There have been a few key changes in crypto market structure.
I've written about this topic before but I found myself carrying some stale epistemological baggage about how the market used to be versus what it is at the moment, so thought I'd share.
1. More coins than ever before and the barrier to creating new coins has never been lower.
2. More competition for the hot ball of money (AI, semis, tech, even commodities) and instruments like 0DTE options - all of which are very attractive to normies.
3. Change in participant type and sophistication - ETFs, more tradfi shops, suits etc.
4. Normie flows that used to concentrate around a few CEXes and a limited token set have been fragmented by the infinite listings and existence of the trenches.
There are fewer normie flows, they're spread too thin, and it's difficult to come back to the casino if you get dumped on for holding longer than 15 seconds.
The main attractor to crypto used to be outsized, long-lasting, and well-distributed trend and momentum effects that were easy to access because there weren't that many venues or coins.
That's basically up only/alt season i.e. multi-month periods that were responsible for a disproportionate amount of a crypto trader's lifetime P&L.
A rising tide lifting all boats is an overused but appropriate analogy - it didn't really matter what coins you bought.
If you got the broader market conditions right, you'd enjoy significant uplift and basically get bailed out even if you made bad picks.
In the current paradigm you can't afford to make bad picks.
To be precise: in previous cycles if you got the conditions right but the assets wrong, you'd still make money but underperform. In the current cycle (even from the most recent BTC run) if you got conditions right but the assets wrong, you got shafted.
So asset selection went from a nice-to-have enhancer to one of the main drivers of returns, even if BTC is going up.
That's a pretty significant departure from what we've dealt with in the past
This type of dispersion is a symptom of the market maturing.
I think that's a net good thing and is likely to incentivise more intelligent token design, less ghost chain VC slop etc.
But that's a forward-looking view, and at the moment we're trapped in this awkward transition phase where the old rules don't really apply but we haven't figured out a new framework yet e.g. top N coins by market cap are still mostly shit vs quality.
Maybe I'm wrong and everything changes and we go back to the market-wide altseason paradigm when conditions are right. This could all be cyclical, but I think that's less compelling than before given the dispersion we saw on the way up too vs just to the downside.
I think it's a good time (especially with other markets and asset classes going crazy) to revisit where crypto sits in the speculative stack and how to approach it as the market is changing.
Cheers.
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@Manage_zone@coinglass_com It means the op poster is full of cow manure and engagement baiting.
Both longs and shorts are opening up which will accelerate any next move. Likely whipsaw possible.
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GM
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most people should be head down farming the 2-3 unreleased protocols you think are highest upside and keep a side pool of money for the 2-3 good trades a year
and otherwise.. get a hobby
All eyes on Plasma’s $XPL TGE in 40min.
I personally participated in their public sale at a $500M valuation and will likely sell the majority of my position today.
This is no FUD.
In fact, there are strong arguments for Plasma:
@pauliepunt is a great founder I genuinely root for.
It’s a stablecoin chain, and stablecoins are crypto’s killer use case, now further boosted by the Genius Act.
It’s positioned as the "Tether chain" at a time when Tether is stronger than ever, becoming one of the most valuable private companies alongside OpenAI.
Strong branding and a creative public sale structure gave them a vibrant community and billions in TVL, something very few have achieved pre-launch.
However, these arguments are mostly left-curve and narrative driven. That’s often enough in crypto, and it explains how they’ve already reached an $8.5B pre-market valuation.
The reason I’ll sell here is simple:
I don’t see how this can run significantly higher without fundamentals massively catching up. As of today, not much is happening that justifies such a valuation. While I believe they can pull it off, this will definitely take quite some time and I doubt they’ll outperform the broader market in the meantime.
A few more points:
The much-praised TVL is misleading: no one can withdraw yet. Once that changes, I expect deposits to shrink quickly, as many only parked funds to qualify for the public sale. I’ll withdraw immediately, no point locking capital with high opportunity costs in a bullish market.
Public sale participants are up 17x here. Most will take profits and rotate, creating heavy sell pressure that needs to be absorbed.
Plasma isn’t the only one pursuing this vision. @stable is building a very similar product, with official backing from Bitfinex and Tether’s CEO Paolo. Branding aside, new chains have limited moat, so it’s unclear who the eventual winner will be.
Nevertheless, this is one of the most exciting launches of the year. Definitely one to watch. But unless something very unexpected happens and $XPL trades significantly below $5B, I don’t think you need FOMO here.
Watch it over the coming weeks. If it’s something you want to bet on long-term, you’ll likely get a much better entry.
For the upcoming altseason, I’ll give you a concise breakdown of how to navigate the market and how to approach ranges on the macro timeframe.
We primarily work with weekly charts, so it’s essential to understand support and resistance. Key levels are zones where price has been tested multiple times and either held as support or got rejected as resistance. These areas carry significant weight in range analysis.
When plotting ranges, swing highs and swing lows are critical reference points:
Swing High → typically the All-Time High (ATH)
Swing Low → often the previous ATH or UTL (ultimate low)
JUST IN: Galaxy Digital announced it executed one of the largest notional bitcoin transactions in history, selling over 80,000 bitcoin worth more than $9 billion 🤯