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1️⃣ What did the true winters in history look like?
The real winter is never just about price drops, but internal explosions → Trust hits zero → Talent runs away, and the ecosystem comes to a standstill.
2014: Mt. Gox lost 850,000 BTC → Avalanche of trust → New exchanges + Ethereum ICO saved the day, igniting the next round.
2017-2018: ICOs were rampant scams + Regulatory crackdowns from China, Korea, and the U.S. → The second winter → COVID liquidity injections + DeFi (Uniswap, Compound, Aave) made a comeback.
2022 (the harshest one): Terra collapsed → Celsius, 3AC, FTX chain reactions → The entire structure was hammered → 2024 ETF approved + Halving + Trump supporting crypto → Money came flooding back.
2️⃣ Cold winter three-step model (the harshest framework of the report)
This cycle repeats every time:
Major event → Trust collapse → Talent loss
- Major events: hackers, scams, explosions.
- Trust collapse: Everyone went from 'working together' to 'shifting blame'.
- Talent loss: Heading to big firms, Fintech, AI where it looks stable + money is abundant.
Now there are shadows, but the essence is different:
- Trump Meme coin: 27 billion market cap in one day → 90% flash crash (pure speculative bubble)💥
10.11 liquidation: 100% tariffs on Chinese goods → Binance's 19 billion largest liquidation in history (macro external explosion)📉
- Sentiment: more doubt, less construction, AI siphoning talent.
The report points out: **These are not crypto's own self-destruction, but policies from outside hitting down**, so it doesn't count as a true cold winter.
3️⃣ Why it's not considered a cold winter now
The past = internal self-explosion (scams, bankruptcies destroyed trust).
Now = external bulls (ETF, Trump) + external bears (tariffs, interest rates).
Builders haven't scattered: RWA, perpetual DEX, prediction market, InfoFi, privacy are still making great strides🔥
Golden saying: 'We didn't create spring, so we don't have winter.'
It means: bulls are given from the outside, bears are also given from the outside, the industry itself hasn't collapsed or exploded.
4️⃣ The market has completely changed after regulation (the most heartbreaking part)
The market is divided into three layers, funds are no longer 'trickling down':
Regulated areas (compliant zones)🛡️:
RWA tokenization, compliant CEX, institutional custody, prediction market, compliant DeFi.
Slow burn, big money, steady as a rock (audit + legal safety net), but low volatility, getting rich is basically hopeless.
Non-regulated areas (casino model)🎰:
The threshold is ridiculously low, 100 times in one day and -90% the next day is normal.
Value: Innovation testing ground (DeFi emerged from here, and the prediction market is now climbing towards compliance).
Shared infrastructure (players who win by doing nothing)🌉:
Stablecoins (USDC is universally accepted), oracles (both sides rely on it for data feeding).
This area is a long-term champion.
Maximum damage: the trickle-down effect is completely gone
In the past, BTC soared, and alt/meme flew along.
Now, the ETF money locked in BTC will not leak down to alt or meme.
Liquidity only stays in places that are 'proven to have value' → BTC is relatively solid, alt/meme are in a bloody sea📉
5️⃣ The next round of the bull market has to rely on these two.
1. Non-regulated areas must explode with DeFi-level killer applications.
Must create huge value (AI agents, InfoFi, on-chain social is still too small).
Key: Rebuild the closed loop of 'experiment → verification → regulation' (DeFi succeeded, the prediction market is on the way).
2. Macro must be loosened.
Liquidity flooding, interest rate cut expectations (like the 2020 DeFi Summer, 2024 ETF bull).
Crypto can't control the Federal Reserve and global interest rates.
Future bull market: differentiation to the extreme
Regulated areas steadily rise, non-regulated areas are volatile, winning bets feast while losing bets return to zero.
There will never be 'everyone rising together' again.
I personally speak frankly (from the perspective of February 2026)
Agree with the report's general direction: it's not the FTX-style trust collapse of 2022, developers are still working hard, on-chain activity hasn't collapsed. Now it's just macro bearish + structurally differentiated bearish, the ETF has locked institutional money in BTC, BTC dominance is high, and the funding chain for alt/meme has broken terribly.
But the report is a bit too optimistic:
AI is siphoning people too aggressively (salary, equity, exit speed completely outclass crypto), macro is worsening again (tariff upgrades, Fed stubbornly refusing to lower rates), and talent fleeing will accelerate.
The 'killer' narrative in non-regulated areas is still very vague, RWA and the prediction market are far smaller than DeFi back in the day.
Direct hit on risks:
Retail investors and leveraged players are the most miserable. Regulated areas are stable but earn little, non-regulated areas gamble excessively and easily lose everything. BTC as a 'safe asset' hasn't fully stabilized yet, and if the macro environment continues to hammer down, BTC will also shake.
Opportunity points:
Shared infrastructure (stablecoins, oracle) are the players who win by doing nothing. If the prediction market truly achieves compliance, it may become the next super narrative. It's recommended to keep an eye on projects that can span two areas.
