Author: Santiago Roel Santos
Compiled by: Tim, PANews
The Price and Adoption Paradox
Crypto adoption will continue, but market prices may not recover for a long time.
This contradiction between accelerating real-world adoption and lagging market prices is not a flaw, but a necessary feature of the current stage of crypto market evolution.
If you look at the crypto market from a ten-year perspective, its prospects are very attractive. However, maintaining this long-term perspective is psychologically challenging. You should be prepared to watch adoption rates expand while prices stagnate or slowly decline; you must also be prepared to watch others profit in other areas (AI, stocks, or the next hot trend the market hypes) while the crypto space seems forgotten.
It will feel unfair, and the process will be grueling. But the price lag is inevitable. Fundamentally, many of these crypto assets never deserved the valuations they once had.
The market doesn't care about actual adoption until the price crashes and it starts to care again.
Application Proliferation Fuels Bubbles
Initial application proliferation can actually fuel bubble problems. This is the painful process of value discovery. When real usage demand cannot support inflated valuations, the market will recalibrate, and this is precisely the necessary path to long-term healthy development.
When crypto infrastructure achieves scaled application, it becomes clear that the capital invested far exceeds its actual needs. Application proliferation will bring pressure tests for business models rather than value verification. Some projects will die off quietly, and while others may survive, their valuations will be far lower than the visions painted at their peak.
Cryptocurrency is moving from the spotlight, the main character, to gradually fading from view, becoming ordinary. From exciting to mundane, and this is the necessary path from noise to maturity.
This is a good thing.
This script isn't new. During the dot-com bubble burst, the NASDAQ index plummeted by about 78%, while the number of internet users tripled and broadband infrastructure was fully deployed. The market took years to recover, and now the internet has quietly reshaped the world. While investors were still licking their wounds, software was "eating" the whole world.
Infrastructure technology does not reward impatient investors.
When Infrastructure Wins, Who Will Be the Real Winners?
The shift in market phases will make many participants uncomfortable. Builders who have spent years maintaining open-source codebases will watch other companies copy their work and reap most of the economic benefits; early native crypto VCs who invested in infrastructure will see traditional VCs capture more value; retail investors who bought tokens instead of equity may feel marginalized, as enterprises benefit from the ecosystem network without returning corresponding value to token holders.
Some are structural problems, some are self-inflicted dilemmas.
The market is adjusting itself. Open networks will develop rapidly, system incentives will change, value capture mechanisms will improve, but not all models will survive long enough to benefit.
Crypto adoption is quietly advancing, it's just that the market hasn't truly valued it yet. It may take years for the market to re-establish the value connection and recognize that crypto technology is a core operating system, not just a speculative asset.
Price Cycles and Application Cycles Are Two Different Things
Price cycles are driven by market psychology and liquidity.
Application cycles are driven by utility value and infrastructure.
The two are related, but not synchronized. Historically, prices often led adoption, which is common in early technological revolutions. Now, adoption is starting to lead, and prices are instead lagging.
Right now, the marginal buyers of crypto assets are elsewhere, they are chasing the AI wave. This phenomenon may continue, or it may reverse, regardless of our will.
But what we can see is that a world without stablecoins, without transparent capital channels, without global 24/7 real-time settlement is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine.
The most profound lesson cycles teach us is: we must accept that the disconnect between application and price may last much longer than expected, and if you want sustained compound interest, you need to remain rational when you lose patience.
This is not a HODL manifesto.
Many crypto projects will never recover. Some were flawed by design, some lack moats, and others have been completely abandoned. New winners will inevitably be born, there will be fallen stars, and a few true dark horses.
Pullbacks Are Healthy
We are entering a different regulatory and economic environment. This creates an opportunity to solve long-standing problems: weak product revenue, insufficient asset disclosure, mismatched equity and token structures, and opaque team incentives.
If the crypto industry really wants to become what it aspires to be, it must first act the part.
I believe anything is possible. My most confident view is that most businesses will adopt crypto technology to remain competitive within the next 15 years. By then, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrency will exceed ten trillion dollars. Stablecoins, tokenization, user scale, and on-chain activity will grow exponentially. Meanwhile, valuation standards will be redefined, existing giants may decline, and unreasonable business models will eventually be eliminated.
This is healthy, and necessary.
Cryptocurrency will eventually become invisible. The more a company makes crypto the core of its product, the more fragile its business model often is. The truly lasting winners will embed it deeply in business processes, payment systems, and balance sheets. Users should not be aware of the crypto technology's existence, but should feel its benefits: faster settlement, lower costs, and reduced intermediaries.
Cryptocurrency should be pure and "boring".
As capital tightens, the era of airdrop proliferation, subsidy-driven demand, unreasonable incentives, and over-financialization is coming to an end. This is just another inevitable historical cycle.
My basic judgment is simple: crypto adoption will accelerate, prices will readjust, and valuations will return to rationality. Crypto is a long-term trend, but this absolutely does not mean the tokens you hold will necessarily rise.
Who Actually Captures the Value of Crypto Technology?
Basic technology primarily benefits consumers by lowering prices and improving experience. The secondary beneficiaries are those enterprises that upgrade their own systems to leverage cheaper, faster, more programmable infrastructure.
This theoretical framework raises some uncomfortable but necessary questions:
- Visa or Circle?
- Stripe or Ethereum?
- Robinhood or Coinbase?
- A basket of Layer 1 protocols or user aggregators?
- A basket of Layer 1 protocols or DeFi?
- A basket of Layer 1 protocols or DePIN?
- DeFi or traditional finance stocks?
- DePIN or infrastructure stocks?
This isn't an absolute either/or; diversified investment strategies are also feasible. The question is about relative value and relative performance. Who will capture the surplus value created by blockchain?
I lean towards traditional and hybrid enterprises that connect to open settlement channels to reduce costs and increase profit margins. History suggests they often benefit more than the infrastructure itself.
But it must be emphasized that there are exceptions to every theoretical framework.
What I Believe, and What I Don't
I do believe that networks with real demand will eventually monetize, the internet has proven this. Facebook also went through many years before commercialization.
I am confident that the value of some Layer 1s will be validated as they develop, eventually matching their valuation. But I also believe most will struggle to attract users and find sufficient value support.
I believe the gap between winners and losers will widen further. Distribution, market entry strategy, user relationships, and unit economics will be far more important than first-mover advantage.
A common misconception in crypto is overestimating the early advantage of technological leadership while underestimating other elements required for subsequent development.
Back to Reality
My view on price movements in the coming years is not particularly optimistic. Adoption will continue to rise, but prices may fall further, potentially exacerbated by broader stock market mean reversion and a cooling AI hype cycle.
But, patience is a great advantage.
- I am bullish on Crypto-as-a-Service models
- I am bullish on crypto-enabled enterprises
- I am bearish on over-financialization
- I am bearish on failed unit economics
- I am bearish on overbuilding infrastructure
Protecting capital becomes crucial. Cash is undervalued: not for its yield, but for the psychological immunity it grants. It allows you to act decisively when others cannot.
The market has entered a fast-paced and increasingly impatient era. Nowadays, having a longer time horizon than most participants is itself a substantial advantage. Professional managers must frequently adjust positions to prove their value. Faced with increasing life pressures, retail investors are increasingly chasing short-term trends. And institutional investors will inevitably once again declare cryptocurrency dead.
Slowly, more traditional companies will adopt crypto technology, more balance sheets will connect to the blockchain.
One day, when we look back on this period in hindsight, everything will seem so clear. The signals were everywhere, it's just that firm conviction often seems easy only after prices rise.
Until then: wait for the pain to arrive.
Wait for sellers to capitulate, wait for faith to collapse, but we are not there yet.
No need to rush into action, the market will continue to fluctuate, life goes on, spend more time with the people you care about. Don't let your investment portfolio become your whole life.
The crypto world will operate silently, whether the market is in the shadows or under bright lights.
Good luck to all.
