The Changing Crypto Order
Arguments for the four-year cycle being dead and why the new order is here.
I really like Ray Dalio’s Changing World Order model because it forces you to zoom out and see the big picture.
Instead of getting lost in daily dramas of crypto X you look at the long-term shifts. That is how we should approach crypto as well.
It is not only about narratives quickly shifting but about how the entire order of the industry changed.
Crypto is not the same market it was in 2017 or 2021.
Here is how I believe the order has changed.
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The Great Rotation
Spot BTC and ETF ETFs launches were a big shift.
Then just this month the SEC approved generic listing standards for commodity ETPs. That means faster approvals and more assets coming to market. Grayscale already applied via this new change.
Bitcoin ETFs had the most successful launch in history. Ethereum ETFs started slow but now hold billions even in a weak market.
Buyers are pensions, advisors and banks. Crypto now sits in the same portfolio calls as gold or the Nasdaq.
Bitcoin ETFs hold $150B AUM, over 6% of supply.
And ETH ETFs hold 5.59% of the total supply.
All this in just over a year.
ETFs are now the main buyers for Bitcoin and Ethereum. They change the ownership base from retail to institutions. You can see from my post below that whales are buying while retail is selling.
What’s more, Old Whales are selling to the New Whales.
Ownership is rotating. The four-year cycle believers are selling. They expect the same script to repeat. But something different is happening.
Retail traders who bought at lower levels are selling into ETFs and institutions. That transfer resets cost basis higher. It also raises the floor for future cycles because new holders will not sell at small gains.
This is the Great Crypto Rotation. Crypto is moving from speculative retail hands to long-term allocators.
Generic listing standards unlock the next phase of this rotation.
In 2019 a similar rule for equities tripled ETF launches. Expect the same for crypto. Many new ETFs are coming for SOL, HYPE, XRP, DOGE and many more giving retail the exit liquidity they need.
The big question remains: will the institutional buying power counterbalance the retail selling?
If macro holds stable I believe that those who sell now expecting a 4-year cycle, will buy back higher.
The End of Broad Market Pumps
In the past crypto pumped together. Bitcoin moved first, then ETH, then everything else followed. Small caps ripped because liquidity flowed down the risk curve.
This time it is different as not all tokens pump together.
There are now millions of tokens. New coins launch daily on pump.fun with ‘creators’ moving attention from old tokens to their own memecoins. Supply exploded while retail attention stayed the same.
Liquidity is spread thin across too many assets because issuing a new token costs almost nothing.
Low float tokens with high FDV were once hot and good for airdrops. Now retail has learnt the lesson. They want tokens that return value or at least hold strong cultural gravity ($UNI failing to pump despite strong trading volumes is a good example).
Ansem is right that we hit the peak of pure speculation. The new meta is revenue because it’s sustainable. Apps with product market fit and fees will pump. Everything else will not.
Two things stand out: users paying high fees for speculation, and the efficiency of blockchain rails versus TradFi. The first is peaking. The second still has room to grow.
Murad adds another good point I think Ansem missed. Tokens that still pop are often new, weird and misunderstood but carried by communities with strong belief. I’m on of those dudes that love the new flashy things (like my iPhone Air).
Cultural significance makes the difference between survival and failure. A clear mission, even if it looks delusional at first, can keep a community alive until adoption snowballs. I’d put Pudgy Penguins, Punk NFTs and memecoins into this category.
Still, not every shiny new thing makes it. Runes, ERC404 etc. taught me how fast novelty can fade. Narratives can emerge and then die before reaching critical mass.
I think together these views explain the new order. Revenue filters out weak projects. Culture carries the misunderstood.
Both matter, but in different ways. The biggest winners will be the few tokens that combine them.
The Stablecoin Order Give Crypto Credibility
At first traders held USDT or USDC to buy BTC and alts. New inflows were bullish because they turned into spot bids. Back then 80% to 100% of stablecoin inflows ended up buying crypto.
Now that changed.
Stablecoins enter for lending, payments, yield, treasury, and airdrop farming. Some of that money never touches BTC or ETH spot buys. Yet it still lifts the system. More transactions on L1s and L2s. More DEX liquidity. More revenue for lending markets like Fluid and Aave. Deeper money markets for the whole ecosystem.
A new development is payments-first L1s.
Tempo by Stripe and Paradigm is built for high-throughput stablecoin payments with EVM tooling and a native stablecoin AMM.
Plasma is a Tether-backed L1 designed for USDT with a neobank and card for emerging markets.
These chains push stablecoins toward real economy, not just trading. We’re back to “blockchains used for payments” meta again.
What this could mean (I’m still unsure tbh).
Tempo: Stripe’s distribution is massive. That helps crypto wider adoption but may bypass spot demand for BTC or ETH. Tempo could end up like PayPal: huge flows but little value accrual to the Ethereum or other chains. The open question is whether Tempo has a token (which I think it will) and how much fee revenue flows back into crypto.
Plasma: Tether already dominates issuance. By connecting chain + issuer + app, Plasma could pull a big part of emerging market payments into one walled garden. It’s like the closed Apple ecosystem vs the open-internet that Ethereum and Solana push for.
It sets up a fight with Solana, Tron, and EVM L2s for being the default USDT chain. I think Tron has the most to lose here while Ethereum was never about payments anyway. Yet Aave and others launching on Plasma is a big risk for ETH….Base: The saviour of ETH L2s. Since Coinbase and Base push for payments via Base app and yield on USDC, they will continue drive fees Ethereum, and DeFi protocols. The ecosystem stays fragmented but competitive, which spreads liquidity wider.
Regulation is aligning with this shift. The GENIUS Act now pushes other countries to catch up with the stablecoin game worldwide.
And the CFTC just allowed using stablecoins as tokenized collateral in derivatives. That adds non-spot demand from capital markets on top of payments demand.
Overall, stablecoins and the new stable L1s give crypto credibility.
What was just a gambling arena now has geopolitical importance. Speculation is still number one, but stablecoins are clearly the second biggest use case in crypto.
Winners are chains and apps that can capture stablecoin flows and turn them into sticky users and cash flows. The big unknown is whether new L1s like Tempo and Plasma become leaders that lock value inside their ecosystems or Ethereum, Solana, L2s and Tron can fight back.
The next big trade is happening with Plasma mainnet this on 25th Sept.
DATs: New Leverage and IPOs for non ETF tokens
Digital Asset Treasuries scare me.
Every bull cycle we find new ways to lever up tokens. It pumps prices higher than spot buying alone could, but the unwind is always brutal. When FTX collapsed the forced selling from CeFi leverage crushed the market.
This cycle the leverage risk may come from DATs. If they issue shares at a premium, raise debt, and pile that into tokens, they amplify the upside. But when sentiment turns those same structures can magnify the dump.
Forced redemptions or share buybacks drying up could trigger heavy selling pressure. So while DATs broaden access and bring institutional capital, they also add a new layer of systemic risk.
We got an example of what happens when mNAV > 1. TL;DR they give ETH to shareholders who will likely dump it. And yet despite the “airdrop” BTCS trades at 0.74 mNAV. Not good.
On the flip side, DATs are a new bridge between token economies and equity markets.
As G, founder of Ethena, wrote:
“One concern of mine is that we have simply run out of crypto-native capital to bid alts beyond prior cycle peaks. If we look at total alt notional market cap peak in Q4’21 and Q4’24 it tops out at roughly the same number: just under $1.2 trillion. Adjusted for inflation its almost the exact same number between cycles. Perhaps this is how much retail capital there is in the world to bid what is 99% vapourware?”
That is the context for why DATs matter.
Retail capital may have topped out, but tokens with real businesses, real revenue and real users can tap into the much larger equity markets. Compared to global equities the entire altcoin market is a rounding error. DATs open a door for new capital to flow in.
And not just that, since few altcoins have the needed expertise to launch DATs, those that do manage to focus attention once again from million of tokens to the few Schelling point assets.
His other point that the NAV premium arbitrage isn’t important… is bullish.
Outside of Saylor, who can use leverage in his capital structure, most DATs will not sustain a lasting premium to NAV. The real value is not in premium games but in access. Even a steady one-to-one NAV with consistent inflows is better than no access at all.
DATs for ENA and even for SOL got hate due to them being ‘vehicles’ to cash out VC tokens.
ENA is especially vulnerable due to huge VC bags. But due to this capital misallocation problem where private VC funds dwarf liquid secondary demand, exiting to DATs is bullish as VCs then can allocate the capital to fund other crypto assets.
It’s important because VCs got rekt this cycle without being able to exit their investments. If they can sell and get new liquidity, they can finally fund new innovations in crypto and push the industry forward.
Overall, DATs are bullish crypto and especially those tokens that can’t get ETFs. They allow projects like Aave, Fluid, Hype etc., with real users and revenue to shift exposure into equity markets.
Sure, many DATs will fail and have spill over effects on the market. But they also bring IPOs for ICOs.
The RWA Revolution Means We Can Have Financial Lives Onchain
The total onchain RWA market just passed $30B USD, almost 9% higher in just a month. The chart is up only.
Treasuries, credit, commodities and private equities are now tokenized. The escape velocity is bending up fast.
RWAs bring the world economy onchain. A few big shifts are:
Before you had to sell crypto into fiat to buy stocks or bonds. Now you can stay onchain, hold BTC or stables, move into treasuries or equities, and keep in self custody.
DeFi escapes the “loop Ponzi” games that were the growth engine for many protocols. And it brings new revenue stream for DeFi and L1/L2 infra.
The big shift is collateral.
Aave’s Horizon lets you deposit tokenized assets like an S&P500 index and borrow against it. But the TVL still small at just $114M means that RWA is still relatively early. (P.s. Centrifuge is working on bringing the official SPX500 RWA onchain. If it happens CFG could do well. I hold a bag).
TradFi makes this nearly impossible for retail.
RWAs finally make DeFi a real capital market. They set a base rate with treasuries and credit. They expand global reach so anyone can hold US treasuries without a US bank (which is becoming a global battleground).
BlackRock launched BUIDL, and Franklin launched BENJI. These are not side projects. They are the bridge for trillions of dollars into crypto rails.
Overall, RWAs are the most important structural revolution now. They make DeFi relevant for the real economy and build the rails for a world that can stay fully onchain.
The 4-Year Cycle
The most important question for crypto natives is whether the 4-year cycle is gone. I hear people around me selling already, expecting it to repeat. Yet I believe that with the Changing Crypto Order the 4-year cycle will repeat.
This time is different.
I bet on it with my bags because:
ETFs turned BTC and ETH into allocatable assets for institutions.
Stablecoins became a geopolitical tool that now moves into payments and capital markets.
DATs opened a path for tokens without ETFs to enter equity flows and VCs to exit while funding new ventures.
RWAs bring the world economy onchain and create a base rate for DeFi.
This is not the casino of 2017. Nor the mania of 2021.
It is a new structural and adoption era where crypto is merging with TradFi while still powered by culture, speculation and belief.
The next winners will not come from buying everything.
Many tokens may still repeat the 4-year dump. You need to be picky.
The real winners will be those that adapt to macro and institutional changes while holding cultural gravity with retail.
That is the new order.
Ignas-Do you think eth will be just a solid long term bet? Not sure how it fits in this puzzle
Pros: Tom lee, etf flows, cultural 'cache'?
Cons: Fake crypto Plasma/Tempo with distribution, low revenues
A brilliant writeup and emphatically answering a desperately sought question from a newbie to crypto verse. ‘This time is different”- thank you.