The Eve of the Integration of Crypto and TradFi in 2025: Prices are a Lagging Frenzy, Structures are a Leading Prophecy

Every time the market declines, the same scene always appears:

A group of people jumped out and said, “See, I told you it was a scam.”;

Then, when the market turns, the same group of people lines up again, chasing the highs and shouting about how awesome it is.

The extreme ups and downs of this emotion have numbed me after eight years in this industry.

But the fact is:

When we talk about price, we are actually discussing the future. Because price is never about the “now”, but the market's discounting of the future. If we continue to focus solely on the price, the future will slip away from us.

Moreover, there is a very real rule in a bear market: what everyone sees is a decline; what I see is stratification. Emotions are receding, the industry is filtering, and the future is being rearranged.

At the same time, I am also thinking, “Why are there more and more new projects, but fewer and fewer meaningful things?” “We all know the industry is going to change, but how exactly will it change?”

That’s why I want to write this article. Not to hype things up, and not to shout “the bull market will come back,” but to show you, in the simplest and most genuine way, what is “currently happening” in this industry from Jiayi's perspective, as well as “what will happen in the future.”

Bull markets are noisy; bear markets are the magnifying glass, microscope, and demon-exposing mirror. In the fog of emotions, I want to take you to a higher position to see where the future's path lies after the tide goes out.

1. Why do I say that the bubble is the biggest benefit in 2025

A very conspicuous fact in 2025, which most people are reluctant to acknowledge, is that we did not wait for the “shanzhai niu” but instead welcomed a round of systemic deflation ahead of time.

Many people interpret this as a bad thing, but if you extend the timeframe, you will find that these years of “no increase but first decrease” are actually the best period for the industry to develop truly mature structures.

Why? Because all of this is exactly the same as the early days of the internet, only the speed has been amplified by the leverage of crypto.

If you really want to understand today's crypto, the simplest way is to see it as an “accelerated version” of the early internet.

Many people think that the chaos, bubbles, and speculation associated with crypto are the unique “original sin” of this industry.

But if you extend the timeline, you will find that this is not a special case at all, but rather a standard feature of almost all technological revolutions—

The internet was just as crazy in the year 2000.

I previously wrote an article titled “From 'Burning Money' to Building Industry Ecosystems: Web3 is Walking the Same Path as the Internet,” which discusses this logic: under the premise of amplified leverage efficiency, the market operation methods of Web2, the Internet, and crypto are essentially converging. However, while the Internet took twenty years to complete this journey, crypto may wrap it up in less than ten years.

1.1 The journey of Internet finance has gone through the same pattern of “incomprehensible → frenzy → collapse → reconstruction”

If you think the crypto volatility is dramatic, it's just because you forgot about the first half of the internet.

In 1999, as long as the name had “.com”, it could secure funding. eToys surged 900% on its first day of trading, and investors were as crazy as during the early altcoin season of Crypto.

Then the bubble bursts.

The Nasdaq dropped from over 5000 points to 1114 points; the media headlines read “Internet Scam”; everyone said the Internet was finished.

That emotion is almost exactly the same as today's crypto:

• People who don't understand criticize it as a scam.
• Even those who understand are dazzled by the bubble.
• Finally trample together
• Then everyone uniformly doubts the future itself.

But ironically, the real internet era began the moment the bubble burst. When the tide goes out, we not only know who is swimming naked, but it also helps us filter out the real contenders most likely to swim to the other side.

In 2002, Amazon's stock price was only $0.6. Google had not yet gone public. Those companies that were left behind built up the real infrastructure, business models, and profit mechanisms during the years when they were least noticed.

Crypto now resembles most what it was like during 2002–2004: not the hottest years, but the most crucial years.

The bubble burst has cleared away the noise, and the trend, direction, infrastructure, and real players have just begun to enter the “construction period.”

This is why I say: The bubble of 2025 is a good thing. Because the truly important things will only appear after the bubble.

1.2 The Negation of Negation: The industry does not rise in a straight line, but rather spirals upward

I particularly like the concept of “negation of negation” because it is so suitable for describing the evolution of technology and industries.

“The Negation of Negation”: The development of things is never a straight upward line. It is more like “moving upward in circles”: every time you think you've returned to the starting point, you have actually already reached a higher level.

The most typical example is the three iterations of the computing architecture.

• 1950s: IBM Mainframe - Centralized Computing power is concentrated in the hands of a few institutions—governments, banks, and large enterprises. This is the first concentration: those who have the machines have the power.
• 1980s: PC Revolution - Decentralization Steve Jobs said, “Computers are the bicycles of the people.” Computing power has moved from data centers to everyone's desktop, and each person owns their own computer, which seems to be a denial of “centralized power.” Computing begins to decentralize, becoming personal and localized.
• 2010s: Cloud Computing - The centralized “negation of the negation”, standing on a higher level AWS, Alibaba Cloud, and various public clouds are centralizing computing power back to data centers.

On the surface, this seems to be a return to the “mainframe era”:

Once again, a few giants control massive computing power.

It seems that cloud computing has returned to “mainframe centralization,” but the essence is completely on a different level:

• The terminal sovereignty comes from the PC,

• Elastic computing power comes from the cloud,

- The advantages of two generations of technology are combined.

Crypto and internet finance are now experiencing exactly the same path:

• Stage One: Nobody understands, but the direction is vaguely there.
• Phase Two: Everyone is crazy, the bubble has blown up to the sky (we just went through this)
• Stage Three: Bubble Burst → Distillation of Truth → Spiral Rise (This is 2025)

Do you think the industry has “come back again”? In fact, it has not returned to the starting point, but to a higher “origin.”

Trends, tech stack, capital structure, regulatory path, all are in this round of rearrangement.

2025, the most important signal before the next round begins.

2. 2025 is the prologue, 2026 is the main text: the true trend of the industry is taking shape.

Whoever solves the fundamental integration of crypto ✖️=“” and traditional finance=“” will hold the world for the next 5 years

The year 2025 actually feels quite strange.

The K line resembles a bull market, but the sentiment feels more like a bear market;

Regulation is advancing, but expectations are declining;

There are narratives everywhere, but making money is harder than any other year.

In the future, I boldly predict. Purely Crypto Native innovations will face bottlenecks. Real breakthroughs and effective innovations will emerge in the direction of the complete integration of 'Crypto ✖️ Traditional Finance', which is a complex innovation that can simultaneously address the financial market needs of both Web2 and Web3.

2.1 Everything happening in 2025 points to the same thing: the industry is “restructuring its framework.”

Bitcoin surged to 126,000 USD, mainstream assets followed suit, but altcoins seem to be getting colder with each round. The secondary market appears to be rising, but the final account balance hasn’t increased… This is the most surreal experience of 2025.

But when you look at 2025 from a “structural” perspective, that year suddenly becomes very clear**:**** This is the first time that the United States, Europe, and Asia are all accelerating their policies in the same year:**

• The first time seeing the SEC's attitude towards ETFs and Crypto becoming friendly.
• BTC, ETH, SOL, and XRP have successively launched spot ETFs. The door has been opened.
• The stablecoin bill provides a clear framework for the entire country for the first time.
• The true implementation of MiCA in Europe has led to the emergence of dozens of licensed institutions.
• RWA has become a key pilot direction for regulation in various regions.

Crypto was first institutionalized into the global financial system. The OGs of Crypto have long hoped for it to enter mainstream finance. Do you remember the title of our article? When we talk about prices, we are actually talking about the future. The resurgence of the market requires a new narrative for fulfillment, and I personally believe it is “The complete integration of Crypto ✖️ traditional finance”.

2.2 Track Level: High Enthusiasm, Weak Prices, This is a Typical “Validation Period”

RWA, AI, stablecoins, L1 (lasted less than a month, I guess), prediction markets, perpetual contracts, on-chain asset management, DAT… each term can ignite a short-term sentiment. Sentiment aside, prices aren't rising. The short-term excitement has turned into a longer-term secondary slump.

📒RWA in 2025: The underlying infrastructure is complete, and the regulatory framework is beginning to take shape, providing “implementable” conditions for the future development of RWAFi.

Let me rave a bit about the contributions made by Plume for the tangible promotion of RWA. I'm using Plume as an example, not because I invested in it, and moreover, its recent performance in the secondary market has been quite average. However, I still believe that PLUME best represents the kind of “infrastructure moment” that has occurred in RWA this year.

First, Plume allows real-world assets to be accessible for the first time:

• Enter the on-chain revenue system in compliance,
• Ordinary users can participate (not just institutions can play),
• Implement on-chain distribution (in collaboration with traditional financial brokers)
• DeFi-ized, composable, and liquid.

Here are a few developments from the past two months: Securitize's assets have been integrated into the on-chain yield system; products from Apollo, VanEck, and BlackRock can be used in on-chain strategies; Bluprynt's KYI has brought “issuer transparency” on-chain; it has become a registered transfer agent with the SEC, connecting with the regulatory level grassroots interface of the SEC/DTCC.

These things sound boring, and users may not know how to engage with the secondary FOMO. However, essentially you just need one sentence:

As the world's first RWA Fi public chain, Plume has essentially flattened the mountain in front of RWA, paving the way for the “necessary road” for RWA to take root.

Because there are teams like Plume building the framework for RWA in 2025, more excellent assets under the RWA-Fi system will have the opportunity to truly take off in 2026.

3. AI × Crypto: There are not many truly valuable parts, but the value density is extremely high.

To put it bluntly, I'm afraid of offending people. The AI sector seems lively, but there are actually very few things of real value.

3.1 Too Many False Propositions

Taking the grand narrative LLM that causes the market FOMO as an example, I believe traditional AI's large language models have matured to the point where “Crypto simply can't compete.”

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, these models are backed by real global massive capital, with computing power, data, distributed training systems, and engineering teams reaching the level of tens of billions of dollars.

Web3 wants to “reinvent an LLM”? It's not that dreams are impossible, it's that physical laws don't allow it. And what is it that traditional AI large language models can't satisfy for you? Web3 doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. For projects of this type, it's recommended to stop burning money on technology and quickly seek real demand scenarios as a way out. After all, a typical characteristic of 2025 is that users are harder to deceive.😁

Hope for an example so that everyone can understand why most AI projects in 2025 tend to “fade away while talking about them”?

3.2 Building the foundation for hybrid innovation to meet the demands of Web2 and Web3 financial markets

First Direction: Build a “Value Incentive and Collaboration Structure” for AI

The problem that Sahara AI aims to solve revolves around building an on-chain incentive mechanism that traditional AI lacks, a globally settlable economic system, and a traceable contribution network. After all, models, data, computing power, and agents all require incentives, collaboration, and distribution.

Second direction: The economic system and execution system of Agent ⚠️****The true strongest intersection of Web3 and AI.

Still focus on the limited capabilities of Web2 agents to better address the scenario needs of automated decision-making, automated execution, automated trading, and automated settlement.

In the Web2 world, the capabilities of Agents are currently constrained by:

• Cannot pay autonomously
• Cannot manage assets
• Cannot make cross-system calls
• Tasks cannot be performed without permission.
• Cannot transparently trace behavior

In the Crypto world, these are native abilities:

• Wallet
• Smart Contract
• DeFi Strategy
• On-chain identity
• Stablecoin Settlement

This is the direction that most people are building in the Web3 AI project now: to build the underlying “execution system” for the future Agent era. Starting with the execution related to financial scenarios is also clearly the most urgent and largest essential market.

3.3 The Third Direction: The Biggest Disruption in the World in the Next Five Years - AI Payments

If I had to summarize the super trends of the next five years in one sentence, it would definitely be the revolution of payment methods driven by AI Agents. When Agents start executing all instructions from users to application terminals, such as selecting, placing orders, asset allocation, and strategy management, payments will no longer be the endpoint of user actions, but rather the “underlying capability” of the agents' operations.

In such a world, security, verifiability, global availability, extremely low cost, second-level settlement, and 24/7 programmable cash flow will be the essential prerequisites for AI Agents.

Traditional payment systems cannot achieve this. But with AI combined with stablecoins and on-chain identity systems, everything has become feasible. In the future, you will see more and more AI applications starting to enable Agents.

• Automatic Stablecoin Call
• Create Multisig
• Set up Custody and Strategy
• Manage On-chain Identity

Seamlessly integrate value transfer itself like calling an API.

Even giants like PayPal, which have been in traditional payments for decades, are starting to accelerate their layout and invest in a new generation of projects with “AI-native payment capabilities,” such as Kite AI. Many people might say: Kite hasn't really provided payment technology services to AI Agents on a large scale yet, is it just a bubble?

Let’s go back to the title once again, “When we talk about price, we are actually talking about the future.” The real question that should be asked is never “How many agents does it serve today?” but rather in the AI-driven future economic model:

Who is already building the foundational capabilities needed for the future? Who is laying the groundwork for the value network in the AI era?

It’s just like after Coinbase released the 402 protocol, dozens of “cryptographic new projects” emerged within a few days. Bad coins will prematurely overdraw the market's expectations because when everyone discusses prices, they represent the future in their minds. The efficiency of token issuance in the industry, along with the MEME and junk altcoins that promote the prosperity of Crypto, also makes it increasingly difficult for entrepreneurs. However, good projects in the market are always scarce, so in this regard, raising the entrepreneurial threshold is not necessarily a bad thing.

4. Stablecoins: The most recognized early track in 2025, but the most worthy of ALL-IN recognition.

Frankly speaking, if there is a track that should be “quiet but definitely taken seriously” in 2025, it is stablecoins.

I believe it is still in the early stages of narrative, the market fundamentally does not understand it, and the vast majority of stablecoin-related projects that have emerged over the past 25 years are neither stable nor have reached the application of coins. Personally, I think the market has not yet entered the true FOMO stage.

1. The most eye-catching stablecoin event this year: is… the Trump family issuing a coin

Yes, the Trump family has officially issued a stablecoin: World Liberty / World Finance. The less content, the bigger the matter.

The real demand scenarios for stablecoins in 2025 are quietly accelerating

① National debt reserves become mainstream → Compliance accelerates

All major stablecoin issuers are basically moving towards transparent reserves and compliance.

② On-chain payments have been “forced to upgrade”.

Please refer to the AI payment content in the previous section.

On-chain payments are the infrastructure driven by demand under the development trend of AIAgent. Please note that this market is not limited to the Web3 market. As I mentioned earlier, the market of future trends will definitely be a larger market that integrates both web2 and web3.

However, once on-chain payments mature, the ceiling for stablecoins will be directly broken open.

③ The first appearance of “structural hierarchy” in stablecoins

In the past, it seemed that stablecoins only had one logic: “Is it USDT or USDC?”

But in 2025, structural layering began to emerge:

• Centralized Stablecoins (USDT, USDC) → Policy/Institutional Scenarios
• Exchange Stablecoin (FDUSD) → Exchange Trading New Project Scenarios
• On-chain native stablecoins (DAI, USDL, etc.) → DeFi scenarios
• RWA Stablecoin → Financial Institution Scenarios, On-Chain Settlement
• Payment Stablecoin → AI Agent, Cross-border E-commerce Scenarios

3. In the realm of stablecoins, the vast majority are “trash projects eager to cash in on trends”

Whenever a new track starts to gain attention, a bunch of “pseudo-themed projects” will emerge first. To issue a stablecoin concept token, the team naively thinks they have come up with a genius scenario, and then the market starts churning out shells in bulk. It's all about a straightforward TVL subsidy activity + externally packaging a yield scenario, which is essentially token overdraft. Since users like to take advantage, let's just repeat the BTCFi playstyle and go through the old path of TVL again, wrap it up, and list it on exchanges without caring about the mess that comes later.

The short-term FOMO among users is real, and it is also true that in the medium term, there will be disappointment with the entire stablecoin sector due to these “pseudo” stablecoin projects. In the long term, the real giants will rise, and it is also true that the secondary value of stablecoins has been severely underestimated.

The core value of stablecoins has only two aspects: stability; and usefulness. If you can't even achieve “real reserves + consensus usage scenarios,” then no matter how many white papers you publish, it won't matter. I guess some people here might say that USDT's reserve ratio is not 1:1 either. Sorry, but the consensus usage scenario of USDT is something that even the Trump family cannot surpass at this moment. To put it bluntly, the essence of currency is that if everyone believes it is stable, then it becomes stable. The most critical aspect of USDT is the first-mover advantage that brought about the earliest market consensus, along with years of operational experience in “maintaining stability.” I stubbornly believe that this inherent advantage cannot be casually replicated by a project simply through a so-called story to overtake an unstable asset.

4. The explosion of stablecoins is larger, more stable, and longer-lasting than anyone imagines. The stablecoin sector will develop in a structural manner.

• Policy recognition and strategic layout of various governments
• Financial institutions entering the market
• Various payment scenarios represented by AI Agent, growth of cross-border payments, daily payments in L2, etc.
• Understanding the minimum cost for new users to deposit Crypto; CEX reserves; Demand for OTC fiat currency.
• RWA Large-Scale Liquidation
• Crypto ✖️ The complete integration medium of traditional finance

I tentatively define stablecoins as the “underlying fuel” for all future tracks.

There are still many sectors that will perform well in 2025, as long as we focus on more efficient or diversified financial investment aspects. Gambling is human nature, and sectors are eternal. It's all about the experience. I won't elaborate further.

5. When we talk about price, we are actually talking about the future.

How to use “the next 5 years” to infer current opportunities? By this point, you may have already sensed something:

If you agree with me that the most important main line for the next 5 years is the “complete integration of Crypto ✖️ traditional finance”, then during the bear market, we should shift our focus from watching secondary prices to thinking about industrial value opportunities and pricing them. Just like MATIC (later renamed Polygon), which initially experienced a significant drop in the L2 sector, or when SOL fell to 9 yuan. In the bear market, anxiety about prices and ecstasy about future value opportunities.

What is the price determining from a market perspective? It determines emotions; it sets the fluctuations of expectations; it establishes the intensity of the narrative.

But I think the real value bottom line at this moment is determined by: who is laying the foundation for the framework of the next 5 years; who is building financial infrastructure that serves both Web2 and Web3; who is embedding themselves into “the financial system of the world under future liquidity integration”, rather than just enjoying themselves on-chain.

So, if you agree with the logic I mentioned earlier,

So the next question is very straightforward:

👀 So how should we view the current price?

1. First, think clearly about a fundamental logic:

In the next 5 years, the vast majority of unicorns will no longer be “purely Crypto Native giants.”

“Pure Crypto Native Innovation” is an extreme on-chain innovation conducted without the backdrop of traditional financial markets; it is also a crop driven by the economy in which the foundational infrastructure of blockchain or Web3 has yet to be built.****. In the past decade of the “long river” of blockchain history, we have experienced countless peaks:

• Native Public Chain
• Native DeFi Lego
• Native NFT & Game Narrative
• Native DEX, derivatives, lending protocols

The previous round of giants (exchanges, public chains, leading DeFi protocols) have basically occupied the high ground of “on-chain native infrastructure.”

Most of the “purely on-chain” things are either micro-innovations, rebranded products, or ways to evade regulation.

“There are more and more new projects, but fewer and fewer truly meaningful things.”

Because true next-level innovation must meet three conditions:

1. Can connect with Web2 and serve Web3
2. Can be used by real-world users, institutions, and funds
3. Can be integrated into the real financial system, rather than just circulating internally within the crypto space

In other words:

Who can truly connect Crypto to the “flow of money in the real world” and the “real financial system”?

Who is qualified to obtain the largest valuation premium in the next round.

2. From the three main lines of the next 5 years, deducing what is the “track worth watching” now

• Main Line 1: RWA-Fi → Transform real-world assets into on-chain composable productive resources → Excellent real yield assets made accessible globally

• A large number of excellent assets with an annualized return of over 10% have not flowed into Crypto, creating a basically empty space. Most of these assets have high user thresholds, and many people who want to participate are limited to institutions, large holders, and those with connections.
• IPOs in US and Hong Kong stocks
• The true linkage of cryptocurrency stocks, rather than being confined to pure DAT-based financial investment logic.

• Main Line 2: AI Agent 2026 Fully Blossoms - A True Era-Level Turning Point Traditional AI companies have pushed the “big language model competition” to its limits from 2023 to 2025. The era of models is over, and the era of agents has begun. For Crypto, the future breakthrough lies in - making agents economical, executable, and trustworthy.

• The “large-scale landing period” of AIAgent, especially the formal surge in financial scenarios.
• Web3 will play the most critical role in the implementation of Agent: the economic system will become a red ocean. - Agent Incentive System - On-chain collaboration system - Agent Task Market - On-chain economic model (revenue, payment, custody)
• Efficient and reliable AI stablecoin payments will connect every Agent Task.

• Main Line Three: Stablecoins & New Settlement Layer (Most difficult to explain in simple terms)

Summary: Finally, let's revisit the core argument of the article:

✍️****When we talk about price, we are actually talking about the future.

If you only focus on the price, the future will definitely slip away from you.

✍️A bull market is noise; a bear market is a magnifying glass, a microscope, and a revealing mirror.

✍️The bubble of 2025 is not a bad thing; it is the “fracture period” before the real growth of the industry.

The cleaner the bubble bursts, the clearer the future.

✍️The innovation that is purely Crypto Native is nearing its ceiling.

✍️The latest narrative direction in the industry for the next 5 years: “The complete integration of Crypto ✖️ traditional finance”

✍️RWA-Fi, AI payments, and stablecoins are the three super main lines for the next 5 years. They are not trends; they are the foundation. RWA, AI, and stablecoins are all accelerating the integration of Crypto ✖️ traditional finance. RWA bridges the framework and assets, AI solves practical efficiency and implementation, and stablecoins are the underlying fuel for all innovations.

✍️Crypto is transitioning from a “single-player game” to a “plug-in for real-world financial systems.” Only those that can connect with real finance will be the long-term winners.

✍️ What truly matters in the AI era is not the model, but the execution:

Payment, settlement, custody, identity, automation strategy.

Whoever provides execution power to the Agent, whoever's AIAgent impresses users the most will seize the future.

✍️All short-term surges are expectations; all long-term rises are structures; price is a lagging indicator, while structure is a leading indicator.

✍️If you can't understand 2025, you will miss the entire text of 2026.

❤️❤️❤️ At the very end, Jiayi's little insight ❤️❤️❤️

Thank you 2025 for being a period full of confusion, perplexity, and constant self-doubt.

It is precisely this “discomfort” that forces me to detach my perspective from emotions and重新去理解 the structural changes happening behind the industry, to see clearly what is true value and what is just noise.

Thank you to the warriors who continue to choose BUILD during this cycle.

The exploration and layout you made during the most ambiguous time in the industry will be the true starting point for the future “negation of the negation” — I believe you will be the group of people that everyone will look back on in the next five years.

I also thank myself and the team that fights alongside me and is tortured by me every day.

Thank you for maintaining a curiosity about the industry, a sense of awe for trends, and an uncompromising approach to understanding over the years.

Only do things that are believed in cognitively, only support people who are recognized cognitively.

Do not cater to short-term market emotions, do not betray long-term structural logic.

The future will still experience repeated fluctuations, but understanding will never decrease.