Author: Ignas
Translation: Baihua Blockchain
One year ago, I wrote “The Truth and Lies of the Crypto Market in 2025.”
At that time, everyone was sharing higher Bitcoin target prices. I wanted to find a different framework to identify where the public might be wrong and to differentiate our positioning. The goal was simple: to find ideas that already exist but are overlooked, despised, or misunderstood.
Before sharing the 2026 version, here is a clear review of what truly matters in 2025. What we got right, what we got wrong, and what we should learn from it. If you don’t examine your own thinking, you’re not investing—you’re guessing blindly.
Quick Summary
- “BTC peaks in Q4”: Most anticipated this, but it looked too good to be true. In the end, they were right, I was wrong (and paid the price). Unless BTC surges from now and breaks the 4-year cycle pattern, I concede this round.
- “Retail prefers memecoins”: The fact is, retail investors don’t actually favor cryptocurrencies. They buy gold, silver, AI stocks, and anything that isn’t crypto. The super cycle for memecoins or AI agents has not materialized.
- “AI x Crypto remains strong”: Mixed results. Projects continue to deliver, the x402 standard keeps evolving, and funding persists. But tokens have failed to sustain any upward momentum.
- “NFTs are dead”: Yes.
These are easy to review. The real insights lie in the following five bigger themes.
1. Spot ETFs are the bottom line, not the ceiling
Since March 2024, long-term Bitcoin holders (OGs) have sold about 1.4 million BTC, worth approximately $121.17 billion.
Imagine what the crypto market would look like without ETFs: despite falling prices, inflows into BTC ETFs remained positive ($26.9 billion).
The roughly $95 billion gap is the reason BTC has lagged behind almost all macro assets. BTC itself isn’t the problem, and there’s no need to dig into unemployment or manufacturing data—it’s just a major rotation by large players and “4-year cycle believers.”
More importantly, Bitcoin’s correlation with traditional risk assets like Nasdaq has fallen to its lowest since 2022 (-0.42). While everyone hopes for correlation to rise, in the long run, as an uncorrelated asset sought by institutions, this is bullish.
Signs indicate supply shocks have ended. Therefore, I dare to predict that in 2026, BTC will reach $174,000 (equivalent to 10% of gold’s market cap).
2. Airdrops obviously “haven’t” disappeared
The crypto community (CT) again claims that airdrops are dead. But in 2025, we saw nearly $4.5 billion in large airdrop distributions:
- Story Protocol (IP): ~$1.4B
- Berachain (BERA): ~$1.17B
- Jupiter (JUP): ~$7.91M
- Animecoin (ANIME): ~$7.11M
The change is: fatigue over points, stronger witch detection, and valuation downtrends. You still need to “claim and sell” to maximize gains.
2026 will be a big year for airdrops, with heavyweight players like Polymarket, Metamask, Base (?), preparing to distribute tokens. This isn’t a year to stop clicking but a year to stop blindly betting. Airdrops require concentrated effort for heavy positioning.
3. Fee Switch is not an engine for price increases but a bottom line
My prediction is: the fee switch won’t automatically push token prices higher. Most protocols’ revenues are insufficient to support their large market caps.
“Fee switch doesn’t affect how high tokens can go but sets a ‘floor’.”
Looking at projects ranked by “Holder Income” on DeFillama: except for $HYPE, all high-income sharing tokens outperform ETH (although ETH is now the benchmark everyone challenges).
Surprisingly, $UNI. Uniswap finally turned on the switch and even burned $100 million worth of tokens. UNI initially surged 75%, but then retraced all gains.
Three insights:
Token buybacks set a price floor, not a ceiling.
Everything in this cycle is just trading (refer to UNI’s surge and retracement).
Buybacks are only one side of the story; consider sell pressure (unlocking). Most tokens are still in low circulation.
4. Stablecoins dominate mindshare, but “proxy trading” is hard to profit from
Stablecoins are entering mainstream. When I rented a motorcycle in Bali, the other party even asked to pay with USDT on TRON.
Although USDT’s dominance has fallen from 67% to 60%, its market cap continues to grow. Citibank predicts stablecoin market cap could reach $1.9 trillion to $4 trillion by 2030.
In 2025, the narrative shifted from “trading” to “payment infrastructure.” However, the trading stablecoin narrative is not easy: Circle’s IPO experienced a surge and then retraced all gains, and other proxy assets also underperformed.
A truth of 2025 is: everything is just trading.
Currently, crypto payment cards are booming due to their convenience in bypassing strict AML requirements from banks. Every card swipe is a on-chain transaction. If in 2026, direct P2P payments bypassing Visa/Mastercard become possible, it would be a thousandfold opportunity.
5. DeFi is more centralized than CeFi
This is a bold statement: DeFi’s business and TVL concentration are higher than traditional finance (CeFi).
Aave accounts for over 60% of the lending market share (compared to JPMorgan’s 12% in the US).
Most Layer 2 protocols are unregulated multi-sigs worth billions.
Chainlink nearly controls all value oracles in DeFi.
In 2025, the conflict between “centralized equity holders” and “token holders/DAOs” became apparent. Who truly owns the protocol, IP rights, and revenue streams? Internal disputes within Aave show that token holders’ rights are less than we imagined.
If “labs” ultimately win, many DAO tokens will become uninvestable. 2026 will be a critical year for aligning stakeholder interests with tokens.
Summary
2025 proved one thing: everything is just trading. Exit windows are extremely short. No token has long-term conviction.
As a result, 2025 marked the death of the HODL (long-term holding) culture, DeFi turned into on-chain finance, and with improved regulation, DAOs are shedding their “pseudo-decentralization” disguise.
