Why is the crypto market never short of "new opportunities"? Let's talk about donkeys, grinding stones, and those dream makers.

Recently, while pondering the meme craze, I suddenly realized a truth: Traffic is indeed powerful, but don't expect it to be very smart.

Following this line of thought, the more I think about it, the more interesting it becomes. In the end, I even thought of that old chestnut of a question – does the “end of history” still hold in the crypto space?

I remember when Fukuyama proposed the “end of history” thesis, many people believed it without doubt. With each round of bull and bear markets, there are always a group of people who leave quietly, muttering: too many coins have been issued, this industry has no opportunities left.

Have you heard these arguments?

“There are no real cryptocurrencies after BTC.” “There will be no new smart contract public chains after ETH.” “The story of meme coins after XX is over.”

All wrong.

BTC is not the end point, it is the starting point. This is the truth.

What is truly scarce?

Many people struggle to understand a contradiction: If BTC is unique, why do new opportunities keep emerging in the crypto market? How can these two propositions possibly coexist?

Think carefully about this question; you need to twist your brain a few times.

The ICO frenzy in 2017 was indeed due to the scarcity of tokens and the abundance of hot money. It's an imbalance of supply and demand, which is easy to understand.

But what about now?

The ERC-20 standard has become widespread, the inscription gameplay has emerged, and the launch platform has made issuing tokens barrier-free… Thousands of new coins can emerge in a single day. Logically speaking, the market should have saturated to the point of being sick of it, right?

But the reality is that just when everyone thinks “there's no more room for innovation,” there are always smart people who find new paths, creating new breakthroughs and new wealth stories.

Why?

Because the market never lacks coins, what it lacks is the opportunity to make money.

What is scarce is not the token itself, but the feeling of “this time I can seize it, this time I can turn my life around.”

Hot money has never chased coins; it chases scarcity— the scarcity of becoming rich. This kind of scarcity is almost eternal, so the pursuit is endless.

The Game of the Donkey and the Millstone

This market is like a classic game.

Retail hot money is like a blindfolded donkey turning in circles, always having hay dangling in front of it that it can't reach. It keeps running in circles, thinking that in the next round it will be able to eat.

But you can never say: “This stone mill is the last one, and the history of stone mills ends here.”

Why?

Because as long as the donkey is still running, there will be people designing new stone mills to lead the donkey over.

The stone mill was born because of the donkey, not the donkey because of the stone mill.

The reason why the market makers exist is that there are retail investors to exploit; it is not that market makers create retail investors. If the logic is reversed, the essence becomes unclear.

Why are new games emerging one after another?

Every new game round is packaged as “this time it's different”.