Original author: 1912212.eth, Foresight News
"I lost over a million last year," Xiao Su told Foresight News.
As an old crypto veteran, he bought many VC coins during the previous bull market cycle. In 2021, Bitcoin once broke through $67,000, reaching a historical high, and many VC coins rose accordingly, with some even outperforming Bitcoin, marking Xiao Su's first pot of gold.
However, the market is unpredictable. In this cycle, Xiao Su suffered setbacks. Since 2024, several VC coins he heavily invested in performed poorly, continuously declining. Forced to be a diamond hand, he could no longer withstand the pressure and had to cut losses at low points. After doing this multiple times, he had already given back most of his accumulated gains.
"Why is it so difficult to make money in this cycle? Who actually made money in the market?" Xiao Su was puzzled. In his view, the era of making money by blindly buying coins and earning while sleeping is gone, and now one must "run fast" to earn money. Market participants like VCs, market makers, exchanges, project parties, retail investors, and farming studios all face significant new challenges.
Xiao Su's experience is not unique. Not only veterans like him, but some well-known crypto VC institutions have also recently announced transformations, candidly admitting that their primary investment returns this cycle were extremely disappointing.
However, looking at cryptocurrency history, 2024 to 2025 is a momentous year. The approval of Bitcoin spot ETF has led traditional financial institutions to rush in. With Trump potentially returning to power and crypto policies becoming unprecedented lenient, a series of positive factors have pushed Bitcoin's price from the bottom of $15,000 to break through $100,000, creating a historical high.
Investors' expectations for a wild bull market reached their peak.
However, Ethereum, another market leader, shattered investors' dreams. Ethereum did not even create a historical high in this cycle. The two previous price boosters, DeFi and NFT, also did not experience a boom. Its founder Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation faced severe criticism. With ETH's decline, narratives around Layer 2, restaking, and ZK all faded, and many related ecosystem tokens performed disappointingly.
The only hot spot - the MEME coin fever - is to some extent a retail investor's venting of dissatisfaction with VC coin overvaluation. VC coin profit returns were already divided by VCs before listing, leaving only bag-holding and "endless decline" for retail investors.
In this even more brutal "casino", only a few shrewd traders, insider traders, and token issuance groups made substantial profits. Most retail investors frantically chasing MEME coins suffered increasing losses in repeated lottery-like events, ultimately realizing that the so-called wealth effect was merely a "showcase" belonging to others.
So who are the real winners? Foresight News interviewed multiple crypto practitioners across different tracks to get their answers.
Bitcoin Holders: Win Big
Bitcoin buyers undoubtedly earned substantial returns in this cycle. On May 10th, Bitcoin Magazine Pro data showed that only 0.55% of addresses were still at a loss after breaking $100,000, indicating most Bitcoin players are in a profitable state. At the time of writing, Bitcoin had broken through $110,000, creating a historical high, with no buyers experiencing losses.
In the crypto world over the past year, the track with the most wealth-generating effect is undoubtedly "MEME". Since the beginning of 2024, MEME coins have sparked an unprecedented wave in the crypto market. From WIF and BONK on the Solana chain, to PEPE and TURBO on Ethereum, and the rapidly popular DEGEN and MOCHI on the Base chain, even MEME assets in the Bitcoin ecosystem, each hot spot quickly attracted tens of thousands of retail investors and speculators.
MEME is no longer just entertainment; it has become a new experimental ground for wealth distribution mechanisms. According to statistics from CoinGecko and dune analytics, the total market value of MEME coins soared from less than $2 billion to over $60 billion in 2024, with an annual increase of over 2900%. Among them, the market value of MEME coins on the Solana chain alone accounted for over 1/3. WIF rose from an initial market value of less than $1 million to over $3 billion, with early holders gaining returns of over 10,000 times. Some users purchased a new MEME coin BOME for less than $200 in April 2024, and their account value skyrocketed to over $2 million in just 72 hours.
These MEME coins often lack traditional technical backgrounds and don't even rely on complete project white papers. With just a slogan or a simple dog head avatar, they can trigger millions of dollars in trading volume.
The craziest MEME wealth effect belongs to the MEME coin TRUMP before Trump's official entry into the White House. Traders like 0x Sun, Dayu, Lengjing, and CryptoD earned tens of millions of dollars from a single coin, causing a sensation in the entire crypto circle, leaving countless people in awe. However, players who can earn such huge profits from a single coin are ultimately a tiny minority. Position management and risk appetite are also a major challenge.
[The translation continues in the same manner for the rest of the text, maintaining the specified translations for specific terms.]Regarding this, Feng Mi reflected, "Farming has never been a mechanical, assembly-line operation. Every account, every TX, every project token is something I've carefully interacted with, recorded, and waited for, even losing money on. They are not just numbers, but more like a series of strategic and luck-based battles, with extremely intense emotional investment. Each project has consumed a lot of effort and time, gas and principal. Because of this, it's an emotional investment. But this 'emotion' became my biggest mistake in this round: unable to sell when I should have sold, hesitating when I should have exited. As a result, I handed over the profits already in my hands to the market, merely accompanying it for a part of the journey."
Market players win and lose, and winners are always the minority. Subsequently, whether individuals or studios, repeatedly countered by anti-farming, when zkSync, LayerZero and other airdrops emerged, the market was filled with wailing. Small retail investors received meager airdrops, farming studios suffered heavy losses, and were even forced to close. Project parties were heavily criticized, but maintained a tough stance, and subsequently, most market projects began to imitate this approach, issuing fewer or no airdrops.
Feng Mi told Foresight News, "The wild era of farming has long ended. The bonus window where everyone could earn their first pot of gold from the chain has closed. Now, it's no longer a stage where rewards can be earned by casually interacting with a few buttons."
When farming players generally find it difficult, persisting becomes even harder. Many players miss wealth opportunities due to insufficient patience. Feng Mi analyzes the root cause of players' inability to persist: "Airdrops are delayed, gas keeps being invested, interactions are boring, tasks become increasingly formalistic, points become increasingly diluted. When returns are long delayed, doubts gradually erode execution power, and complaints follow. But the real big results often hide just after the point where you almost want to give up, almost think it's ineffective. You must believe - results are not first to happen, but first to be believed, before they can be realized."
Feng Mi also shared farming failure cases, "On Babylon, I did extensive BTC staking interactions, investing significant funds and attention. The result was extremely limited airdrop allocation, with returns so poor they were unbearable to look at." Additionally, he heavily invested in the entire Move ecosystem, including Aptos, with investments exceeding $4 million at market peak. However, ecosystem projects collectively underperformed, with no standout projects, and the official team lacking direction and top-tier operational capabilities.
Airdrops also have various bittersweet experiences.
However, compared to buying coins, farming airdrops might still be one of the few tracks where one can earn big money from initial small principal. Multi-account strategies and boutique account strategies remain viable approaches, but require more sophisticated methods. The game of outsmarting project parties still greatly tests farmers' cognition and execution.
Conclusion
The only constant in the crypto market is change. One day in crypto is like a year in the human world - though exaggerated, it also reflects the speed of change. Unable to see clearly or grasp opportunities means they're gone, which is undoubtedly most torturous for those continuously pursuing more wealth in the industry.
However, the most fascinating aspect of the crypto circle is that every time market participants believe they've reached the end of the wealth effect, there's always some inconspicuous corner or domain quietly growing, preparing for subsequent rise, continuously attracting curious young people through another surprising wealth effect.
