The New Landscape of the Crypto Assets Market: The Rise of Four Parallel Cycles

Recently, industry experts have been discussing a common topic: the traditional "four-year cycle" theory is outdated. If investors are still holding on, waiting for the huge profits brought by a bull market, they are likely already being left behind by the market.

The reason is that the market landscape has fundamentally changed. The current Crypto Assets field no longer applies a single investment strategy; instead, there are four distinctly different operating cycles, each with its own unique rhythm, gameplay, and profit logic.

Bitcoin's Super Cycle

Bitcoin has evolved from a speculative target to an institutional allocation asset. The scale of funds and allocation logic from Wall Street, publicly traded companies, and ETFs has completely overturned the traditional "bull-bear rotation" model.

The key change is that retail chips are flowing massively to institutional investors. This fundamental restructuring of the chip structure is redefining the price discovery mechanism and volatility characteristics of Bitcoin.

For retail investors, they face the dual pressure of time costs and opportunity costs. Institutional investors can endure a holding period of 3-5 years, while retail investors obviously find it difficult to possess such patience and financial strength.

A slow Bitcoin bull market that lasts for more than ten years is very likely to emerge in the future. The annualized return may stabilize in the range of 20-30%, but intraday volatility will significantly decrease, resembling a steadily growing tech stock.

Short-term fluctuations of MEME

The argument for the long-term existence of MEME projects still holds. When the technical narrative lacks expressiveness, the MEME narrative will always fill the market gap in sync with the rhythm of emotions, funds, and attention.

The essence of MEME is a speculative vehicle for "instant gratification." It does not require complex technical validation, just a symbol that can resonate. From pet themes to political memes, from AI concepts to community IPs, MEME has evolved into a complete "emotion monetization" industrial chain.

However, the MEME market is evolving from "grassroots carnival" to "professional competition." The difficulty for ordinary investors to profit in this high-frequency rotation is sharply increasing. With the entry of professional teams and large funds, this once "grassroots paradise" is facing serious internal competition.

Long Cycle Development of Technological Innovation

Innovations that truly have technical barriers, such as Layer2 scaling, ZK technology, and AI infrastructure, require 2-3 years or even longer to see actual results. These types of projects follow the technology maturity curve, rather than the emotional cycles of capital markets, and there is a fundamental time difference between the two.

The reason why technology projects are often criticized by the market is mainly due to the overly high valuation given in the conceptual stage, while they are underestimated during the "valley of death" stage when the technology is actually implemented. This determines that the value release of technology projects exhibits a non-linear leap characteristic.

For patient investors with technical judgment, positioning valuable technology projects during the "valley of death" phase may be the best strategy for achieving excess returns. However, this requires the ability to endure long waiting periods and market fluctuations.

Short-term Hotspots of Innovative Concepts

Before the main technical narrative takes shape, various small hotspots rapidly rotate, from tokenization of physical assets to decentralized physical infrastructure, from AI agents to AI infrastructure, each small hotspot may only have a window of 1-3 months.

The fragmentation of this narrative and the high-frequency rotation reflect the dual constraints of scarce market attention and the efficiency of capital seeking returns.

A typical small hot spot cycle follows a six-stage model of "concept validation → capital probing → public opinion amplification → panic entry → valuation overreach → capital withdrawal." To profit in this model, the key is to enter during the "concept validation" to "capital probing" phase and exit at the peak of "panic entry."

The competition between small hotspots is essentially a zero-sum game of attention resources. However, there is a technical correlation and conceptual progression between the hotspots. If subsequent hotspots can continue the previous hotspots, forming a systematic upgrade linkage, and truly create a sustainable value closed loop in this process, it is very likely that a super hotspot similar to the DeFi summer will emerge.

From the current pattern of small hotspots, the AI infrastructure field is most likely to achieve breakthroughs first. If the underlying technology can be organically integrated, there is indeed the potential to build a "super hotspot" at the level of an "AI summer."

In general, recognizing the essence of these four parallel operating cycles is essential to finding suitable strategies in their respective rhythms. Undoubtedly, the single "four-year cycle" mindset can no longer keep up with the complexity of the current market. Adapting to the new normal of "multiple cycles in parallel" may be the key to truly profiting in this market.