To All Crypto Holders Questioning Life: Navigating the Darkest Hour, Crypto Is Still at the Chaotic Beginning

marsbitPublicado em 2026-02-10Última atualização em 2026-02-10

Resumo

An 8-year crypto veteran reflects on the extreme optimism at the start of 2025 following Trump’s pro-crypto election win, which quickly soured after Trump family meme coin launches damaged credibility. Despite institutional adoption through Bitcoin ETFs and stablecoin integration by major firms, the market crash began with Trump's 100% China tariffs and an MSCI proposal to exclude crypto-heavy companies from indices. A massive Binance outage triggered historic liquidations, decoupling crypto from rising traditional markets. By 2026, crypto fell further as traditional markets sold off, demonstrating deep entanglement with Wall Street—a double-edged sword of institutional adoption. Critics declared crypto dead, but the author argues the market is still immature and intertwined with equities. Macro conditions like potential rate cuts and a weaker dollar could fuel a recovery. The larger narrative remains intact: stablecoins are modernizing finance, blockchain infrastructure is expanding, and regulatory clarity is advancing. The convergence with AI remains an unexplored frontier. Despite risks, the author believes we are still at the "chaotic beginning" of an internet-native financial system.

Author:Connor Dempsey

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Introduction: This article reviews the extreme optimism following Trump's victory in early 2025, the subsequent epic crash triggered by the "First Family" issuing tokens, tariff policies, Binance's unexpected downtime, and the stock market stampede. From the perspective of an 8-year industry insider, the author provides a profound analysis of how the crypto market shifted from "independent trends" to a "double-edged sword" scenario deeply intertwined with Wall Street. Despite the current devastation, the author believes that, given the macroeconomic expectations of interest rate cuts and a weak dollar, along with the trend of financial infrastructure moving on-chain, we are still at the "chaotic beginning" of this internet financial revolution.

Full Text Below:

I've been navigating the crypto market for 8 years, and every so often, I encounter days that feel like these past few.

February 5th was one of those days. But this didn't happen overnight. Here's our journey.

Looking Back

Entering 2025, expectations for cryptocurrency were incredibly high. The moment Trump's victory was confirmed in late 2024, Bitcoin (BTC) began breaking new highs. We were transitioning from a Biden administration that actively tried to stifle the U.S. crypto industry to a Trump administration that vowed to make America the "crypto capital of the world." Clear regulations were imminent, Bitcoin had a new institutional narrative, and ETFs were ready, allowing big money easy access.

The Screeching Halt

The world's largest economy was finally embracing the technology we had all been building for 16 years. The vibes were sky-high. Then, the dumbest thing I've seen in my 8 years in crypto happened. The President of the United States—Donald J. Trump—launched his own shitcoin. Then, his wife launched one too.

Public opinion overnight shifted from "cryptocurrency will modernize financial markets" to "the President is running a pump and dump." A massive wave of retail investors rushed into $TRUMP. Most got rekt. Just like that, those who had always hated the industry had another reason to call the whole thing a scam.

Source:@messaricrypto

Staying Positive

Crypto had shaken off awkward situations before, and there was still plenty to be optimistic about. Billions were flowing into Blackrock's Bitcoin ETF. Stripe, Visa, even century-old companies like MoneyGram were going all-in on stablecoins. The Trump administration enacted federal stablecoin regulations, with a market structure bill (Clarity) aimed at providing clear rules for the entire industry close behind. The game was still on.

October 10th (10/10)

Most market participants (including myself) expected the year to end at all-time highs (ATHs). The Fed was cutting rates, Bitcoin was rechallenging its $125k ATH, experts predicted Bitcoin would hit $250k, Ethereum (ETH) would hit $12k, while stocks and gold would also hit new highs.

Then on October 10th, Trump announced 100% tariffs on China, and MSCI proposed excluding companies with high crypto exposure from indices tracked by pension funds and ETFs. The latter threatened to cut off one of Bitcoin's biggest sources of demand.

The market started selling off, and then the real crypto carnage began. Crypto investors were over-leveraged (as always), and then the world's largest exchange—Binance—experienced a technical glitch, triggering the single largest liquidation event in crypto history. $30-40 billion in forced selling occurred, some altcoins dropped 70% in a day.

The consensus was that this event broke the crypto market, at least temporarily, and we've been decoupled from the rallying stock and commodity markets ever since.

Caption: Thanks to @ceterispar1bus for the great chart

The Grind Lower

Then came the real pain. While other assets were ripping, crypto was grinding lower. The ATH setup predicted by Fundstrat to take us to "Valhalla" was all there: rate cuts, a weak dollar, global risk-on. The S&P 500 closed the year at new all-time highs. Gold and silver embarked on an epic run. Peter Schiff was dancing on our graves. And crypto just sat there bleeding out.

Re-Coupling

By 2026, the rest of the market started selling off too, and crypto went with it. The S&P began giving back trillions in gains, gold and silver experienced their worst selloff in 40+ years. On February 4th, hedge funds got crushed. Many blamed it on a tech selloff due to fears AI would make software companies obsolete. Regardless, risk managers had to step in and cut positions, including the ones they now held heavily in Bitcoin via ETFs, options, etc. The selling pushed Bitcoin lower, which triggered more mechanical selling, which then spread to crypto-native funds. Trend Research reportedly got liquidated on a $2B Ethereum position on Aave, adding fuel to the fire.

Trad-fi selling triggered crypto selling. Not the other way around. The institutional adoption everyone fought for ultimately became a double-edged sword. Which brings us to now.

Crypto Is Dead

As expected. Those who have been wrong about crypto for over a decade are crawling out of their holes again, dancing on our graves.

"The digital gold thesis is broken. Crypto is not a hedge against currency debasement. Worse, a miner death spiral is coming and it's going to zero. It was a scam all along." Elizabeth Warren's tweet about how Bitcoin causes cancer is probably coming any day now.

Long Live Crypto

The critics are right, Bitcoin and the rest of the market were a disappointment in 2025. The reality is this is still an immature market, just 17 years old. It largely still trades like a tech stock, and last week showed it's more intertwined with Wall Street than ever. The bright side? The same Wall Street that dragged crypto down last week can ultimately pull it back up.

And the setup is there. The Trump administration and incoming Fed Chair have signaled they plan to run the economy hot with low rates and a weak dollar to address the debt crisis. That's the macro cocktail for pushing risk assets higher, crypto included.

Furthermore, don't forget the bigger narrative. Even our longest critics no longer deny what we've built is real. Stablecoins are upgrading how global money moves. The market structure bill will pass, paving the way for all financial business to be blockchain-backed. The entire financial system is being upgraded, we're just working out the details right now.

Are we out of the woods forever? No. Macro risks could still drag us down. Quantum computing is a real threat to Bitcoin. Trump's antics give Democrats a reason to crack down on the industry again if they regain power.

But a hundred years from now, this will all be noise, and an internet-based financial system will look inevitable. This period will be seen as the chaotic beginning. And there's a real wildcard: the merging of crypto and AI is inevitable. We just don't know what it looks like yet. In short, we are still actually early.

AI-slop free guarantee This article is guaranteed to be free of AI-slop. That is to say, every word was typed by a human. That said, I did use Claude Opus 4.6 as an editing and research partner, which was fed content written by people much smarter than me.

Perguntas relacionadas

QWhat were the main factors that led to the crypto market crash described in the article?

AThe main factors included the launch of Trump's and his family's meme coins, which damaged credibility; Trump's announcement of 100% tariffs on China; MSCI's proposal to exclude crypto-heavy companies from indices; a major technical failure at Binance causing massive liquidations; and the subsequent decoupling from rising traditional markets followed by a re-coupling during a broader market sell-off.

QHow did institutional adoption become a 'double-edged sword' for the crypto market according to the author?

AInstitutional adoption became a double-edged sword because while it brought massive capital and legitimacy, it also deeply intertwined crypto with traditional finance (TradFi). This meant that when Wall Street faced a sell-off (e.g., in tech stocks), risk managers liquidated positions across assets, including crypto ETFs and derivatives, triggering a cascading sell-off in the crypto market itself.

QWhat macroeconomic conditions does the author believe could help crypto recover?

AThe author points to expected low interest rates and a weak dollar under the Trump administration and the incoming Fed chair, which are seen as a recipe for overheating the economy and boosting risk assets, including cryptocurrencies.

QWhat long-term trend does the author identify that supports the future of crypto, despite short-term volatility?

AThe author identifies the broader narrative of financial infrastructure moving on-chain. This includes the adoption of stablecoins for global money movement, the eventual passing of market structure legislation, and the inevitable upgrade of the entire financial system to be blockchain-based.

QWhat external threat does the author mention that could pose a risk to Bitcoin in the future?

AThe author mentions quantum computing as a realistic future threat to Bitcoin's security.

Leituras Relacionadas

Crossing the 'Memory Wall': The Wafer-Level Revolution and Computing Power Routes in the AI Inference Era

In 2026, a historic shift occurred in AI as major cloud providers' inference spending surpassed training spending for the first time, signaling a move from "building large models" to "using large models." This shifts the core challenge from computing power to the "memory wall"—the bottleneck of data movement (model weights, activations, KV Cache) between external DRAM and processors, where energy and latency from data transfer far exceed computation itself. Companies like Nvidia face GPU idle time due to bandwidth limits. In contrast, Cerebras Systems adopts a radical "wafer-scale" approach with its Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE). Instead of cutting a silicon wafer into many chips, Cerebras uses almost the entire wafer as one massive chip (WSE-3). This design provides 44GB of on-chip SRAM, delivering memory bandwidth thousands of times higher than traditional HBM (e.g., 21 PB/s vs. Nvidia B200). For LLM inference, weights are streamed layer-by-layer from external MemoryX storage to the chip, avoiding HBM bottlenecks. This results in token generation speeds 1.5–5 times faster than Nvidia's B200 in some models and significant advantages in first-token latency and long-context tasks. Additionally, Cerebras's architecture offers much lower interconnect power consumption (0.15 pJ/bit vs. GPU's ~10 pJ/bit). However, Cerebras faces challenges: SRAM scaling has slowed with advanced nodes, limiting future capacity gains; the chip requires specialized liquid cooling and custom software stacks; and its external I/O bandwidth (150 GB/s) is low compared to NVLink, hindering multi-system scaling for very large models. Competition is intensifying. Major players are pursuing three paths: 1) Developing proprietary inference ASICs (e.g., Google TPU, Microsoft Maia), 2) Leveraging advanced packaging (e.g., TSMC's SoW) to democratize wafer-scale-like integration, potentially eroding Cerebras's process advantage within a few years, and 3) Exploring optical interconnects for ultimate bandwidth. Commercially, Cerebras is transitioning from a hardware vendor to a service provider, facing the immense challenge of building high-power, specialized data centers to meet large contracts (e.g., 250MW/year from 2026–2028). In conclusion, the AI inference era presents a fundamental architectural trade-off. Cerebras opts for extreme physical optimization for low-latency, single-task performance, while Nvidia prioritizes versatility and massive cluster throughput. The path forward remains uncertain, with technology and business models still evolving in the race toward advanced AI.

marsbitHá 7m

Crossing the 'Memory Wall': The Wafer-Level Revolution and Computing Power Routes in the AI Inference Era

marsbitHá 7m

Has Bitcoin's 'Rebound Ended', Officially Entering the Late Bear Market Phase?

**Title: Has Bitcoin's Rebound Ended, Entering the Late Bear Market Phase?** **Summary:** Bitcoin's price has declined by 13% this week, signaling a potential return to late-stage bear market conditions. The price fell to around $67k, positioned between the Realized Price and Realized Cap Weighted Average. For the first time since early 2022, the Short-Term Holder cost basis has dropped below this key average, confirming a hallmark of late-cycle bear markets. Profitability metrics have collapsed sharply. The 7-day average of the Realized Profit/Loss ratio plummeted from a local high of 3.16 to 0.29, mirroring the February panic sell-off. Critically, the 90-day average never breached the threshold of 2, indicating the recent rally to $82k was a bear market bounce, not a structural shift. Realized losses surged to $1.35 billion daily, with $770 million coming from Long-Term Holders selling at a loss. This accelerating redistribution of supply from weak to strong hands is a necessary but ongoing process for a market bottom. The rally stalled almost precisely at the aggregate cost basis (~$83k) of US spot Bitcoin ETF investors, turning that level into strong resistance and leaving the average ETF holder underwater again. Spot market flows have turned decisively negative, showing sellers are dominating order books despite the price drop. While a significant futures long liquidation event cleared over $400 million in leverage, providing a potential reset, sustained spot demand is yet to materialize. Options markets continue to price in higher future volatility (Implied Volatility) than recent price action (Realized Volatility) has shown, with a persistent skew towards put options, indicating ongoing demand for downside protection. In conclusion, multiple metrics point to a fragile market structure. Resistance at the ETF cost basis, accelerating realized losses, dominant spot selling, and cautious options pricing all suggest the bear market trend persists. A sustainable recovery likely requires a resurgence of spot demand, ETF holders returning to profit, and a clear reduction in selling pressure.

marsbitHá 7m

Has Bitcoin's 'Rebound Ended', Officially Entering the Late Bear Market Phase?

marsbitHá 7m

TechFlow Intelligence Agency: Anthropic Calls for Global Pause in AI Development While Preparing for Trillion-Dollar IPO; SpaceX IPO Roadshow Heats Up, But S&P 500 Rejects Fast-Track Inclusion

In today's TechFlow Intelligence Briefing, several major tech stories highlight a growing theme of trust and credibility gaps across AI, crypto, and finance. AI company Anthropic has publicly called for a global pause in AI development, citing risks from Claude's "recursive self-improvement." Ironically, this coincides with reports the company is preparing for a massive IPO targeting a near $1 trillion valuation. This perceived hypocrisy, coupled with widespread user complaints about Claude's declining performance, is sparking debate over whether the safety warning is genuine or a competitive tactic. Meanwhile, in a substantive security move, Anthropic open-sourced a framework for AI-powered vulnerability discovery. In the crypto market, Bitcoin's price drop below $61,000 triggered over $1.16 billion in liquidations, flipping the market into a state where more BTC is held at a loss than at a profit, a historical bearish signal. On the corporate front, SpaceX's highly anticipated IPO is generating immense Wall Street excitement, with Goldman Sachs projecting 100x revenue growth by 2030. However, the S&P 500 has refused to fast-track the company's inclusion post-IPO, potentially limiting immediate institutional demand. Separately, ByteDance's AI app Doubao lost over 6 million monthly active users after introducing a subscription model, highlighting the challenges of AI monetization. Other notable developments include Nvidia certifying HBM4 memory from Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron; Cloudflare's acquisition of front-end tooling company VoidZero; and its CEO warning that bot traffic now exceeds human traffic online. The underlying narrative connects these events: a trust crisis. From AI firms' contradictory actions and crypto volatility to the clash between SpaceX's hyped narrative and institutional rules, a pattern is emerging where stated intentions and actual practices are increasingly misaligned.

marsbitHá 22m

TechFlow Intelligence Agency: Anthropic Calls for Global Pause in AI Development While Preparing for Trillion-Dollar IPO; SpaceX IPO Roadshow Heats Up, But S&P 500 Rejects Fast-Track Inclusion

marsbitHá 22m

Dalio Warns: AI Boom Shows Signs of a Bubble, Day of Reckoning Will Be the Time of Burst

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, warns that the current artificial intelligence investment boom shows classic signs of a bubble, which he expects will eventually burst. In a Bloomberg Television interview, he noted that great technological revolutions often lead to capital inflows that create bubbles, making it difficult for investors and companies to calibrate their spending accurately—either overspending to capture market share or underspending and losing their competitive position. This caution comes amid significant rallies in AI-related assets, particularly chipmakers, driven by soaring demand for data centers and high-bandwidth chips, raising debates about overheating valuations. In contrast, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently asserted that investors embracing the AI wave would see "crazy" returns and dismissed concerns over return on investment for data center spending as outdated. Dalio, however, focuses on the risks in the profit realization phase. He argues that bubbles tend to show signs of破裂 when markets transition from investment to the need for tangible returns, describing the burst as a process of converting paper wealth into cash. While acknowledging AI's intrinsic value, he expressed concern over the future profitability of some AI companies, suggesting the market is repeating a familiar pattern. The 76-year-old billionaire, who fully exited Bridgewater in 2025, has a net worth estimated at $21.5 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

marsbitHá 57m

Dalio Warns: AI Boom Shows Signs of a Bubble, Day of Reckoning Will Be the Time of Burst

marsbitHá 57m

Privacy Coin Crisis of Confidence! ZEC Plunges Over 56% in a Single Day

Zcash (ZEC), a leading privacy-focused cryptocurrency, experienced a severe crash on June 5th, plummeting over 56% in a single day and erasing nearly two months of gains. The flash crash was triggered by the disclosure of a critical zero-knowledge proof vulnerability within Zcash's Orchard privacy pool, which had existed since the pool's launch in May 2022. The flaw theoretically allowed an attacker to forge unlimited ZEC undetectably due to the pool's privacy features. The vulnerability was discovered on May 29th by independent security researcher Taylor Hornby during a proactive audit commissioned by Shielded Labs, utilizing AI-assisted analysis. The Zcash development team responded swiftly, implementing an emergency soft fork to disable Orchard transactions on June 2nd and executing a permanent hard fork fix (NU6.2) on June 3rd. Despite the technical fix, a major crisis of confidence emerged. The core issue is that Orchard's privacy design makes it cryptographically impossible to prove whether the vulnerability was exploited over the past four years, casting permanent doubt on the historical supply integrity of ZEC. While Shielded Labs argues exploitation was unlikely, the inability to provide definitive proof has severely damaged market trust. This sentiment was exacerbated when BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, a prominent ZEC supporter, announced he was selling his entire position. He stated that privacy assets require "perfect security" rather than "probable safety." The combined effect of the disclosure and Hayes's exit ignited widespread panic selling, leading to massive liquidations and significant price decline. Analysts note the event highlights a fundamental tension within privacy coins: the conflict between verifiable supply and cryptographic privacy.

链捕手Há 59m

Privacy Coin Crisis of Confidence! ZEC Plunges Over 56% in a Single Day

链捕手Há 59m

Trading

Spot
Futuros

Artigos em Destaque

Como comprar T

Bem-vindo à HTX.com!Tornámos a compra de Threshold Network Token (T) simples e conveniente.Segue o nosso guia passo a passo para iniciar a tua jornada no mundo das criptos.Passo 1: cria a tua conta HTXUtiliza o teu e-mail ou número de telefone para te inscreveres numa conta gratuita na HTX.Desfruta de um processo de inscrição sem complicações e desbloqueia todas as funcionalidades.Obter a minha contaPasso 2: vai para Comprar Cripto e escolhe o teu método de pagamentoCartão de crédito/débito: usa o teu visa ou mastercard para comprar Threshold Network Token (T) instantaneamente.Saldo: usa os fundos da tua conta HTX para transacionar sem problemas.Terceiros: adicionamos métodos de pagamento populares, como Google Pay e Apple Pay, para aumentar a conveniência.P2P: transaciona diretamente com outros utilizadores na HTX.Mercado de balcão (OTC): oferecemos serviços personalizados e taxas de câmbio competitivas para os traders.Passo 3: armazena teu Threshold Network Token (T)Depois de comprar o teu Threshold Network Token (T), armazena-o na tua conta HTX.Alternativamente, podes enviá-lo para outro lugar através de transferência blockchain ou usá-lo para transacionar outras criptomoedas.Passo 4: transaciona Threshold Network Token (T)Transaciona facilmente Threshold Network Token (T) no mercado à vista da HTX.Acede simplesmente à tua conta, seleciona o teu par de trading, executa as tuas transações e monitoriza em tempo real.Oferecemos uma experiência de fácil utilização tanto para principiantes como para traders experientes.

468 Visualizações TotaisPublicado em {updateTime}Atualizado em 2026.06.02

Como comprar T

Discussões

Bem-vindo à Comunidade HTX. Aqui, pode manter-se informado sobre os mais recentes desenvolvimentos da plataforma e obter acesso a análises profissionais de mercado. As opiniões dos utilizadores sobre o preço de T (T) são apresentadas abaixo.

活动图片

Categorias popularesright-arrow

Etiquetas Popularesright-arrow