The appeal of trading cryptocurrencies continues to decline, and the crypto market is facing an unprecedented life-and-death crisis.

Once upon a time, trading cryptocurrencies was the dream of young people to get rich quickly. But by the end of 2025, this situation is changing rapidly.

At a time when the Federal Reserve announced interest rate cuts, the US stock market hit record highs, and gold prices increased by over 50%, the cryptocurrency market found itself in an unprecedented awkward position—people are no longer rushing into crypto trading markets like crazy. Instead, more and more people are turning to traditional asset allocations such as stocks, Hong Kong stocks, and A-shares.

The most intuitive feeling is: the crypto market is losing its once greatest attraction—the money-making effect. And this market crisis is completely different from previous ones. It is no longer just a technical issue or regulatory risk, but a systemic ecological dilemma—industry innovation has stagnated, sector bubbles are exploding one after another, large capital controls the pricing power of mainstream coins, and ordinary investors’ strategies have failed. The market has become a game of “insiders making huge profits.”

External enemies, internal risks: Why is the crypto market losing favor?

The crisis facing the crypto market comes from two directions.

Gold, US stocks, and tech stocks are stealing market attention

Look at this set of data and it becomes clear:

BTC’s annual performance is far behind gold. As of October 2024, BTC’s annual increase was about 17%, while gold’s increase during the same period exceeded 50%. In contrast, the Dow Jones Industrial Average also hit new highs, surpassing 48,000 points, performing much better than BTC. More notably, BTC fell from its previous high of $125,000 to $111,000 at that time, and by January 2026, BTC had dropped to $89.96K, with an annual decline of -12.19%.

Bitcoin, once hailed as a “hedge asset,” now reveals its true nature of high volatility and high risk. When regional crises erupt globally and macroeconomic variables change, BTC does not become a safe haven but is instead treated as a risk asset within the US stock market, falling along with it.

The liquidity dilemma caused by scale disparity is even more deadly.

The US stock market’s total market value is nearly $70 trillion, while the overall size of the crypto market remains at the $3-4 trillion level. After nearly 17 years of development, the cryptocurrency market size is still less than 15% of the US stock market, and its share in the global economy is minimal.

What does this mean? It means that a year’s revenue of a company like NVIDIA has already surpassed the entire market capitalization of Ethereum accumulated over 10 years. More intuitively, in the first half of 2025, the trading volume of individual investors on NASDAQ reached $6.6 trillion, which is twice the liquidity of the entire crypto market.

In such a scale comparison, the crypto market appears as an island—funds do not flow in, and activity drops sharply.

Narrative stagnation, lack of innovation

Another blow comes from the narrative level.

Compared to the many breakthrough models launched this year in AI, such as Claude Code, GPT-5, Deepseek V3.1, Qwen3 MAX, the “Crypto x AI” projects are still stuck on paper or tokens, far less active than in previous years. The market’s spotlight is firmly occupied by AI companies, while the crypto circle falls into a stagnant quagmire.

Liquidity exhaustion, market internal decline

Problems within the crypto market are even more worrying.

“October 11 Big Crash” shattered the last bit of confidence

On October 11, 2024, the crypto market experienced a major industry-wide shock. According to multiple sources, the liquidation scale reached $30-40 billion, equivalent to about 1% of the total market size overnight. Coinglass alone recorded a tragedy of over 1.6 million liquidations.

Countless investors chose to leave forever that day, and the already strained liquidity of the crypto market worsened. Short-term new capital inflows are almost impossible, and the market has fallen into a self-reinforcing recession vortex.

Fragmented hotspots, restless market sentiment

Past turning points in the market often brought weeks of rally, but now they have become arenas for “weekly hot topics.”

A few days ago, everyone was chasing a certain Meme coin, and then another topic took the headlines; “Two Saint’s Heart” was just hyped for a few days, and was immediately pushed out of sight by new hot topics. Market attention is torn into shreds, and no one can see the full picture of the market, leading to a collapse in investment logic.

In such an environment, many people choose to save money and manage finances, abandoning crypto trading.

Large capital manipulation, “insider profits” become the norm

A series of actions after Trump took office further intensified this chaos. From tariffs and trade wars, delayed high-tariff policies, to the fluctuating US-China relations, and recent summit meetings—Trump always seems to first release “tough words” to shake the market, then stage plot twists to pull the market back from the abyss.

The crypto market has been manipulated by Trump’s team and their immense influence. Simply put: if you’re not in the “insider” circle, you become a “cash machine” for others to cut profits.

The trap of financialization: innovation experiments turn into “savings jars”

The most ironic change occurs within the crypto projects themselves.

Cryptocurrencies once promised to be a testing ground for technology and innovation. Now? They are turning into a huge “savings jar.”

More and more projects are operating according to “financial planning” models, backed by well-known investment institutions or ecological support, becoming market favorites. The nearly 10-fold increase in Circle’s listing, the wave of stablecoin issuance, the hefty airdrops of Plasma(XPL)—all tell the market: the only way out is to use liquidity funds to generate financial returns.

The most amusing thing is that the MegaETH project, a top-tier project in the Ethereum ecosystem, raised $1 billion (actual cap was $50 million), oversubscribed by 20 times. Even the initial funding rounds of some top projects are snapped up by “whale accounts.”

The crypto market has become a super track for financial products, not a cradle for technological innovation.

Conclusion: Cherish those still trading crypto; they may be the seeds of the next bull market

Looking back from January 2026 at this crisis, we see an era where the crypto market is rapidly shrinking. Liquidity exhaustion, narrative stagnation, insider manipulation—these three mountains weigh heavily on everyone still wanting to trade.

But if we must find hope, it is: cherish the group still remaining in the market. They have experienced countless crashes, liquidations, hot topic rotations, yet still choose to stay. As cryptocurrency penetration increases, they are the few who have endured multiple tests and still hold liquidity chips.

When the next bull market arrives, the true drivers should be those projects with genuine value, built over years of entrepreneurship—hope you are still here.

And those who persist in trading in the crypto market may be accumulating strength for the next prosperity.