Author: Tony Ling; Source: Foresight News

Summary of this article:

Standing at the moment of writing this article, 2024Q4, this is a new round of coins The early stages of the bull market.

The value of BTC is in the macro field, analogous to bonds and stocks in financial history, and is the "fuel" for a new round of development of human science and technology; in the meso field, it is the future of mankind The currency that is bound to enter the digital world is also an index; in the micro field, it is a new round of legal supervision and the compliance of currency issuance, thus siphoning the demand for private investment around the world.

This may be the last "reckless" cycle belonging to the crypto industry, and also the last mega cycle in which BTC has a huge beta increase. This means that after this cycle, BTC’s beta will be significantly reduced, but it does not mean that the broad token issuance market will not have a hundredfold alpha opportunity.

The top of this bull market for BTC will appear in Q4 of 2025, with a high of US$160,000-220,000. Prior to this, apart from the "first wave" that has now occurred, there are two more significant mid-term bull market trends.

This is 1999 in the Internet era. In other words, after the bull market reaches its peak in the next 12-18 months, the crypto industry will be like that of 2000-2001. Just like the bursting of the Internet bubble, ushering in a long winter. Of course, this is also an opportunity for industry reorganization. I'm looking forward to it.

When I feel that the bull market is coming, that is when the article output is at its highest.

About 4 years ago, at the beginning of the last bull market cycle, I wrote "How should we invest in digital currencies in 2021?" 》. When we talk about the entire digital currency industry, it is inevitable to first mention the value and price of BTC.

If you already believe in the value of Bitcoin, you might as well jump directly to Part 5 for your expectations for the future price trend of Bitcoin.

一

From an industrial perspective, I would like to discuss the value of BTC at three levels: macro, meso and micro. From a macro perspective, BTC represents the risk aversion expectations of the entire human financial market.And the third "financial medium" that can be capitalized after bonds and stocks in human history; from a medium perspective, BTC is the "digital era" that humans will inevitably enter in the future, which is the "index" with the best output value in the web3 world; From a micro perspective, BTC is gradually improving in terms of compliance supervision and will attract a large number of "traditional old money" in mainstream markets such as the United States. In the third world, private investment needs that cannot be met locally are absorbed.

At a macro level, we regard Bitcoin as an epoch-making event in the history of human finance. assets, then the most important thing is to understand the changes in financial history. "How should we invest in digital currency in 2021?" - Part One of Four", the status of digital currency is rectified from the perspective of the history of science and technology. Behind every technological revolution, important financial infrastructure and new financial "mediums" have been produced.

Behind finance are changes in the current situation. The present moment may be the most confusing moment for the global political and economic situation in the past thirty years. It is also the moment when the traditional financial order is most fragile and a major reshuffle is most likely to occur. Now I can no longer trace whether there were financial venues similar to the London Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange when famous financial bubbles such as the "Dutch Tulip" appeared hundreds of years ago, or whether Dutch vendors were accustomed to offline Trading was just speculation without establishing rules and order, which made the bubble finally come to nothing. However, in the long history, every technological innovation that is remembered by mankind has a change in the financial paradigm behind it, and the change in the financial paradigm is an inevitable product of the changes in the current situation. These cause and effect each other, but they complement each other, and finally write a rich and colorful chapter in human history. I have no way of predicting that if the Civil War had not brought about drastic changes in the social structure of the United States, reshaping social classes and encouraging technological innovation to enter the industry, whether the second industrial revolution would still have started in the United Kingdom, but eventually flourished in the United States. Become a milestone.

At the same time, I have a more radical point of view: when everyone is talking about the economic downturn and how to find a viable business model - business Why is a business model needed? Has the word "business model" itself lost its meaning?

Here are more of my thoughts, which are a bit complicated. I won’t go into details here. They will be discussed in another article in my future, "The Quadrilogy of Cryptocapitalism". "Extra: Philosophical Talk on Business and Investment" is developed as the most important part. (Related reading: "Cryptocapitalism Quadrilogy Part One: Token issuance, Financing NewParadigm")

[Excerpt: Discussing business models in the contemporary business environment and financial environment, the context behind it refers to the past 100 years of " "Company system" is the mainstream business entity, and the general path of development is: by enlarging the market size, increasing the number of employees, and finally going public, a complete system of stock pricing based on profit * PE. This path may not be feasible in the future.

Of the value owned by today's "social capital" (or expressed as "private economy"), equity companies may account for 95%, while stocks Listed companies as value anchors account for most of the capital value. But in the future, these values ​​may exist more in “business” (why not limited partnership) and “token” (foundation).

Two

Spend more time talking about BTC’s industry meso-level arguments. At the end of my book for 2021, the first of the eight predictions I mentioned was that BTC is unbeatable. Refer to the electronic version of my book "Unlocking New Passwords - From Blockchain to Digital Currency" Postscript 4 –

From the perspective of the technology industry, web3 is an inevitable trend in the future, and Bitcoin is the core asset of the entire web3 world, or in economics, it should be called "currency." In the ancient times of barter, gold was the most common "currency". After the modern system and financial system developed, currency became the most common "currency". In the future, with the advent of the digital age, in the virtual space of the Metaverse, all life in the digital world will need a new "currency."

Therefore, some people are holding on to "Why is the token you invested in?" which is meaningless. Blockchain and crypto need "+", just like when someone asks you what track to invest in, you say "I want to invest in an equity company" or "I want to invest in an Internet company." Web3 as a special industry, crypto as a new market method and financial medium, has gradually been combined with other industries - blockchain + AI = DeAI, blockchain + finance = Defi, blockchain + entertainment/art = NFT+metaverse, blockchain+scientific research=Desci, blockchain+physical infrastructure=Depin…..

The trend is very clear, but, and we have What's the matterDepartment? In other words, how can we gain wealth appreciation after seeing the trend clearly?

Then let’s turn our attention to AI.

The main theme of business society in recent years has been bright and dark. There is no doubt that AI is a hot topic that capital has been pursuing and can be put on the table. Crypto is a place surging in the dark, where all kinds of legends and myths of sudden wealth gather. However, it is also a place with many restrictions, making it out of reach for many people.

The potential of the AI ​​market is indeed widely considered to be in the trillions, especially in the fields of generative AI, AI chips and related infrastructure. However, for investors, everyone believes that AI is a rising industry and is willing to invest their own money in it, but in what? Can I invest in an AI ETF index fund now to fully cover the AI ​​ecosystem and effectively track industry growth?

No. Nvidia shares have nearly tripled in 2024, while the performance of most AI-themed ETFs has been lackluster over the same period. Looking further back, Nvidia's stock price performance will not be positively correlated with the overall growth of AI output value - there will never be only Nvidia as a chip company.

Comparison of the performance of mainstream AI ETFs and NVIDIA stocks in 2024

AI is the main theme, but will there be a product that can anchor the future market value development of the AI ​​industry? Will the value of this ETF increase as much as the output value of the entire AI industry increases? Just like the Dow Jones Index/S&P 500 ETF represents the development of Web0 (equity companies), and the Nasdaq ETF represents Web1, the investment opportunities of web2 are not presented in an exponential manner. The Web3 world, or the value of the entire digital world of human beings in the future, is most suitable The index is BTC.

Why must the value of the Web3 world be measured in BTC?

Because, since the birth of computers and the Internet, human beings are destined to spend more and more time in the virtual world instead of the real world. In the future, when we put on VR/AR glasses, we can sit at home and visit Yellowstone Park, return to the Tang Dynasty to experience the palace, and enter your device.Drink coffee face to face with friends on the other side of the world in a virtual meeting room... The boundaries between reality and virtuality will become increasingly blurred. This is what the future digital world, or metaverse, will look like. And there, if you want to decorate the virtual space, if you want the digital people there to dance for you, you always need to pay - this cannot be US dollars, RMB, let alone physical assets. The most suitable one I can think of and the only one that can be accepted by the entire digital world is Bitcoin.

I remember that in the movie "Revolution of 1911", Mr. Sun Yat-sen held up a 10-yuan bond: "When the revolution is successful, this bond can be exchanged for 100 yuan." .

Three

Back to the present.

We live in an economically stable country, and legal currency can be trusted. But this does not mean that the entire world’s financial system is as stable as the society we live in: the first thing Argentina’s new president did after taking office was to cancel Argentina’s legal currency system – no one in Argentina trusts the legal currency issued anyway, so why bother? . Türkiye's inflation rate in 2023 will reach +127%, correspondingly, its digital currency ownership rate is as high as 52%. Especially in the third world, as the information technology infrastructure has been gradually improved in recent years, its traditional fiat currency mobile payment and digital currency payment methods have developed almost simultaneously. In contrast, just like around 2010, when information technology was booming, it skipped the 1.0 era of POS machines and bank card swipe payments and went directly to the 2.0 era of mobile payment. The third world has begun to develop in recent years, 3.0 The digital currency payment of the era directly replaced the mobile payment method of the 2.0 era, making digital currency payment a common sight in daily payments.

There is an interesting argument here. Bitcoin has no controller. If it is used as a currency or "currency", it cannot realize the macro-control function of legal currency. In fact, U.S. dollars are also issued by companies, so so-called macro-control must give way to the interest groups behind it. Capital power is the driving force behind the operation of the world. If we have to say that there is macro-control of cryptocurrency, then Bitcoin mining interest groups are the biggest regulators.

Changes in inflation rates in major economies in recent years

Changes in Argentina's inflation rate in recent years

From a micro perspective, with the acceleration of capital flows, the technology and financial cycles have changed. In an environment with weak economic antifragility, traditional equity markets need 8-10. With a lock-up period of 10 years, this long-term investment feature has caused many people to worry about liquidity issues, and currency rights provide the possibility of early liquidation, which can not only attract more retail funds to enter, but also provide early investors with more flexibility.

In the traditional equity market, angel rounds or early investors usually enter a relatively mature stage about 5 years after the company is established. Development stage but still some time before IPO or acquisition (usually 8-10 years), seeking partial exit through equity transfer or corporate repurchase. This model can effectively alleviate the time cost of investment, but its liquidity is obviously more limited than currency rights.

< p style="text-align: left;">The attraction of the currency rights model is that it allows early investors to withdraw funds earlier through token issuance or circulation, while attracting a wider range of market participants. This flexibility may have an impact on traditional The pattern of the equity market has a profound impact. In this regard, you can refer to "Cryptocapitalism Quadrilogy Part 2: A Battlefield without Gunpowder - VC or Token Fund?"

On the other hand, most of the world’s sovereign The financial market is extremely fragmented and illiquid, and the inherent global financial characteristics of crypto have greatly attracted this group of funds, including South Korea, Argentina, Russia, etc. The stock market development in Southeast Asia, mainly Vietnam, cannot keep up. The speed of wealth accumulation among the middle class has allowed these emerging classes to directly skip the stage of local financial market participation in the financial market and complete the transition to crypto. In the context of global digital currency compliance and integration with mainstream financial markets, These The investment demand for private assets cannot be met by the weak local financial infrastructure - the Korean stock market main board market (KOSPI) and the GEM market (KOSDAQ) together have more than 2,500 listed companies, but 80% of the companies have a market value of less than To 100 million US dollars, the daily trading volume is negligible, and the digital currency market, which attracts global retail investors, has the most liquidity and has become their best investment target.

Doge’s current market capitalization and trading volume

Samsung’s current market capitalization and trading volume

Note: From As can be seen from the figure, Doge's current market value is approximately US$60B, and Samsung's market value is approximately US$234B, which is approximately 4 times that of Doge. However, Doge's 24h trading volume has reached 5.5B, which is tens of thousands of times that of Samsung.

In the United States, the strategic location of the global digital currency market, 2025 is likely to usher in a new change in the cryptocurrency legal system. The two most important bills-FIT21 and DAMS will affect the future destiny of the currency circle. The core of these two blockchain bills, which are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) rather than the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), is to treat token issuance (token issuance) as a commodity transaction. , rather than securities issuances, and thus belong to the CFTC Management. Considering that these two bills were proposed by Republicans and the current SEC Chairman Gary Gensler represents the Democratic position, the bills face greater resistance if Trump is re-elected. , because the Republican Party has taken the lead, the possibility of the bill being passed has increased significantly.

Explaining this bill, in layman's terms, it means that currency is treated as a commodity and is controlled by the CFTC. The legalization of supervision can greatly promote the enthusiasm of companies to raise funds through currency issuance, attracting more capital to flow into the currency circle, and there will be stable channels for long-term compliance development. More people will continue to work in this industry after making money for a long time. The most important thing is that after the United States takes the lead in introducing this bill, it will officially open the global digital currency financial market and blockchain technology market. The competition between them, "grabbing projects" and "grabbing talents", may further occur in the future in a completely globalized and free-flowing currency circle. If the United States were more friendly, or even if currency issuance was no longer a gray industry but a prestigious financial innovation, the founders who live in Singapore, Switzerland and other relatively crypto-friendly countries will soon have a great migration.

四

Looking back to 2016, you can count the crypto types in the world on your fingers. BTC is like a game currency, and you can use RMB to directly enter the exchange. In the era of "top-up and purchase", the natives of our generation in the currency circle had hopes for the future. (For details, please refer to the end of the article "How should we invest in digital currencies in 2021? - Part 1 of Four")

That's my dream too.

Originally, my assumption was that it would take 8-10 years to achieve these goals.

However, we only used it for four years.

At that time, I had a new dream - now that Bitcoin as a monetary asset has been slowly accepted by mainstream society, other digital currencies , or token, in addition to digital equity, must also play the role of digital commodities. In the future digital world of mankind, in addition to financial value, it must also generate utility, so that mankind can better enter the digital world.

Oh yes, this thing, later everyone gave it a new name - NFT.

"Digital commodities in the metaverse era", this is my definition of the future end of NFT, and it is also the true realization of web3 and digitization of "commodities in the Internet era". Thus the most important part of mass adoption.

For this reason, I resolutely built the NFT industry at the beginning of 2021. In the series of articles "The Road to the Future - Web3 Five Steps", I have described its future.

五

Of course, the most intuitive thing is to attract people. In other words, even if more people are willing to read the article I write, it will naturally depend on the increase in BTC.

It’s time to get to the point. It is necessary to mention my prediction for the BTC market: The peak of this round of BTC will appear at the end of 2025, and the reasonable range should be between 160,000 and 220,000 US dollars. After that, in 2026, it is recommended that everyone take short positions and rest and recuperate.

In my paper "Bitcoin Valuation Model under Miner Market Equilibrium—Based on Derivatives Pricing Theory" written on January 1, 2019, it was mentioned The bottom of the four-year cycle 2018-2021,

And what I mentioned in 2022, the bottom of the four-year cycle of 2022-2025.

From the current perspective, the entire currency circle is at a critical crossroads. Today’s digital currency industry is like that of the century The Internet industry of communication, the next 1 to 2 During the window period of 2018, the bubble burst is not far away. With the passage of crypto-friendly laws such as FIT21 in the United States, compliance supervision of assets such as currency rights has been completed. A large number of people who once lacked understanding of crypto, even scorned it completely. , very traditional old money will begin to accept BTC and make allocations at the 1%-10% level. However, after this, if blockchain and digital currency cannot be gradually integrated with traditional industries, "blockchain +" will truly usher in. "Industry" changes, just like the Internet industry combined with consumption, social networking, media, etc. and transformed them. I really don't see any new funds coming in, and there is no reason for this industry to have amazing growth opportunities. Defi in 2020, NFT and metaverse in 2021, these are all in the right direction, and also set off a wave of innovation at that time. Throughout 2024, BTC has repeatedly reached new highs, but the entire blockchain industry has not had enough innovation to talk about. The market is just flooded with more memes and Layer1&2&3, but there is no new "business concept innovation." Moreover, as far as I can see in 2025, the atmosphere of the entire industry has determined that I am pessimistic about the emergence of landmark "business concept innovation."

The tide has risen, and now the water is flooding. Small rafts are everywhere. Hundreds of boats are competing for the current. The boatmen are competing to see who can row faster, and even laugh at them. Those heavy, machine-powered iron ships. But when the big waves subside, the wooden boats will be stranded. Only by maintaining constant machine power can they sail out of the port and usher in the sea.

Even, to make an interesting prediction, the sign that the currency bubble has reached its peak will be when Buffett, the world’s largest opponent of Bitcoin, begins to change his tune, or even Get involved in the industry. The staged victory of the revolution is often the moment when the greatest crisis lurks.

The current currency circle can be compared to the Internet era in 1999. After experiencing a rapid blowout on the right track, the digital currency industry, starting in late 2025, may usher in a dramatic correction due to a huge bubble. returnLooking back at history, the Internet industry ushered in the initial public offering (IPO) of Netscape in December 1995, followed by the listing of Yahoo in April 1996, which triggered a market craze. On March 10, 2000, the Nasdaq hit its all-time peak of 5,408.6 points. However, the bubble then quickly burst, and by 2001 the market entered a winter period. Although the broad cold spell lasted until 2004, the real low was in October 2002, when the Nasdaq nearly fell below 1,000 points, marking the industry's nadir from a financial perspective.

In 2020, MicroStrategy successfully increased the value of the company's stock by purchasing BTC, achieving for the first time a Significant stock-to-currency linkage effect. In February 2021, Tesla announced its purchase of Bitcoin, which became a landmark event for the giant’s official entry. These historical moments are reminiscent of the "1995-1996" years of the blockchain industry - the beginning of the Internet boom.

Looking forward, I think that at the end of 2025, the price of Bitcoin may usher in a long-term peak, but in early 2027, it may hit a new peak. trough. Once the FIT21 bill is passed, it may start a wave of universal currency issuance, just like the ".com" era.

If the threshold for token financing is reduced to almost zero, and even ordinary people can issue their own tokens just like high school students can easily learn to make a website, then The limited capital in the market will be quickly diluted by the swarm of various Tokens. Under such an environment, the last wave of "violent bull market" belonging to token issuers may not last more than three months. Subsequently, due to the imbalance of market supply and demand and the depletion of capital, the industry will inevitably usher in a comprehensive collapse.

However, before that, in the next 12 months, we still have BTC’s beta potential increase of nearly 2 times, and for ordinary people, because of the global Liquidity is gathering, and there are countless opportunities for early-stage currencies that can be "a hundred times a thousand times" in a very short period of time - why not participate?

And, looking back at the turbulence of the year, it was also criticized by many media as a "bubble" ” of the Internet industry. Today, the Nasdaq crossed 20000 point mark. Looking back, it looked like a mountain in 2000, but now it is just a small hill. Even if I entered the Internet industry in 2000, persisting to this day is still almost the right choice.

As for BTC, there are hills one after another.

3202 days have passed since I bought my first BTC on March 7, 2016.

I still remember that the price at the moment I clicked the mouse was displayed as 2807RMB, which was less than 400 US dollars.

Many people have asked me, how high do you think BTC can go?

This question makes no sense. The price of gold has been hitting new highs these days and over the years.

The meaningful question is, how high can the price of BTC rise before a certain point in time?

Let’s wait and see.