The New Landscape of the Crypto Assets Market: The Rise of Four Parallel Cycles

Recently, industry experts have been discussing a common topic: the traditional "four-year cycle" theory is no longer applicable to the current Crypto Assets market. If investors still hold onto the mentality of waiting for a bull market surge, they are likely falling behind the development of the market.

The current Crypto Assets market has evolved into a complex pattern where four distinctly different cycles run simultaneously, each with its own unique rhythm, strategy, and profit logic.

Bitcoin's Super Cycle

Bitcoin has transformed from a purely speculative object into an asset for institutional allocation. The traditional halving cycle effect has become ineffective, replaced by a slow upward trend that may last for over a decade.

The core of this change lies in the fundamental shift in the holding structure of coins. Retail investors are exiting on a large scale, while funds represented by institutional investors are actively entering the market. This transition is reshaping the price discovery mechanism and volatility characteristics of Bitcoin.

For ordinary investors, this means facing the dual pressure of time costs and opportunity costs. Institutional investors can withstand a holding period of 3-5 years, while retail investors clearly find it difficult to maintain such patience and financial strength.

It is expected that Bitcoin may show a long-term stable growth trend in the future, with an annualized return potentially stabilizing in the range of 20-30%, but the intraday volatility will significantly decrease, resembling a steadily growing tech stock.

The Short Wave Cycle of MEME

The MEME token market is evolving from grassroots frenzy into a professional arena. MEME is essentially a "instant gratification" speculative vehicle that requires no complex technical background, just a symbol that resonates.

The MEME market has developed into a complete "emotional monetization" industrial chain, covering multiple fields from cultural symbols to political MEMEs, from AI concept packaging to community IP incubation.

However, the MEME market is becoming increasingly specialized, and the difficulty for ordinary investors to profit from this high-frequency rotation is sharply rising. The entry of professional teams and large holders is making this once "grassroots paradise" highly competitive.

Long Cycles of Technological Innovation

Innovative projects that truly have technical barriers, such as Layer 2 scaling, ZK technology, and AI infrastructure, often require 2-3 years or even longer to see actual results. These types of projects follow the technology maturity curve rather than the market sentiment cycle.

The value release of technology projects usually exhibits a nonlinear leap characteristic. For patient investors with technical judgment, positioning during the "valley of death" stage of a project may be the best strategy for obtaining excess returns.

Short Cycles of Innovative Hotspots

Before the main technical narrative took shape, the market often saw rapid rotations of various small hotspots, such as RWA, DePIN, AI Agent, etc., each hotspot may only have a window period of 1-3 months.

The fragmentation and high-frequency rotation of this narrative reflect the dual constraints of current market attention scarcity and the efficiency of capital rent-seeking. A typical small narrative cycle follows a six-stage model of "concept validation → capital exploration → public opinion amplification → FOMO entry → valuation overdraft → capital withdrawal."

It is worth noting that if these small narratives can form a systematic upgrade linkage and truly precipitate a sustainable value closed loop in the process, it may give rise to a super narrative similar to DeFi Summer. Currently, the AI infrastructure sector is most likely to achieve this breakthrough first.

In general, understanding the nature of these four parallel cycles is essential to finding suitable strategies within their respective rhythms. Adapting to the new normal of "multi-play cycle parallelism" may be the key to truly profiting in this market cycle.