I’ve gone through three bull markets (2017, 2021, 2024-2026), and I’ve noticed the pattern. I believe the next cycle that truly outperforms BTC won’t be driven by the best technology—it will be driven by the narrative that’s easiest to attract incremental capital.

The biggest rule of a bull market can be summed up in one sentence: money never repeats the hotspots of the previous cycle, but it will upgrade the story from the previous cycle.

Below are my bold predictions for the next bull market—the ones I’m most bullish on:

1; AI and Crypto

If the next bull market has one more super sector, I think it will still be AI. But not the previous one: AI concepts and ChatGPT.
Instead, it upgrades to: AI Agent, AI payments, AI computing power, AI data.

Key focus: FET, TAO, NEAR, VIRTUAL, GRASS, AIOZ

Because AI is no longer just being traded as a concept—it has truly started to be implemented. In the future, AI will need: payments, identity, data, computing power, on-chain wallets—Crypto happens to fill in that missing piece. Many industry research reports also view AI, stablecoins, RWA, and more as core narratives for the coming years.

2; RWA (tokenizing real-world assets on-chain)

This is what I believe will be the biggest institutional narrative over the next few years. Institutions won’t be trading MEME every day. What they truly care about is: how to move several trillion dollars of traditional assets onto the chain. This includes: US Treasuries, stocks, real estate, funds, private equity.

Corresponding tokens: ONDO, LINK, OM (if the ecosystem continues developing), CFG

RWA is more like DeFi in 2019—back then, many people felt it was boring. When it truly explodes, it may have already multiplied by several times. Tokenization of real-world assets is becoming an important direction for the integration of traditional finance and crypto, and more and more institutions are participating.

3; SOL ecosystem

Many people think SOL has already pumped a lot. But what’s truly worth paying attention to isn’t SOL—it’s the SOL ecosystem. History proves that each bull market cycle produces a highly capital-active public chain.

In 2017 it was ETH, in 2021 it was SOL taking off; in the next one: SOL still has the potential to become one of the most capital-efficient ecosystems, but the capital may flow more to ecosystem projects rather than to SOL itself. Solana still maintains strong ecosystem activity in areas like payments and consumer-grade applications.

Worth watching: JUP, JTO, DRIFT, KMNO, PYTH

4; ETH ecosystem

Many people think ETH is slow. But in the future, it may become more like: Microsoft in the U.S. stock market. It may not rise the fastest—but it’s increasingly favored by institutions. Because: stablecoins, RWA, ETFs, on-chain finance—many of these will be built on the ETH ecosystem. In the future, ETH might not be the most exciting story, but it very well could be the most stable infrastructure. More and more research positions Ethereum as institutional-grade settlement and financial infrastructure.

Watch: AAVE, ENA, UNI, LDO

5; Payments and stablecoins

I think many people underestimate this track. Over the next few years, stablecoins may be even more important than DeFi—because payments are the real demand.

If more and more global businesses start using stablecoins, it won’t only be USDT that benefits. There’s also XRP, XLM, HBAR, LINK, and stablecoin infrastructure.

Stablecoin supply continues to grow, and payments and cross-border settlement are becoming important application directions for the crypto industry. #GateUS合规扩展佛罗里达