Author: flowie, ChainCatcher

If you are still looking forward to altcoins, then you may lose some fantasies when you see this set of data.

According to the dune panel data created by @cgrogan, the number of types of crypto tokens has increased from more than 3.4 million in 2022 to more than 39 million in 2025. In 2024 and 2023, the crypto market created more than 10.09 million and more than 18.7 million tokens each year. In sharp contrast to this bull market, the explosive growth of altcoins is that the number of cryptocurrency developers has decreased instead of increasing. Electric Capital's Cryptocurrency Developer Report shows that the total number of crypto developers fell by 7% and 24% in 2024 and 2023 respectively.

The crypto market has long become a huge "coin issuance" factory without any concealment. Apart from the coin issuance model and the introduction of casinos, we can basically see new paradigm innovations.

The backdrop of fairness and getting rich overnight is the extremely low cost of doing evil and a large number of ordinary users who have been cheated. In long-term PvP, all important players, including users, are educated to be smart short-termists.

Yesterday, the cryptocurrency panic and greed index fell to 10, the lowest level since June 2022. @ZKSgu refuted Crypto's shouting for externalities, "No one in the field can keep it."

The exchange and VC, as the most criticized participants in this bull market, are looking for opportunities to leave or forced to leave.

The old crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX is seeking a sale, and according to a person familiar with the matter, Deribit, the largest crypto options exchange, may have completed a merger agreement, with the acquisition amount likely to be as high as $5 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Not only the exchange, the entire crypto field is ushering in a wave of mergers and acquisitions.According to RootData data, in the two months since 2025, there have been more than 20 mergers and acquisitions in the encryption field, with an average of more than 10 encryption mergers and acquisitions per month.

A large number of VCs are facing elimination. YettaS’ biggest feeling on Consensus HK is that VCs are full of grief: some VCs cannot raise the next round of funds, some VCs are halfway through, some VCs switch to strategic investors and no longer invest independently, and some VCs even consider issuing Meme to raise funds.

And investor @26x14eth began to call on young people not to focus on the most precious time in the currency circle to make gold, and to intern in the AI ​​and robotics industry with potential even if they have the opportunity. Because this is not the cycle that everyone can make money in 2017-2021, and the most precious wealth at the moment is time.

But there are also people waiting for a turnaround. Encryption KOL@cmdefi is not that pessimistic. His feeling is that the current market is like in 2018-2019. After the ICO bubble burst, everyone felt that there was no hope in this market and it was all a scam.

"But DeFi Summer is here in 2020, speculative funds are reduced, and the market is more concerned about application innovation. Stay in the game. (Waiting for the turnaround)."

This bull market is indeed hell-level difficulty.

The surprise encryption construction is hardly visible. From Trump's "harvest" trend of celebrity coins, Pi Coin Online Institute to Safe's recent hacker attack, everyone woke up as if they were dreaming. It turned out that the encryption system was so absurd and vulnerable.

Overseas The current situation of the encryption ecosystem drawn by KOL@sherlock has resonated with the market. In addition to the crypto construction with no solidity, conspiracy groups can be seen everywhere.

This bull market makes money even harder to make.

Players who have experienced the baptism of the last bull market may be particularly painful. Binance and other places in the last round of wealth myths have become dumping places for major Dogecoin investors, and the so-called alpha is the peak. PrestoResearch counts Binance for the first month of 2025The tokens that were launched, 100% fell by more than 70%.

If you are a beta diamond player with the top 20 market capitalization, you will no longer be rewarded. From July 2024 to date, the top 20 tokens in market value have generally fallen by more than 60%. The hair-fighting party also sighed that it is still impossible to escape being beaten by being beaten again and again.

The seemingly fairer on-chain PVP is even more messy.

As of February 26, the number of tokens issued by the Pump.fun platform has exceeded 8.1 million, the number of Meme coins with a market value of more than US$100 million is nearly 32, and only 154 have market value of more than US$10 million. Now, after experiencing celebrity coins scandals such as Libra, the on-chain PVP is also coming to an end.

Without actual encryption construction, most people cannot make money, so where does the money go?

Conflux Lianchuang Yuanjie may have revealed the truth. Except for a very few smart sons of luck, most of them have flowed to the various stakeholders of "assembly-issuing coins".

Yuan Jie shared on Twitter that "the 'coin issuing factory' is not only VCs, serial entrepreneurs, market makers, OL Agency, studios, big players, and exchanges, a complete assembly line, greedily sucking this industry and leeks like vampires."

In the crypto market, coin selling is the biggest business model.

In Yuanjie's view, under the "coin issuing factory" model, the project party's wealth creation process mainly focuses on the two core links of chip distribution and upper-soc. The model of issuing coins on this assembly line is: Find the founder of the core circle (such as Vitalik, A16Z, Binance, etc.) or the leader of the meme with huge influence to take low-priced chips

Make up beautiful narratives and use artificial data (TVL, on-chain data, node scale, etc.)

Binding interests Kol Group completes TwitterShilling (Selling)

Influence the core decision-makers of the Institute (How to) complete the final shot

The Institute begins dumping through market makers, repeating the above steps to create the next project.

An investor in Web2 and Web3 also told ChainCatcher that because there is no R&D investment, the team does not have to support a few people, as long as the coin is harvested, it will not be eliminated. "The market elimination mechanism has completely failed, and there are more junk projects and tokens."

But when ordinary users are no longer easily conspired by the "narrative" routines of project parties and VCs, the more rude meme coining model has appeared. The same methodology is just not playing with VC.

Behind the fair issuance of coins with almost no threshold is the extremely low cost of doing evil. Primitive Crypto investment partner @YettaSing believes that the Meme model is essentially a darker on-chain world than the VC model. Due to the lack of product and technical support, "absolute fairness" is often just a cover. The celebrity coin scandal like Libra unveiled the last fig leaf of meme.

The wealth effect is ineffective everywhere, and the industry has begun to collectively reflect and hold people accountable.

Recent public opinion has once again attacked the hair-pulling studio. Encryption kol@mscryptojiayi believes that altcoins cannot be raised, and it can be traced back to the moment when the "bribery system" was prevalent. The first shot of industry change was to be shot in the hair-fighting studio.

In her opinion, the studio and the project party "conspired" to build a "false prosperity" in the industry, which not only diluted the expected benefits of ordinary users, weakened users' long-term loyalty to the project, and led to the community's degeneration from a value community to a profit trading market, but also laid mines for the second-level market crash.

She criticized that there are even many studios that have no bottom line to collude with fraudulent projects, and they are shameless in jointly building rat warehouses and coaxing exchanges and users.

But the kol ice frog @Ice_Frog6666666 of the airdrop track refuted. He believes that "false prosperity" is an industry twistThe result of the development of the Qu, but not the reason. The studio is not the biggest vested interest and rule-maker. If the knife does not cut to the biggest vested interest or is not aimed at the rule-maker, the reform is destined to be ineffective.

In addition to the hair-fighting studio, this bull market is believed to have two other vested interests with the project party, and VC and CEX are the targets of being besieged many times.

During the Hong Kong Consensus Conference, a Crypto VC even criticized that "90% of VCs should close."

The rise of VC coins is also due to the fact that there are too many encryption scams after ICO, and the projects after VC screening and endorsement have gradually been recognized by retail investors.

It's just that this retail investor leader has lost trust. Retail investors believe that VCs can obtain chips at a lower cost and have information advantages, and conspire with the project party to dump tokens and harvest users.

In this bull market, VC coins are generally high in valuation and low in circulation, which causes the market to be smashed and is also the source of dissatisfaction among community users.

He Yi also said in response to the listing controversy last year that "some VCs are indeed the core reason for inflated prices."

The injured are always ordinary retail investors.

As the most powerful part of wealth creation, exchanges are naturally considered to be a big deal by the market.

Mainstream majors such as Binance and Coinbase have been frequently besieged by controversy over the past year. CEX's sky-high currency listing fee was once regarded by Moonrock Capital CEO Simon as the biggest reason for the project party's inability to bear and market liquidity loss.

Although He Yi later denied this sky-high price "coin listing fees", CEX's currency listing mechanism and "beauty group" insider trading have always been questioned as one of the culprits of blood sucking on garbage projects.

Although He Yi has repeatedly stated that Binance has a transparent and complex currency listing process, the meme TST on the BNB chain has been quickly launched recently and immediately smashed the market, even Zhao Changpeng opened it.Start questioning Binance's currency listing issue.

Not only exchanges and VCs, but almost any earning party on the "coin issuing factory" can be "revolutionized". Encryption kol @CyberPhilos believes that the three major borers in the Crypto world, in addition to CEX, also include KOL Agency and market makers.

A common view is that important participants in this bull market are too path-dependent, and there is not enough native innovation. After no new external liquidity enters the market, everything is invalid. But is this the result or the cause? Why can each party on the chain become a "borer"?

Overseas kolMurtaza reflects, "Wealth comes far ahead of practicality, not just a small mistake that will be solved by itself over time. This actually poses a fatal threat to the technology realizing its potential."

Murtaza mentioned that the global cryptocurrency industry has a market capitalization of more than $2 trillion. Usually, an industry of this scale will only be formed after something useful to society has been developed.

Cypher Capital Bill, partner at Nothing Research @0x_Todd all have similar views in reflecting on the dilemma of VC and exchanges.

Bill said that Web3 venture capital and Web2 venture capital follow completely different logics. The former emphasizes that "early fame is the key", and the model of quickly creating wealth prompts founders to chase trends, focus on marketing and quickly list exchanges.

In Bill's view, Web3 actually requires more "patience capital" - venture capital that adopts a Web2-style approach and supports the founders to build long-term value in major markets, so that the team can focus on product development rather than rush to cash out.

CEX The dilemma of listing coins may also be due to the premature cashing of the project party's wealth. @0x_Todd believes that compared with listed public offerings in the traditional Web2 market, the problem with the Crypto agreement is that it enjoys the benefits of traditional listing: investors exit/motivate employees, but do not assume any obligation to traditional listing.

The lack of encryption supervision is also the key to the problem. @0x_Todd said that all the tricks such as "bribery, fraud, fraud, and fraud" should be used because they will not receive punishment.

The current encrypted panic has reached an extreme. Although everyone is held accountable and reflects, they are also collectively trapped. Whether the industry can really "scrape the bones to heal the wounds" is still unknown.