Opinion: The Bull Market Has Arrived, How to Position in This Cycle?

Original Title: "Is a 26-Year Bull Market Starting? How to Position This Round?"
Original Author: Dayu, Crypto KOL

Every bull market is different, and only those who continuously embrace change can truly shine in a bull market—therefore, predicting what a bull market is can be quite challenging, but I believe there are still clues to follow.

Currently, there is still debate about whether the bull market has arrived, but my view is very clear: the bull market has already arrived!

I believe we are now in the early stages of a bull market. According to past bull market patterns, there is a high probability of another 20% or slightly more pullback, hopefully before reaching 90,000, providing a great opportunity for those who missed out. Before that, everyone needs to prepare in advance and not hesitate when the right moment comes.

1. Why Do I Say the Bull Market Has Arrived?

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1. The Cycle Has Not Failed

Many people feel that the impact of halving on the crypto market has diminished, which is true, but halving is essentially a cycle anchor of emotions, narratives, and consensus.

After the last halving, Bitcoin rose from over 60,000 to nearly 120,000 in just over a year, then fell back to just over 60,000 in another year, almost halving. The bubbles that needed to be squeezed have been squeezed, and only then can a new round have space. The crypto market is still deeply influenced by emotions, consensus, and narratives; the direct buying power brought by the halving signal itself is not important; what matters is that before and after this node, funds and attention will refocus.

2. Positive Macro and Funding Environment

The bear market of the past two years essentially stemmed from liquidity contraction; now the direction has reversed. With the U.S. midterm elections approaching, along with expectations from the Trump administration and recent fiscal actions, it essentially represents a form of indirect interest rate cut, with the core demand being to stabilize financial assets, "If you don't release the water, I will release it myself."

3. Intrinsic Momentum and Emotional Resonance in the Crypto Market

In the past few weeks, trading volume in the crypto market dropped to historical lows, with Binance even experiencing an hour without any Bitcoin transactions. At the end of a bear market, this means that those who needed to sell have already sold, and those who wanted to buy are still watching. In this structure, once a short squeeze or rise occurs, it will trigger extremely crazy market conditions.

This is also one of the reasons I dared to go all in on BTC at over 60,000—also because the miners' cost price is generally around this level, but the timing for the rise came much earlier than I expected; I thought it would take a few more months.

This week's trend has seen prices rise from just over 60,000 to nearly 80,000, with those who missed the opportunity rushing to chase the price, those who got in wanting to leverage, and shorts desperately trying to escape and cover.

The craziest times in the market are often when not everyone is optimistic, but when everyone starts to fear missing out.

2. Can This Surge Continue?

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First, the cyclical patterns of the crypto market have not fundamentally changed, and the external environment supports this change. After the external AI concept hype, the focus has shifted to optical modules and storage, and after repeated rotations, funds have begun to hesitate; concepts like SpaceX are also difficult to sustain high levels. The stock market places more emphasis on fundamentals, and a large amount of money made or lost in the U.S. stock market and AI will flow here as soon as the crypto market shows the first clear signal.

Second, the funding signals are clear. On-chain data shows that the daily minting volume of stablecoins like USDT and USDC has reached billions of dollars, a rare level in recent years. Looking at OKX and Binance's C2C, buying USDT is no longer easy; previously, there were large orders in the millions or even hundreds of millions, but now the largest sell order is only 200,000 USDT, indicating a shortage of USDT—but as long as someone buys, the price will rise along with the minting of USDT.

From both the funding and emotional perspectives, the characteristics of a bull market starting are very clear, so I am very optimistic about the future.

3. How to Position in This Round?

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In the past few rounds, we made big profits using the barbell theory, which means not putting all funds in one direction: part on certain trends and part on high-odds opportunities, while giving up the mediocre opportunities in between.

So, what is the biggest change in this bull market? It is the different sources of funding.

In previous bull markets, it was mostly retail investors FOMOing in, a game of dumb money, with the crypto market representing low-end, get-rich-quick gambling; but since the last round, the situation has changed, the big players are harder to cut, and retail investors have become smarter, only playing MEME, with fewer people taking over.

Even though this round has just started, several trends have emerged and will become increasingly clear:

1. Institutional Funds Dominate

In the past, when people talked about institutions entering the crypto market, it sounded like a joke. But that is no longer the case; whether it is the approval of ETFs for BTC, ZEC, or projects like HYPE, they are now attracting a large amount of institutional funds from Wall Street and institutions from mainland China and Hong Kong. These are projects they can understand. In China, you can think of it as traditional VCs like Dongfang Hongwan and Gao Rong Capital entering the crypto market, but they will not take over any VC coins or pay attention to MEME coins; instead, they will bet on on-chain finance.

Pay attention to this term, "on-chain finance"; institutions are not buying a "coin project that can rise"; if something can rise a lot, they don't necessarily need to come to the crypto market. They mainly focus on projects that can occupy positions in on-chain finance.

On-chain finance has a background; the U.S. Genius Act, the Clear Act, and the recent SEC's ICO framework, as well as the 24X6 mechanism for securities and the full on-chain transition of U.S. stocks by DTCC, are all part of on-chain finance.

Therefore, this part reminds us to focus on the infrastructure related to on-chain finance in this round. I am also paying attention to some very small and new projects that are bringing many traditional financial practices into the crypto market. In the end, whoever can successfully implement this business and attract users will have huge opportunities, and may even produce projects on par with Hyperliquid.

2. Real Value Dominates

In the past, the crypto market learned from the stock market to issue tokens for financing, but in the end, the products were not delivered, the tokens were not empowered, and it was a mess, with project parties only focusing on dumping tokens, and retail investors taking over from each other—this kind of play reached its end in the last round. Binance, as the biggest player in this play, also felt powerless at the end of the last round; retail investors really couldn't take it anymore, leading to a massive user shift to the stock market, and trading platforms began to fully engage in stock-related businesses.

The essence is not that users suddenly liked stocks, but that they were cut and scared.

Among the countless projects in the crypto market, many good projects that survived the last round are generally showing revenue, token buybacks, and destruction, and have great prospects. Currently, there are nearly 20 such projects, and I will briefly go through the list later.

3. MEME Will Still Be a Key Player

After TRUMP was issued, MEME coins peaked temporarily, and it was time to exit the MEME market. But now that the bull market is back, we need to follow the market corrections and pay attention to MEME, which has intrinsic logical support: crypto market users are naturally speculative; everyone comes to the crypto market for the purpose of making money and wealth effects; otherwise, it is better to trade stocks or buy indices. This demographic attribute determines that contracts and MEME will still be mainstream.

Moreover, the thrill of gambling remains unchanged; MEME coins and contract trading are both aligned with the famous saying, "Speculation is as ancient as mountains."

The traditional strategy of "listing on Binance" may gradually become outdated. In the past (and even now), major players on BSC would create a good concept, control 70% to 90% of the chips, and wait for Binance to list and dump; but Binance is not foolish and does not want to be the scapegoat. Most of the time, they only list contracts for everyone to speculate, not allowing spot listings for users to take over.

I believe that rather than betting on specific MEME coins, it is better to focus on their underlying assets, such as SOL or Pump platform tokens. If you are optimistic about BSC MEME, you can also consider directly holding BNB (I personally prefer HYPE, as I believe it represents future trends and am no longer fond of BNB), but BNB, while old, still has its influence and should not be overlooked in a bull market.

For those with a high-risk appetite, you can pay attention to Robinhood's "PUMP-like platform" on the chain, with the platform token called Pons, which should have risks and odds at least five times that of PUMP.

Because Robinhood is a new chain, I recommend downloading the FOMO platform, which is currently the most used for MEME, developed by the DYDX team, which has strong financial experience. With U.S. compliant custody funds and a no-private-key third-party solution, funds are always in your hands. Even if the platform stops operating, users' money will not be lost, making it very safe and indeed user-friendly, allowing any on-chain token to purchase all on-chain assets, which is quite impressive.

Overall, buying platform tokens for MEME is like buying a casino, which is generally more stable than buying MEME itself.

4. VC Coins That Are Neither Here Nor There

These assets are actually riskier than MEME. Buying MEME early at least involves small bets for big returns; buying VC coins in small amounts often leads to no profits.

This part mainly consists of various VC coins, relying on shilling, FOMO, and herd mentality to gamble.

The core of the big players is to do a good project, but to cut the leeks well. Most projects in the crypto market, such as 90% of the spot on Binance, will harvest a wave in each bull market, while the less successful ones will just lie flat and continuously dump until the project goes to zero. In contrast, projects that can continue to do things (cut leeks) are considered good, as tokens can still be played with, and there are still opportunities.

Therefore, VC coins cannot just be judged by their stories. My screening criteria are threefold: Are there real users? Is there sustainable revenue? Is the team genuinely planning to do this long-term? If they cannot pass these three criteria, no matter how lively the hype is, do not touch them.

4. Key Projects to Focus On

In this round, we should prioritize focusing on projects with real revenue. I have compiled a list of some representative projects and provided brief comments on them, many of which may surprise everyone, including UNI, which was previously considered pure air, but has actually quietly changed now. Let's take a look at the table (not fully listed, just examples):

The table may seem a bit challenging to read, so I will summarize it in words:

• HYPE: This is the strongest project in the crypto market, representing an outstanding example, with high revenue, aggressive buybacks, a large vision, strong innovation, and rapid iteration. The founder is very impressive, and there is not much more to say; the project is walking very steadily on the path of on-chain financial infrastructure—the only regret is that the current price is already reasonably expensive.

• UNI: Previously considered an air coin, but it now has a buyback mechanism, and the recent buyback amount has reached a new high as the market warms up. However, from a PE perspective, it is still more expensive than the high HYPE, so it is old and not sexy, but as the leader of AMM in the crypto market, it can be included for observation.

• AAVE: This goes without saying, the number one in on-chain lending. When it fell to the bottom, including core developers leaving and protocol parameters going wrong, I really didn’t dare to buy—who knew that good projects, no matter how much negative news, always provide opportunities, just like HYPE when it fell to around 10U during JELLYJEELY.

• MORPHO: This project is extremely strong on the institutional side; during the bear market, top institutions directly increased their holdings at market prices, causing it to seem as if it had not gone through a bear market, and it is now more suitable for observation.

• ETHFI: This is an old project that originally focused on staking, but it has done something very admirable by choosing to do the right and difficult thing, making a beautiful transformation, and is now more focused on on-chain payment—actually, it seems to be the only one currently issuing tokens. Projects like REDDOTPAY have a valuation of 2 billion dollars in the bear market, but they probably won’t issue tokens, so ETHFI going on Binance is relatively very worthy of attention in this bull market!

• PENDLE: The team is very strong, and this project is also in a positive spiral for the bull market; there is no need to say much, it will definitely perform well.

• FLUID: This is likely to be an overlooked gem, with good PE/PS ratios, and it recently experienced some negative news, making it worth tracking; I already have some holdings.

In addition, there are also projects with revenue and buybacks, including JUP, PUMP, etc. Due to space limitations, I won't list them all.

5. Final Thoughts

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After the first rapid rise of the bull market, a pullback may come at any time, with a magnitude of around 20%. A pullback is not a risk; it is an opportunity for those who missed out to get in.

Be prepared in front of opportunities: what to buy during the pullback, how to divide into batches, how much for each batch, and just do it when the time comes; don’t hesitate.

In the past couple of rounds, my friends should recognize my ability to seize opportunities; we have basically not missed any major opportunities. As this round restarts, we must aim for several billion!

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