When will the pancake circle shine again—waiting for its return!

The recent market crash should have disappointed many people in the crypto world, especially after exchanges launched US stocks, everyone realized US stocks kept rising while crypto crashed, making many feel that the crypto space is just trash in comparison.

So why has this round of the crypto market performed so poorly? I also thought about it over the weekend, and here are some of my views!

First, indeed, no comparison means no harm

Comparison 1: After the US stock market fell in January, it quickly rebounded to new highs, while Bitcoin has been crashing recently, forming a stark contrast.

Comparison 2: The leader in crypto, Bitcoin, if starting from its low point of 15,000 in 2022, rose to the highest point in 2025 at 125,000, an 8x increase.

Meanwhile, the leader in US stocks, Nvidia, if starting from its low of $11 in 2022, rose to $220 now, a 20x increase.

Comparison 3: Year-over-year, Bitcoin’s previous cycle was in 2021. If starting from the low of 4,000 in 2019, it reached the peak of 69,000 in 2021, a 17x increase. Its recent performance is weaker than before.

Comparison 4: Other altcoins year-over-year, few have broken through the 2021 high. Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, TRX, etc., are limited in number. In 2021, Ethereum surged 30x, and many mainstream altcoins increased 30-50x. But in this cycle, most mainstream altcoins haven't even reached new highs, let alone increased 10-20x.

Therefore, the performance of the crypto space this round can be said to be very poor (lacking a strong wealth-creating effect). Given all these comparisons, many people have started to abandon and scorn the crypto space, and without wealth creation, capital will also flow away.

Why did this situation form?

I thought about it briefly and offer one explanation:

In 2021, the crypto space had “top-level new concepts”: DeFi, blockchain games, NFTs. Each narrative was strongly applied and implemented, especially DeFi, which made people think that finance could be played with in new ways. If traditional finance is disrupted, it would be a “huge” opportunity, so capital flooded in.

After all, financial speculation is about “expectations,” which can have very high upper limits, and there are actual products in place, like Uni, Aave, Compound, YFI, and others. Blockchain games are also disruptive—people didn’t expect gaming to be overturned, and gaming is a huge industry. Although at the time, only pixel-style games appeared, everyone believed that in the future, 3D and better games would emerge. NFTs were also a big bomb, with strong practical applications—NFTs can tag physical assets (tickets, intellectual property, art, game items) and link to the real world, with limitless prospects.

This cycle, although AI projects like Virtual, Tao, etc., appeared in the crypto space, these concepts are simply weak compared to ChatGPT.

Then, RWA (Real-World Assets) and DePIN concepts also emerged, but there are no truly outstanding practical applications yet. Most concepts remain at the theoretical level. RWA has only brought out stablecoins and on-chain gold, but nothing “beyond expectations,” no huge imagination space.

Why is “imagination space” so important? Because humans are animals living in a “web of meaning they create themselves.” I heard this sentence in Luo Ji Thinking many years ago. I didn’t understand it deeply at the time, but now I finally get it.

For example, why did SpaceX, recently listed, get a valuation of $1.7 trillion right after going public? The reason is that SpaceX provided enormous imagination space. First, it’s the first “private aerospace” + “future Mars travel” company. It’s not just a concept; it has real projects. It launched 10,000 satellites, and the number of low-earth orbit satellites is limited, occupying most positions. Starlink has already started making a profit. So SpaceX has a narrative, products like rockets, an ecosystem with satellites, and expectations of Mars colonization. It almost covers everything. How could its market cap not be high?

Of course, whether Mars colonization will succeed is not the point. The key is that as long as a small part of people believe, they form a consensus network or a “web of meaning.” Someone is willing to believe in this huge imagination space.

Similarly, Tesla is the same. For example, Tesla’s robots and autonomous vehicles have led to a PE ratio of hundreds. It’s the only company with a trillion-dollar market cap that exceeds 100 in valuation. It shows that Musk is a master at creating a “web of meaning.”

In this cycle or the next, the crypto space lacks projects that can give people infinite imagination space. I’ve always said that the crypto space needs new projects, not new public chains. Even in 2026, new public chains are still emerging, which is meaningless for the development of the crypto space.

After this round of cleansing, when everyone is being heavily “harvested” by “garbage projects,” and when “new projects” are dead if they don’t innovate, the overall environment will change. Then, some people will truly be willing to develop “high-quality projects”—projects with huge imagination space and practical applications.

For example, decentralized AI large models. Currently, AI large models are distributed across various centralized companies. If in the future, AI large models become malicious, capable of independent thinking, and can operate outside the control of any single centralized company, wouldn’t that be very dangerous?

So, can Web3 entrepreneurs find a solution—create a decentralized AI model that is as efficient as current models, but also prevents major companies from competing with each other, saving social resources, and avoiding future AI destroying humanity? The underlying technology could be blockchain, using Ethereum or Bitcoin as the base chain.

Of course, this is just a “guess.” If such a project really appears, the crypto space might shine again, rather than being in its current state. Until then, the entire industry may need to continue experiencing this long process of淘汰.