The cycle is quietly taking shape: In a stock game, how should we understand the "second half" of 2026?

Recently, I’ve been chatting with a few veteran insiders, and the general feeling is: “It’s getting harder to make money; the old logic of ‘carving a boat to seek a sword’ no longer works.”

The market appears calm on the surface, with BTC still oscillating around $77,000, but beneath the surface, dark currents are surging, reaching a life-and-death crossroads that must be taken seriously. If you’re still using the 2020 or 2024 halving narratives and the old logic of liquidity flooding to guide your current operations, you’re likely to be marginalized in this cycle of “structural bull market.”

Today, I took some time to write a long article to share my in-depth thoughts on the current macro and micro structures of the crypto market, hoping to help everyone clarify the defensive and offensive strategies moving forward.

###1. Macro Bloodletting: Is Bitcoin Becoming a “One-Man Game”?

Many Twitter influencers are daily watching Federal Reserve speeches and ETF inflows and outflows, but honestly, by 2026, you might be looking at the wrong chart.

Current on-chain data and reports from major research institutions (like 10x Research) reveal a brutally stark truth: The buying activity of MicroStrategy alone accounts for nearly 70% of the net inflow into stablecoins, ETFs, and futures markets across the entire network.

Since this year, Saylor has been using an almost “perpetual motion machine” arbitrage tactic—issuing perpetual preferred stock (STRC)—to swallow over 170k BTC, a figure that far exceeds the global miners’ output during the same period.

• Pain point: Retail investors and traditional institutions’ incremental capital is slowing down, and market liquidity is highly concentrated.
• Thoughts: If Bitcoin’s pricing power shifts from “a global decentralized game” to “an infinite arbitrage game of a few Wall Street giants,” it means BTC has a very strong downside support, but it also implies that its “vampiric” effect on altcoins will continue beyond expectations. The high dominance of BTC isn’t accidental but a natural result of this capital structure.

###2. ETH/BTC Exchange Rate Hits New Low—Is Ethereum Really Dead?

A few days ago, the ETH/BTC rate directly broke below 0.027, hitting a new low for the year, and the market was filled with cries of “Ethereum is dead.”

Objectively, Ethereum has indeed been under pressure this year. In a macro environment with tight liquidity, Wall Street funds tend to favor more liquid assets like BTC. But from a testing and developer perspective, blindly shorting the Ethereum ecosystem is also unwise.

• Fundamentals remain unchanged: Whether it’s high-net-worth capital tokenizing real-world assets (RWA) or top-tier institutions engaging in decentralized finance (DeFi) compliance and liquidation, Ethereum remains an irreplaceable Layer 1.
• Pain point in L2 fragmentation: Today’s Ethereum is like a vast empire fractured by countless Layer 2 solutions. After modular (layered) narratives lowered infrastructure costs, the true value capture has not extended to $ETH .
• Tone setting: ETH isn’t heading to zero; it’s shifting from a “high-volatility asset” to a “utility asset.” It’s more like a U.S. Treasury bond in Web3—steady but lacking the exciting wealth effects.

###3. Where Are the Structural Opportunities Leading?

Since the floodgates are closing, where is the remaining capital flowing? Currently, only two tracks have the ability to generate self-sustaining growth and attract attention:

####1. Solana’s “Compliance + Application” Dual Spiral

Pay attention to a recent milestone many have overlooked: In the joint guidance issued by SEC and CFTC, SOL has been substantively defined as a “digital commodity,” explicitly excluding protocol staking from being classified as a security.

Once this legal barrier is lifted, Solana’s RWA scale has directly surpassed $2 billion, and the number of independent on-chain holders even once exceeded Ethereum’s. Meanwhile, traditional payment giants like Mastercard and Western Union are beginning to develop in the Solana developer platform (SDP). While everyone is still hyping memes, Solana is quietly eating into the cross-border settlement market of Web2 with PayFi (payment finance).

####2. “Compliance by Design” Infrastructure

On July 1, the EU’s MiCA regulation’s grandfathering period officially ended. California’s DFAL and DAC8 tax reporting mechanisms are fully implemented.

What does this mean? The era of “wild growth” is over. Projects that will survive and grow by 2026 are not those with the best stories, but those that embed real-time transaction monitoring, MPC custody, and compliant proof of reserves directly into their protocol code. Compliance is no longer just a legal department issue but a hard technical requirement.

###4. Survival Guide for the Second Half of 2026

As a veteran who has been through many market cycles, I sincerely offer a few pieces of advice:

1. Abandon the illusion of a full bull market, embrace “hotspot islands”: The future market will resemble A-shares or U.S. stocks, with 20% of sectors booming and 80% of coins ignored. If a track cannot form an ecosystem or generate real revenue (protocol income) within 1-2 weeks, don’t hesitate—reallocate.
2. Focus on high-confidence assets: Shift your holdings toward assets with clear Wall Street market-making (like MicroStrategy’s model) or strong compliance expectations (assets with explicit commodity status).
3. Combine technology and AI agents (Agentic Workflow): Whether for quantitative trading or daily operations, relying solely on humans is a thing of the past. Study how AI agents can automatically execute trades, detect, and aggregate on-chain data, and use tools to bridge information gaps.

Final words: The crypto market cycles through new narratives every four years and resets every two. Staying at the table is more important than anything else.

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments: Do you think ETH can rebound in the second half? Can SOL’s PayFi disrupt traditional payments?

#BTC #Solana #ETH #Crypto2026 #DeFi #RWA