Previous cycles were fueled by retail, with an industry trying to legitimize itself.
This cycle is about max extraction and fraud - Legitimized by the presidential family cashing out billions in meme coins, insider trading and forks of existing protocols.
Hacks have also been hitting hard. North Korea has stolen 500m this year alone and 2b last year.
So… no thriving. On the opposite. Dying is a more appropriate word at this time. Some would call this an opportunity. I see more pain ahead.
No wonder Coinbase is laying off people with the excuse of AI. The reality is that volume is zero. At this stage only me and a bunch of other retail weirdos keep on buying bitcoin paycheck by paycheck…
IMO there's actually an opposite effect going on: Retail was never the main driver behind crypto pricing. Think of it like this: If every US adult purchased $1000 in BTC, that purchase would represent a level of volume that BTC, otherwise & at today's historically low volume, takes about 5 days to clear. BTC volume is too high to be explained by retail.
Crypto volume comes from institutional liquidity, not retail. All of that liquidity has moved from crypto to AI. It turns out that the liquidity wasn't actually interested in the technology or the philosophy; they were interested in outsized ROI. Think of BTC not as a currency, but as a share of stock in the crypto technology sector.
Idiots who were getting fleeced by shitcoin pump and dumps are now getting fleeced by insiders betting on heads of state being assassinated.
That's the problem with building your castle on a quicksand whose fundamentals aren't in the same order of magnitude as the market cap you command. When all you truly offer is gambling, eventually a shinier casino will open up and eat your lunch.
This cycle is about max extraction and fraud - Legitimized by the presidential family cashing out billions in meme coins, insider trading and forks of existing protocols.
Hacks have also been hitting hard. North Korea has stolen 500m this year alone and 2b last year.
So… no thriving. On the opposite. Dying is a more appropriate word at this time. Some would call this an opportunity. I see more pain ahead.
No wonder Coinbase is laying off people with the excuse of AI. The reality is that volume is zero. At this stage only me and a bunch of other retail weirdos keep on buying bitcoin paycheck by paycheck…