In 2025, the crypto market will be highly fragmented, and fund returns will underperform the childcare industry! Investment difficulty in 2026 may rise again.

Cryptocurrency investment firm Fisher8 Capital recently released the “2025 Year in Review,” which points out that the past year has been extremely challenging for most crypto funds. Amid high capital rotation and the overall underperformance of crypto assets compared to traditional assets, the market has officially bid farewell to the “bull market” era and entered a highly selective, structurally differentiated phase.

Fisher8 states that although long-term themes such as AI and DePIN experienced significant pullbacks in 2025, the team chose to endure volatility and maintain medium- to long-term allocations, ultimately delivering a positive return of 16.7% for the year. However, the report also admits that when measured by risk-adjusted returns, the investment experience was even worse than simply investing funds in the childcare industry.

Institutional narrative decline, Trump trade reversal impacts crypto market

Looking back, at the end of 2024, the market widely bet that Trump’s victory would bring a crypto-friendly regulatory environment, including a shift in stablecoin policies, the strategic Bitcoin reserve concept, and the launch of crypto projects related to Trump himself, making crypto assets some of the most volatile targets in Trump’s trading.

However, the post-election reality did not quickly meet expectations. With slow policy progress, lack of breakthroughs in legal frameworks, and a market de-risking, Trump-related assets and the crypto market declined in tandem, highlighting the risk that some crypto asset prices have been financialized through politicized narratives.

Fisher8 points out that the “Expanded Accessibility of Alternative Assets” executive order signed in August 2025 allows 401(k) retirement trustees to consider digital asset allocations. Although it did not immediately bring in capital inflows, it substantially changed the demand structure of the crypto market, paving the way for medium- and long-term capital entry.

Risk assets become K-shaped, long-term meme coin holding myth shattered

The report indicates that the Risk-On trend in 2025 has significantly converged. Even with Bitcoin reaching a new all-time high, meme coins and long-tail assets performed relatively weakly, with capital shifting toward a few assets with structural advantages, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and applications with cash flow or value capture capabilities.

Fisher8 believes that, aside from institutionally anchored assets like BTC, ETH, and SOL, most tokens only rose during their narrative hype. Once the narrative fades, liquidity quickly dries up, and the long-term holding hypothesis no longer holds.

Digital Asset Vaults (DAT) expand rapidly, structural risks emerge

Another significant phenomenon in 2025 is the rapid expansion of Digital Asset Vaults (DAT). Fisher8 notes that some DATs mimic the MicroStrategy model, becoming channels for crypto exposure before ETF approval, but many meme coin DAT structures are highly predatory.

The report bluntly states that many DATs create exit liquidity by exchanging tokens for equity, combined with low-cost private rounds and relaxed lock-up conditions, ultimately causing retail investors to be under pressure in both equity and token markets, with value being rapidly extracted.

Investment focus for 2026: application layer, selectivity, and verifiable value

Looking ahead to 2026, Fisher8 presents three core judgments:

The currency premium of the new generation of meme coin public chains is disappearing

True asymmetric opportunities will emerge at the application layer. As mainstream chains dominate market share, new chains find it difficult to break through user and liquidity moats. Instead, applications with actual revenue are undervalued in the long term.

U.S. midterm elections in 2026 will intensify market volatility

Amid fiscal expansion, potential inflation, and policy uncertainty, crypto assets remain attractive, but the path will be more turbulent.

Crypto market enters K-shaped token economy

Protocols with verifiable and auditable value capture mechanisms are favored by the market, while tokens with ambiguous value attribution and reliance on trust narratives will face long-term liquidity depletion.

Institutional expectations: increased difficulty in crypto market investments in 2026

Fisher8 summarizes that 2026 will no longer be a broad bull market but a year highly sensitive to asset structure, governance design, and value alignment. Investment difficulty will rise significantly, but this also creates opportunities for re-pricing of fundamentally sound projects.

This article, “In 2025, the crypto market is highly fragmented, with fund returns lagging behind the childcare industry! Investment difficulty may rise again in 2026,” first appeared on Chain News ABMedia.