Ansem: I disagree that crypto is over; I believe in AI and small team startups.

Author: Ansem

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Guide: When market sentiment is low, BTC is trading sideways at high levels, and ETH continues to face pressure, the “crypto is over” chorus is once again running rampant. In this tweet, well-known trader Ansem offers a rebuttal: poor performance from major coins does not equal industry decline—stablecoins, perpetual contracts, and tokenization are the true structural narrative. For investors who are still at a loss and allocating assets, this is a long-term framework that deserves serious consideration.

Disagree—crypto is simply going through a mature phase.

As stablecoins, perpetual contracts, and tokenization remain the themes, they will continue to seep into the global economy, and many successful crypto startups will emerge.

Hyperliquid is only the first; it demonstrates very well how strong the combination of an open blockchain and business tokenization can be—there will be more after that.

The current problems in crypto market sentiment come from the poor performance of mainstream large-cap coins. In under twenty years, BTC has risen from $0.01 per coin to $100,000. In terms of resisting the continuing decline in the dollar’s purchasing power, it has actually done a remarkably successful job of completing its mission. Today, the issue Bitcoin faces is a “Ponzi-like” tendency brought about by Saylor’s playbook—this is temporary. I believe that until this problem is resolved, BTC will not see any clear, trend-setting upside again. Also, concerns about quantum computing are real. These two points, together with institutional outflows’ liquidity, are more than enough reasons for long-time BTC players to de-risk by moving excess liquidity elsewhere—because we’ve already seen specific cases, such as that large OTC trade handled by Galaxy (in 2025, a single entity completed a $9 billion sale). There are also many similar individuals whose holdings are already in an infinitely profitable state.

But after outperforming every asset on Earth for more than a decade, BTC going weak again for a few more years doesn’t mean crypto is dead—what a ridiculous claim.

Ethereum is also suffering for its own unique reasons. I think I’ve talked about this topic enough, but it is indeed being suppressed by competition from new entrants, and it hasn’t managed to turn ETH into a great asset worth holding long term. All L1s are struggling on the demand side because, historically, the story around these tokens has been “future growth,” not real revenue. But now Hyperliquid has proven, in a tangible way, that a business can be directly connected to an L1 token—previously, those L1s were very passive. They captured too little revenue from applications that used their infrastructure. Ethereum’s situation is even worse, because it outsources execution activity to Rollups.

But that also doesn’t mean more successful crypto startups won’t appear.

Crypto regulation improvements have a very clear trend, which will greatly lower the barrier for entrepreneurs to build crypto businesses. At the same time, existing tech companies are also acknowledging the advantages of blockchain—Robinhood, Stripe/Tempo, and others are clear proof.

AI has taken away a large share of the attention that originally belonged to crypto, and since the bottom in late 2022, tech stocks have performed far better than crypto. As a trader, allocating time between stocks and crypto is extremely wise. In the past, if you were willing to take risks, over-allocating to crypto was reasonable—that was an emerging industry, and as it moved into the mainstream, it experienced extraordinary returns.

Next, as AI models make exponential progress in the coming years, there are three underestimated crypto tailwinds:

1）Open-source AI will become more competitive with closed-source AI

2）It will become easier for small teams to build successful startups with software

3）Stablecoins and blockchain are better infrastructure for AI agents to trade

With these trends stacking on top of each other, it means you’ll see more crypto experiments and token innovation—not fewer—especially in the backdrop of continuously improving regulatory conditions and retail speculation becoming the next big trend.