This round of market volatility has exposed the harshest truths in the crypto world.

If you're still using the old "bull and bear cycle" narrative to judge the market, it means you've already taken the wrong side. After 2025, the crypto ecosystem has undergone a fundamental transformation: it's no longer the domain of retail investors, but a battleground for capital, narratives, and discourse power. The past opponent was "whales," but now the adversaries are traditional finance, institutional capital, and meticulously crafted market stories.

The most direct reflection of this is in the changes of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The approval of ETFs seems like good news, but it's actually a declaration—crypt assets have officially entered Wall Street's asset allocation list. Sounds professional? Actually, it means: they have become "safer" and also "boring." Institutions want stable returns and hedging tools, not tenfold speculative dreams. Systemic forces are taming those wild fluctuations.

But the most painful part is the altcoin track.

Still buying into the "future"? No, you're buying into a liquidity trap. 90% of new projects are not about innovation from day one, but about executing a clean exit of funds. The more exaggerated the whitepaper, the more complex the token mechanism, the narrower the retail investors' escape route.

The current narratives—AI, RWA, modularity, DePIN—each has its rationale, but they are being shaped into tokens for a game of hot potato. You think you're investing in trends, but in reality, you're providing liquidity for big players at the top.

So who wins? Not those who shout signals every day, not the most active voices in the community, but those who see through the structure and have patience. This market rewards cognition and discipline, punishes luck and emotion.

If you're still chasing hot topics, betting on explosive gains, dreaming of the next hundredfold coin, then this market cycle is just a harvesting mechanism for you. But if you start asking—where is the capital flowing from? Who holds the pricing power? Who wants me to take over?—congratulations, you've truly entered the crypto world.

The market never lacks opportunities; what it lacks is those who can survive until the next round.