Reprinted: Plain Blockchain

In Fact, the Altcoin Season Came in 2025

From around May to August 2025, BTC was rising while its market share was declining. During this phase, the market share of altcoins was increasing. BTC was on the rise, while the total market value of altcoins grew even more, marking the altcoin season.

The Redundancy of VC Tokens

The contradiction of the altcoin season lies in the fact that while the total market value is growing, the market has no perception of the altcoin season.

This is because the total market value of altcoins is increasing, but there are simply too many types of altcoins, resulting in the vast majority of individual altcoins not showing significant gains.

Thus, the key issue of the 2025 altcoin season is — the redundancy of VC tokens.

So the question arises, why are there so many VC tokens in 2025?

Misalignment of Liquidity in Primary and Secondary Markets for VC Tokens

The normal route should be for VCs to invest first, then enter the secondary market after the Token TGE, facing a much larger liquidity in the secondary market, which drives the price up.

However, this round of market conditions has led to a misalignment of liquidity between the primary and secondary markets.

The Reason for the Redundancy of VC Tokens is Excess Liquidity

From 2021 to 2022, there was a significant amount of VC investment in the primary market, both in terms of investment amount and project quantity.

In other time periods, financing generally concentrated within 1 to 2 months, but from 2021 to 2022, financing was abundant and prolonged.

We can consider this as financing redundancy brought about by excess macro liquidity, which is indeed the fundamental reason for the redundancy of VC tokens in this round of market conditions.

The Poor Price Performance of VC Tokens is Due to Insufficient Liquidity in the Secondary Market

However, whether looking at the previous M2 annual growth rate or financing data charts, they clearly indicate that after the TGE of these redundant VC tokens in 2025, market liquidity has decreased.

This formed a time misalignment of liquidity between the primary and secondary markets. A large number of VC tokens experienced liquidity redundancy during the financing stage in the primary market, while there was a lack of liquidity in the secondary market after the TGE.

Of course, there are multiple reasons for the lack of liquidity in the secondary market, which will be discussed in the next article.

Summary

The most critical issue is that the misalignment of liquidity in the primary and secondary markets for VC tokens has led to an excess of VC tokens during the 2025 altcoin season, where selling pressure is relatively large while buying power is insufficient, causing poor price performance.

Altcoins/VC Tokens Will Not Disappear

VC Token Financing Continues with a Cautious Attitude

Still referring to the earlier VC financing chart. It can be seen that in 2025, numerous projects still received financing. The total amount and number of financing are far lower than in 2021. On one hand, this may be due to relatively tight macro liquidity, and on the other hand, it reflects the cautious attitude of VCs in investment activities.

However, one point to note is that in 2025, an average of about 75 projects received financing each month. The amount and quantity of VC financing in 2025 are higher than in 2017-2018. This indicates that when we overlook the redundancy of VC token financing in 2021, the financing for altcoins/VC tokens is still progressing.

After this round of bear market concludes, once VC tokens undergo TGE again, there will not be as much redundancy of new tokens as in 2025. Unless macro liquidity remains insufficiently loose, the next round of altcoin trends may fall between the madness of 2021 and the coldness of 2025.

Web3 Finance Still Maintains Nearly $100 Billion in Scale

First, in the financial sector, a large number of traditional financial institutions have joined Web3. Examples in this regard are not even necessary to elaborate.

Currently, the total value locked (TVL) across the network still stands at $92.831 billion, approximately equivalent to the levels of March-April 2021.

Technology Companies and Web3 Are Continuously Merging

Examples of Technology Giants Participating in Web3:

In non-financial sectors, technology giants are also participating in Web3. For example:

Google is deeply involved in the Hedera ecosystem, serving as a network node and a member of its governing council. The members of the Hedera governing council also include IBM, Boeing, Nomura Securities, and others. Google has integrated Hedera's ledger data into BigQuery, allowing developers to use SQL to query Hedera blockchain data (blockchain is not a relational database and does not support direct SQL usage; it generally requires indexing before SQL can be utilized).

Google is also one of the nodes for Midnight (a privacy-preserving sidechain of Cardano) and provides developers with tools for quickly deploying Midnight nodes using Google Cloud.

NVIDIA has recently facilitated cooperation between its AI development platform Brev.dev and the dePIN project Akash. Developers using Brev.dev for AI development can choose to utilize Akash's computing power.

Microsoft has directly developed the Bitcoin Layer 2 DID network — ION.

Telegram is leading the TON ecosystem.

Sony has directly launched the L2 entertainment infrastructure Soneium...

Web3 Serving Web2 and AI Examples

On the other hand, some Web3 projects are also serving the Web2 field and AI. For example:

The Bittensor subnet provides incentives for AI development, promoting the growth of the AI ecosystem.

Aethir serves hundreds of enterprise clients, including cloud gaming and AI.

VeChain serves companies like Walmart and BMW, providing on-chain traceability services.

Polkadot also has some enterprise-level or institutional-level service clients, such as Politecnico di Milano...

Summary

VC is still continuing to invest in Web3, which means that VC projects still have a certain amount of funds and motivation to pursue technological innovation and product development... Moreover, the amount and number of VC investments are higher than in 2017 and lower than in 2021, reflecting cautious growth in VC investments.

The integration of finance and Web3 is occurring across multiple areas such as DeFi, RWA, and stablecoin payments. Technology institutions and Web3 are also merging.

All this indicates that altcoins/VC tokens will not disappear.

The Trend of the Americanization of Altcoins/VC Tokens

The "Nasdaq-ization" of Trading Platforms

On March 25, 2026, Binance published "Risk Alerts for Market Makers in the Cryptocurrency Market and Guidelines for Project Parties and Users."

Among them, five types of risk behaviors or phenomena of market makers were proposed: aggressive selling and unlocking conflicts, one-sided trading behavior, mismatch of price and volume, insufficient liquidity or depth, and imbalance between trading volume and liquidity.

In response to these risks, Binance's measures include:

First, advising project parties. It is recommended that project parties conduct scientific due diligence before and during cooperation with market makers to assess and monitor in order to manage risks effectively.

Second, regulating project parties. Project parties must strictly adhere to the Token release schedule, prohibit market-disturbing Token behaviors, promptly disclose market maker information to the platform, refrain from colluding with third parties to manipulate prices or liquidity, carefully select partners, clarify executable actions in contracts with market makers, and continuously monitor market maker behavior after launch.

Third, platforms must continuously monitor and manage market makers. Binance commits to "continuously monitoring market-making behaviors and taking swift and decisive actions against any violations, including blacklisting non-compliant market makers."

Since then, based on regulatory acceptance and compliance, Binance has further played a supervisory role in the healthy development of the market, making the platform trend toward a "Nasdaq-like" model.

In the stock market, trading platforms like Nasdaq serve as both stock issuance platforms and trading platforms while being deeply involved in market regulation.

However, cryptocurrency trading platforms often can only undertake the latter function, that is, as trading platforms for Tokens. The issuance of Tokens is based on blockchain, posing one of the bottlenecks for cryptocurrency trading platforms in regulating Token issuance, on-chain circulation, and trading.

As the world's largest trading platform, Binance's constraints and regulation of market maker behavior will bring very positive implications for the crypto market, benefiting the rights of retail investors.

As a leader in the crypto industry, Binance's actions are likely to garner more support from other platforms, project parties, and users, with more platforms likely to emulate Binance's management strategies for market makers. This means the overall crypto market will trend toward a "Nasdaq-like" state.

This is a future that is more favorable to retail investors, healthier, and more worthy of expectation.

Speculations on the Americanization of the Altcoin Market

In terms of Token issuance: Given more traditional financial institutions and technology giants joining, as well as more cautious VC investment behavior, it is likely that only relatively higher-quality VC tokens will be issued. The phenomenon of large quantities of mixed-quality VC issuances like in 2025 should greatly improve.

In terms of Token trading: Binance, as one of the leaders in the crypto market, is strengthening the control over risk behaviors of market makers. It is likely that other platforms will imitate and learn from this, thus the Token trading market will gradually reduce market manipulation and harvesting behaviors, trending toward a relatively healthy trading ecology akin to that of U.S. stocks.

In terms of KOLs: As the number of VC tokens is set to decrease, the demand for Token advertising will also shrink. More and more bloggers are entering the KOL ranks, and during each bear market cycle, some idle BD start transitioning into KOL roles; hence, the supply of Token advertising providers will increase. This means competition in the Token advertising market will intensify. KOLs with more differentiation, stronger analytical abilities, and correct values may have a better chance of succeeding in the competition, which is beneficial for the health of the industry.

In terms of market conditions: Simply trading on a four-year cycle may not yield much return. The four-year cycle may gradually weaken. BTC may synchronize to a certain extent with U.S. stock markets. The concentration of VC tokens' TGE may also diminish.

In terms of retail investors: The probability of winning and the odds of trades may correlate to a certain degree with understanding.

Of course, this might be an optimistic speculation; the actual situation may not be the same. However, it is certain that altcoins will not disappear.

Article link: https://www.hellobtc.com/kp/du/04/6275.html

Source: https://x.com/blockTVBee/status/2039035517233410053