Written by: nikshep
Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News
AI has taken away Bitcoin's risk-speculation attribute, and USD stablecoins have replaced Bitcoin as the universal circulating currency in the crypto market; the anchor that once silently held the fragmented crypto world together is no longer Bitcoin. This is the most bullish structural change for the crypto industry in years, yet few understand the logic behind it.
This week, Bitcoin fell below $70,000, plummeting about 45% from its high last October, plunging the market into despair. Spot ETFs have experienced historic and sustained large-scale outflows, marking the longest redemption cycle since the products launched; the price of Bitcoin, hailed as "digital gold," remains sluggish, while physical gold surges ahead.
But the market's lament is misguided.
Just as Bitcoin continues its decline, a largely unknown on-chain exchange surpassed Coinbase in trading volume last year; a prediction market platform's valuation surged to $20 billion, with annualized fee revenue reaching $365 million; privacy coins, once viewed skeptically by the market, rose 70% in a single week, charting an independent course while Bitcoin traded sideways; and a long-undervalued underlying network enabled private cross-chain transfers, allowing users to move assets without even needing to purchase its native token.
The crypto industry is not sinking with Bitcoin. Crypto no longer needs Bitcoin.
This statement may seem bearish at first glance, but the reality is quite the opposite. Crypto is maturing, moving beyond the wild era where all altcoins were tied to Bitcoin's price movements and speculation-driven rallies, evolving into a USD-denominated real economy ecosystem. Projects now succeed or fail based on their own fundamentals. A new set of underlying interconnection infrastructure is replacing Bitcoin, linking the entire crypto world together.
This year, Bitcoin has lost two core functions, replaced by two new types of entities, and the resulting vacancies are nurturing entirely new opportunities.
AI Has Seized Bitcoin's Risk-Speculation Capital
Bitcoin itself does not generate cash flow; it has no profits, dividends, or interest. Its price fluctuations are almost entirely determined by the amount of speculative capital, making it a typical capital reservoir: prices soar when liquidity is loose and correct deeply when capital tightens. In 2026, the AI sector has risen powerfully, continuously diverting speculative hot money that once flowed into Bitcoin.
Global AI infrastructure investment this year is estimated to be in the range of $700 billion to $830 billion, roughly equivalent to half the size of the US investment-grade bond market, with projections reaching $7 trillion by 2030; the AI industry contributes about 5% to US GDP, surpassing consumer spending as a driver of US economic growth. NVIDIA alone accounts for 8% of the S&P 500 index weight. AI is no longer an ordinary sector; it has formed a super-strong gravitational field for capital, reshaping pricing logic across the entire market.
AI drains Bitcoin's capital from three key dimensions:
1) AI has captured the core narrative. Bitcoin's past core selling point was "betting on future asymmetric opportunities," but AI has verifiable revenue, explosively growing market demand, and policy support from various countries. Investors can gain exposure through index funds. Institutions now classify Bitcoin alongside other speculative, non-earnings-backed stocks as the same type of risky asset. Within the same risk pool, where one side has profit realization and the other relies purely on expectation, capital naturally continues to exit Bitcoin. This is the root cause of the consecutive ETF redemptions.
2) AI requires capital. AI expansion relies heavily on debt financing. Cloud giants' bond issuance has already surpassed last year's total, and private credit for the AI industry has exceeded $200 billion. High-quality issuers absorbing vast amounts of top-tier capital through massive debt issuance leave less capital available to flow into high-risk assets like Bitcoin.
3) AI forces a high-interest-rate environment. The AI industry drives up production costs for resources like electricity, water, and storage chips, with related category price increases generally in the 5% to double-digit range, anchoring US inflation around 3.8%. The Federal Reserve is compelled to maintain a high benchmark rate of 3.50%-3.75%, with the market having almost no rate-cut expectations for the year. AI not only competes with Bitcoin for capital but also locks down loose liquidity from the macroeconomic environment.
Beyond this, the computing power side is also being disrupted. Bitcoin mining and AI computing power are essentially about converting electricity into computational power, competing for the same power resources. The economic benefit per unit of electricity for NVIDIA servers is far higher than that for mining rigs. Last quarter, the comprehensive cost for leading listed mining companies to mine one Bitcoin was about $80,000, but the Bitcoin market price was only $70,000, resulting in a loss of $19,000 per coin. Numerous mining firms are transitioning to AI computing power: the industry has signed over $70 billion in AI supercomputing cooperation orders, with leading miners' AI business revenue potentially reaching up to 70% by year-end. Core Scientific spent $10.2 billion converting a 300-megawatt Bitcoin mining farm into an AI data center; Riot sold its own Bitcoin and leased land to AMD. These entities, once guardians of Bitcoin's network security, are collectively exiting.
Compared to the widely feared risk of quantum computing, AI brings permanent structural change. Even if future quantum computers could crack Bitcoin's encryption algorithm, the industry could patch the protocol through post-quantum cryptography standards and soft forks. However, AI's capture of narrative, capital, and power resources is irreversible; no protocol upgrade can挽回. Bitcoin's first core value is彻底落空.
USD Stablecoins Replace Bitcoin as the Crypto Market's Base Currency
This is the most easily overlooked critical change. Throughout crypto's development history, Bitcoin has long served as the industry's reserve asset and on/off-ramp intermediary: fiat was first converted to Bitcoin, then exchanged for various altcoins, with all coins priced in BTC. Inbound capital had to buy Bitcoin first, which was the root cause of the联动涨跌 across the entire market.
Stablecoins have severed this chain. USDC transaction volume surpassed USDT in 2019 for the first time since then, with global stablecoin annual transaction volume exceeding $30 trillion. The current user on-ramp path is now: fiat → USDC → various assets. Bitcoin has been completely踢出 the circulation chain. Polymarket revamped and launched its platform-native dollar stablecoin (pegged 1:1 to USDC reserves) this year. Hyperliquid settles entirely in USD across its platform. As summarized within the industry: stablecoins have become the underlying universal reserve currency for applications, with various platforms merely attaching their own label on top.
Therefore, when market risk-aversion sentiment rises, dominance charts show Bitcoin's share declining while stablecoins' share increases. Capital is not flowing out of the crypto market; it's merely switching within the industry to USD-denominated assets. Investors looking to allocate to the crypto sector no longer need to hold Bitcoin; USD stablecoins have assumed this function. On-chain transactions all operate on USD, and on-chain capital flows can no longer generate buy-side pressure for Bitcoin. Bitcoin's second core function has正式落幕.
With Bitcoin Detached, the Crypto Economy Thrives
Setting Bitcoin aside, the products being realized today are no longer speculative chips tied to coin prices but commercialized projects with real cash flows.
The existence of Hyperliquid alone debunks the narrative that "cryptocurrency is dying." This on-chain spot/derivatives exchange matches leading CEXs in matching depth and transaction speed, with user assets self-custodied; its total transaction volume last year was $2.6 trillion, higher than Coinbase's $1.4 trillion, with annualized revenue between $8-13 billion. The platform uses 97% of its fees for secondary market buybacks and burning of its native HYPE token, with an annual buyback volume of around $13 billion, accounting for 7% of the token's total market cap. The burn rate is 4-5 times that of Ethereum and 14 times that of Solana. The project received no VC funding, achieving a value闭环 through community airdrops and fee buybacks. Trading volume fluctuations depend entirely on trader demand, unrelated to Bitcoin's price movements. The platform's scale grew逆势 during Bitcoin's bear market.
Another protagonist is the prediction market leader Polymarket, valued at $20 billion, with annual transaction volume of $250-300 billion, annualized fees of $365 million, and daily active users increasing 2.5倍 in five months; it issues a platform dollar stablecoin, with its token即将上线. Polymarket's product revolves around betting on elections, sports events, and global affairs, with demand unrelated to Bitcoin price fluctuations.
Such projects now employ traditional corporate valuation logic: revenue, user scale, valuation multiples—a hallmark of the industry's maturation.
New Sector Dividends: Privacy Becomes a Scarce Resource
If Bitcoin's transparent and monitored ledger was the default option of the past, then privacy is the new upgrade option. It's a currency with self-sovereignty and untraceability only obtainable on-chain. But the method of acquiring this currency is截然不同, and this difference is key.
Self-Held Privacy. Zcash (ZEC) surged 70% in a single week, with its total market cap approaching $10 billion, up over 45倍 from its 2024 low, charting an independent course while Bitcoin traded sideways. Its fundamental支撑 is solid: the proportion of private transaction volume increased from 11% last November to 30%, most private assets are not transferred back to public chains, causing circulating supply to持续收缩叠加 rising demand. Regulatory pressure that once打压 privacy compliance反而助推 privacy币 value落地: Robinhood listed ZEC spot, and Grayscale filed for the industry's first privacy币现货 ETF. Privacy has升级 from a single application scenario to a long-term investment logic. However, ZEC requires单独买入代币 and switching公链 to use.
Cross-Chain Universal Privacy. NEAR does not require purchasing a privacy token or跨链 migrating assets. Leveraging on-chain signature technology, a single NEAR account can directly control native assets on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, with no wrapped tokens or跨链桥 risks, relying on a decentralized multi-party secure computation network for key custody. Combined with confidential intent protocols, users can privately transfer assets on any公链, with counterparty and routing information全程隐匿, executed via private shards. User assets remain on their original公链; privacy becomes a universally附加的 underlying service.
Compared to单一隐私币种, this model is more颠覆性. Users don't need to hold ZEC or leave native ecosystems like Ethereum or Bitcoin. Privacy evolves from being an asset-specific attribute to a built-in function for all transactions across scenarios.
The Underlying Coordination Layer for the Multi-Chain Era Replaces Bitcoin's Hub Role
Looking at the broader crypto landscape: the industry is no longer converging towards unity but rather operating with多链并行 and continuously expanding ecosystems. USD stablecoins have become the underlying universal currency, and AI agents autonomously holding credentials, calling interfaces, and transferring funds have become全新参与主体.
The vast multi-chain + agent ecosystem urgently needs interconnected infrastructure, a role Bitcoin played for the past decade. Now, this vacancy is being filled by a new coordination and privacy layer: cross-chain signatures, USD settlement, private transactions, and agent自动执行.
NEAR is targeting this sector. It supports AI agents using USDC for private settlement, leverages hardware security enclaves for confidential computation, and aims to turn its signature network into the key management hub for the agent economy, providing链-agnostic cross-chain and private services for users and bots.
Another落地 product in the same赛道 is Venice. It focuses on AI applications with private interaction, attracting a large number of native Web2 users; staking its platform token VVV allows sharing in AI inference revenue. The project has bought back and burned over 40% of its代币 circulating supply through product revenue, with demand driven by AI usage volume. The代币 price movement is脱钩 from Bitcoin.
The new industry focus has already taken shape: it's no longer a单一币种 but rather the underlying infrastructure upon which various实体项目依附 to create real value.
Conclusion
Combining them: USD is the全行业流通 cash. Project tokens like HYPE, POLY, ZEC, NEAR, VVV correspond to corporate equity. The privacy跨链 layer is the基建串联全行业. Bitcoin is just one板块 within the ecosystem. With AI seizing the macro speculative pie, physical gold absorbing避险 demand, and stablecoins monopolizing the reserve currency function, Bitcoin's glory days are over under this三重挤压.
For the past decade, the entire industry watched Bitcoin's price movements, with all altcoin trends following Bitcoin. That era has彻底落幕. Evaluating projects now aligns with traditional实体公司 standards: whether they have real revenue, active users, and whether their代币 can capture project growth收益.
Do not judge the warmth or coldness of the crypto industry based on Bitcoin's涨跌 anymore. Focus on项目营收, user增量, and the underlying基建串联全链: infrastructure enabling全链隐私转账, USD settlement, and human/machine通用的跨链 functionality.
AI has taken away macro speculative capital, USD has taken away the reserve currency status, and new underlying protocols have taken on the重任 of interconnecting the entire industry. Bitcoin falling below $70,000 is not the末日 of the crypto industry but the历史性拐点 where crypto彻底摆脱 Bitcoin's束缚.
