Crypto 2029: The end of the four-year cycle of encryption

It's just a little bit of a joke

This post is part of our special coverage Syria Protests 2011

You're standing on the eve of the biggest change in the history of encrypted money, and if you want to keep working on the industry, you have to keep an eye on what's going on。

There are three core issues for the whole industry:

• What determines the value of the token
• How can frontier technologies land in block chain ecology
• What happens when encrypted money ceases to be an independent asset and becomes the base infrastructure of traditional finance

I can examine these three issues from the theoretical level alone, and there are countless people doing it every day, but empty theories can never be conclusive. So I intend to do this in a different way: to sort out the real changes that will occur in the industry from the present to the year 2029, and to mark the specific subject, data and time nodes in the text, with enough evidence, so that after three years you can look back and see if my judgment is accurate. This is only one of the many possibilities for the future, and part of the inference is bound to go wrong. But the vague vision of the future cannot be perjured, nor can it be perjured. I would rather give a clear but potentially erroneous judgement than say some vague and never-turning words。

The perspective of this projection is derived from my work scene: I have long-term deep-stamped the cross-cutting areas of start-ups, industry regulation and venture capital investment, which communicate with alternative asset managers, fund providers, each week. This does not mean that my judgement must be correct, but I have fully considered the various constraints in reality。

Mid-2026: Quality markers are no longer all kinds of tokens

By mid-2026, before the market had yet to define the standard for the value of tokens, the market for the renewal of contracts by non-publicly issued enterprises had run through product market convergence。

This change began on the Hyperliquid platform. SpaceX, on-line on the platform, issued a non-public contract for sustainability, which suffered early from the malicious liquidation manipulation of Ventuals and later became the price reference point of the highest interest in the first and second markets. By July, major banks and hedge funds will have used the contract to price their own private assets, and Robinhood and other trading software for ordinary users, as well as to pre-judge the opening prices of businesses after they are listed. Every few weeks before a large enterprise is on the market, the price of the permanent contract will be fine-tuned to the final offer price and the accuracy of the seven-digit service fee charged and the price-priced investment acceptance team will lose face. OpenAI's permanent contract with Anthropic is at a new level. Over a period of time, this home-grown encrypted exchange became the most reliable source of real-time valuation for unlisted businesses worldwide。

AT THE SAME TIME, A FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION ARISES IN THE MINDS OF ORDINARY TRADERS: HOW CAN THE REST OF THE CURRENCIES IN THE CHAIN CONTINUE TO BE TRADED? FOR 18 MONTHS, THE YAMAYA CURRENCY MARKET HAS BEEN RUNNING CONTINUOUSLY, AND THE PROJECT'S FOUNDING TEAM AND INVESTMENT AGENCIES HAVE BEEN SELLING THEIR TRADES IN LARGE AMOUNTS AND TIME-TIME ALGORITHMS; THE ONLY CURRENCY THAT HAS BUILT A FULL VALUE CAPTURE RING HAS RISEN ALL THE MARKET TARGETS. MORE THAN A DOZEN MECHANISMS FOR CAPTURING THE VALUE OF TOKENS HAVE BEEN INTRODUCED IN INDUSTRY, BUT THE VAST MAJORITY OF THEM HAVE FAILED TO FORM A POSITIVE CYCLE, ROOTED IN THE FACT THAT THE PROJECTS TO WHICH THEY ARE ATTACHED HAVE NO ASSET VALUE PER SE. INSTEAD, THE INDUSTRY SOLVES THE TECHNICAL PROBLEMS OF CAPTURING THE VALUE OF TOKENS BEFORE LOOKING FOR PHYSICAL ASSETS WORTH CARRYING THE VALUE。

The current state of affairs in this reverse industry is the bottom push behind the boom of undisclosed and lasting contracts. The real demand of the market is never for a lasting contract product per se, but for a high-quality asset; and in 2026, the only high-quality asset in the chain that can be traded is a composite certificate of profits from an entity that has no connection to the encryption industry。

END 2026: AI TRACK DOES NOT NEED ENCRYPTED CURRENCY

Anthropic and OpenAI made technological breakthroughs, competed on the base model tracks, and the market started to price General Artificial Intelligence (AI) earlier. The ensuing ripple effect is that all non-head-based large-model enterprises continue to outflow the related operating funds. Capital has begun to treat Universal AI as a core asset held on an enterprise ' s balance sheet rather than as a standardized tool for industry-wide penetration。

In this environment, the "AI+encrypted" track is silently falling. It is not that this logic is perjured, but that the industry is no longer in a position to argue. x402 Payment agreements are formally online without any payer user; the industry ' s bright chain-based intelligent economy has never been able to form a scalable landing, all of the existing smarts are settled in United States dollars through API, and the traditional software industry has a consistent pattern. There is a consensus among windward operators that AI industry does not itself need to be supported by encrypted money and that investors are no longer imposing this track。

THE ONLY "AI+ENCRYPTED" PRODUCT THAT REALLY RUNS THROUGH THE MARKET IS THE FORECAST MARKET. THE FORECASTED SCALE OF TRANSACTIONS AROUND LARGE UNDERLYING MODELS IS GROWING RAPIDLY, AND IT BECOMES THE MOST ACCURATE FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT TO BE USED TO WAGER CORE VARIABLES THAT CAN DRIVE LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY -- WHICH FIRMS WILL HAVE THE BEST PERFORMANCE MODELS IN THE NEXT MONTH。

ANOTHER LOW-PROFILE CHANGE IS TAKING PLACE: WHEN THE CLARITY ACT WAS PASSED IN THE SENATE IN MID-2026, THE VAST MAJORITY OF TRADERS CONSIDERED IT IRRELEVANT AND THE MARKET DID NOT RISE; HOWEVER, BY THE END OF THE YEAR, ASSET-BASED MONETIZATION PROJECTS HAD ACCELERATED. LARGE ASSET MANAGEMENT UNITS HAVE MOVED FROM THE PILOT PHASE TO FULL OPERATIONS, WITH NO PUBLICITY AT ALL - THE CORE TASK OF THE COMPLIANCE DEPARTMENT IS TO AVOID PROJECT SPRAWL. THE MONETIZATION OF TOKENS IS CONCENTRATED IN THE MODEST INTERMEDIATE CATEGORIES OF BALANCE SHEETS SUCH AS MONEY MARKET FUNDS, PRIVATE CREDIT, ETC. THESE ASSETS DON'T HAVE KOL SINGING ON SOCIAL PLATFORMS, AND THEY DON'T HAVE K-LINES TO FIRE。

AT THE END OF 2026, THE ENCRYPTION INDUSTRY WAS DIVIDED INTO TWO INDEPENDENT ECONOMIES THAT WERE VIRTUALLY NON-TRAFFIC: ONE LOUD, PROFITING FROM THE BET ON THE AI TRACK, AND THE OTHER QUIET, WHICH WAS GRADUALLY ABSORBED BY THE TRADITIONAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM THROUGH A COMPLIANCE DOCUMENT. THE VAST MAJORITY OF PRACTITIONERS FOCUS ON THE PREVIOUS MARKET。

Early 2027: Clear development path for the Grand Public Chain Foundations

A common public chain can no longer be used to influence origin and ambiguity。

Over the years, major mainstream foundations have been speaking out about two completely fragmented sets of narratives: a public vision of large-scale landings for ordinary users, and a combination of private and institutional negotiations, which have never resulted in a convergence of narratives. By the beginning of 2027, the contradiction between the two lines of development had surfaced。

There is a high concentration of open-door tracks, the only retail products with real user needs, and the total volume of transactions is concentrated on a few trading platforms; and the agency ' s business is the only track that can bring about stable paying customers at this time. Major foundations have successively finalized core development directions and have opted for a high degree of harmonization: a corporate sales team, a compliance package, a web-based universal compliance development toolkit, which will be used to pass currencyized asset and voucher licences, expand Wall Street cooperation channels and improve privacy transactions。

Media and encrypted social platforms interpret each strategic shift as a trade-off: priority services, the abandonment of ordinary caravans, the choice of serious financial customers and the abandonment of speculative casino attributes。

However, this interpretation is not shared by the insider of the Foundation, but rather by the team ' s increased branding of encryption to ordinary users, with a change in the set logic. Qualified investors have over the years determined that the threshold has continued to be relaxed and that the number of qualified people has expanded. The infrastructure team is well aware of the fact that the Foundation's facilities at the bottom of the institution, which will soon be open to ordinary users who are not now classified as “qualified investors”, will not be publicly announced. Compliance teams talk about bank customers to the outside world only because banks are current payers。

And the low-key institutional market that emerged at the end of 2026 ushered in an unprecedented increase: a general compliance investor in the future. The two previously fragmented economies have finally built bridges through the "qualification of qualified investors"。

Mid-to-end 2027: triple development of smallpox Board

The new generation of creative firms has rekindled the private market: artificially intelligent bio-integration, physically artificial intelligence, human robotics, all oversubscribed, and businesses ' valuations have skyrocketed, but only a few years away from being listed. The composite contracts of these small-scale enterprises were not kept up to date in a few weeks. The market pattern of 2026 has re-emerged and the volume of money is larger: the world ' s most popular high-quality assets are all concentrated in the first-level private market, and the only counterpart that users can trade on the chain is a composite and lasting contract that settles the fund rate every eight hours。

However, each of the three types of markets has hit the development ceiling, constraining industry growth:

Smallpox for a lasting contract issued in private BoardReal private capital has grown steadily in line with traditional private sources, with a steady expansion of the quarterly scale, with no sense of existence on encrypted social platforms that only watch the surge. The core limitation is that private securities are not publicly available to investors, and that the best mode of flow in the encryption industry - the sun that attracts the diaspora - cannot be applied to such assets at the legal level. At the same time, there is a structural short cut-off for the renewal of contracts: events that need to be brought on the market as price-driven only to cover mature enterprises in the later stages; and mid-term start-ups, such as bio-intellectual intelligence, human-shaped robots, which are distant channels of exit, are unable to launch matching composite contracts. For the vast majority of the first-level market markers, the regulated and protected real holding channels are not the preferred option, but the only viable trading tool for compliance, except that public publicity is not permitted by law。

Stabilizing Currency ceiling: The total volume of stable currency flows has continued to rise steadily and has never stopped expanding, but major institutions have quietly scaled back their expansion plans. The mid-term elections changed the configuration of the National Assembly Committee, and the list of candidates for the 2028 presidential election was gradually established, with several popular candidates openly opposing the issuance of private United States dollar coins. While the provisions of the Act relating to landings in 2025 and 2026 have not been repealed, the implementation of the Act is vested in the new Government. The finance managers of the major banks must include risk scenarios for the next ten-year closure plan, where regulatory attitudes become more stringent. The industry will not shut down the Stable Currency Project, but will simply stretch the land cycle and scale down the pilot, and everyone is watching the results of the November 2028 general elections. The speed at which the dollar flows along the chain completely binds the uncertainty at the policy level, which is high in mid-2027。

Asset currency ceilingThis conservatism spread throughout the institution's encrypted market. The private credit and fund share products of the monetization are continuously on line and are fully compliant, but no one wants to be a negative case in the next year ' s Senate hearings because agencies deliberately control the project volume。

The commonality of the three tracks is clear: the product itself is logical and market demand is well proven, but external policies outside the industry still limit the pace of development. In 2027, apart from the fact that the encrypted currency itself has skyrocketed and collapsed, the industry has grown steadily, but the encryption industry has been used for 10 years, and only the straight-line spiral has succeeded。

2028: compliance access threshold is no longer scarce

(There has since been a decrease in the accuracy of projections: previous projections have been refined to a quarterly level, with only year-by-year variations after 2028, resulting in an increase in the range of pre-judgment errors. This paper identifies a central assumption: the Democratic Party won the November 2028 election. If the election results are reversed, the timing of the events in the sector will vary, but the overall development framework will not change

The speculative Casino attributes of the encrypted market have gradually faded, and virtually no one has been able to precisely define the point of departure. Market-based mechanisms for harvesting were too efficient, with each round of additional liquidity less than the previous round in 2026 to 2027, and funds were withdrawn more quickly by a few head players. There has been no landmark collapse in the market, and currency speculation continues intermittently, with one-day booms, but after a certain point in the first half of 2028, speculative transactions have ceased to be the core focus of the industry, with trade volumes only being statistically present and no longer dominated by the industry ' s ecological culture. Some traders have turned to the forecast market for the heat of fire; some of the speculative blocks that have remained on a shrinking scale; and a large number of traders have spent the past year completing what no one expected in 2026 - certification of qualified investors。

The panic at the policy level is gradually digested with market pricing throughout the year. The most popular candidates from both political parties accept donations from the industry, with different formulations and a unified core position: the encryption industry needs to be regulated, not completely banned. Those who used the previous lax regulation as a harvesting window were previously investigated. The industry has come to realize that regulatory clean-up seems to be a good signal: Governments distinguish between speculative harvesting operations and financial infrastructure, so that infrastructure can obtain a secure capital input. The finance managers of the major banks that contracted the pilot in 2027 quietly resumed the expansion plan before the general elections; by the time the results of the elections were on the ground, the vast majority of policy risk premiums had been absorbed。

The most profound lesson of the industry in 2028 came from the trading market that everyone had been looking at: a large amount of space on the front trading platform at the beginning of the year, a large amount of space enough to pry the board, a concentration of the long-term contracts issued in closed doors, and a full-blown liquidation risk that the market had been worried about since the Ventuals manipulation. Within hours, billions of people were cleared, the system was automatically forced to reduce, losses were shared by the market, and the profit-making side lost significantly. After all, it is not possible to determine whether the volatility is a result of malicious manipulation or a mere market accident, and this ambiguity is itself a central conclusion: a market without a bottom spot anchor does not have a fair benchmark price, and even "market manipulation" cannot be defined, let alone documented. There are spot price constraints on the renewal contracts of listed companies, but there are no bottom anchors for the non-public issuance of the renewal contracts. True private equity shares do exist in compliance channels, but large-scale open flows are not allowed, broad pricing is not allowed, and each lasting contract price is only an autonomous estimate of the platform and there is considerable room for human intervention. This chain of liquidation is not the market for synthetic contracts per se failed, but rather the absence of real assets at the bottom and the inevitable consequence of the operation of the market mechanism。

Over the past decade, the ban on public access to private securities has been packaged as an investor protection policy. But the current market storm proves that this rule simply keeps ordinary investors out of the legal channels of dealing, leaving them in the market for highly leveraged, price-free synthetic contracts. The true dividing line was never between a synthetic asset and a real asset, but whether the right to trade was legally enforceable。

After the storm, new regulations were put in place, not so much as reforms: regulatory guidelines were issued to allow second-tier market transfers of private securities to eligible investors who had completed their qualification tests, and publicity was given to second-tier private securities transfers (restricted to second-hand shares and excluding first-round financing for enterprises), and the group of investors eligible for qualifications had been expanding over the years. The logic behind this is clear: the market for synthetic contracts requires a bottom-up price anchor, and the least costly option is to liberalize the open flow of real private capital. A 90-year-old publicity restriction has significantly eased the market for derivatives only。

The first week of the new landing is much more hotter than in memes, with the only difference being that the subject matter of the transaction is the real business equity. For the first time in the history of this asset, private second-hand shares have been registered, blocked and disseminated, and community propaganda has been legalized. Social platforms are polarized: half of the practitioners view them as a completely new financial infrastructure, while the other half fear that the diaspora will become the exit route for windfall agencies. The latter is intuitive, but judgement lags behind: This concern is true when assets are only physically unsupported air coins; however, today the subject of the transaction is the market for the renewal of contracts over the past two years, which has proven the market-wide interest in the profits of entities。

The first inflow of funds into a permanent contract has already proven the heat of a mature enterprise, and further flows to medium-term start-ups that cannot be covered by a lasting contract, due to the fact that real holdings have no capital rates and no time constraints on listing. The durability of the contract did not disappear and was transformed into a complementary block of late-stage business transactions, which no longer occupied all core market flows。

By December, the industry had ushered in a new round of cattle markets, underpinned by the oldest standards of finance, but had now finally gained access to legal channels of circulation。

2029: Markets become the only central focus of the industry

In the first year of the complete landing of this round ' s cattle market, the movement is very different from the past, which is the core value. All the targets of the steady rise in behaviour are the business of the landed entities and the creative enterprises that actually create social values. The new basic asset class traded by ordinary users is private equity: biotech companies that have completed multiple-wheel clinical trials, human robotic manufacturers, all of whom have seen the scenery, and artificial intelligence laboratories, which were traded in 2026 with a lasting contract, are now directly owned by users。

Qualified investors' thresholds have been relaxed over a 10-year ladder to produce a whole new group of bulkers, with only the assets in which institutions were able to participate five years ago, and are now tradable by ordinary compliance investors, with the vast majority of people not even classifying such transactions as “encrypted money investments”。

The central issues raised at the beginning of the article are completely polarized: the successful transition to a new market, a bottom-up infrastructure chain, captures real business flows, and platform coins are equivalent to cash flow receipts. All the remaining tokens will face extremely realistic market rules: the absence of a legally enforceable right to gain, the absence of a full value to capture closed-ring tokens will not continue to fall for 18 months, as in 2026, but will be the direct and outright loss of liquidity. In 2026, the industry-wide debate over mechanisms to capture the value of tokens did not yield a single package; the circulation of private entities ' assets directly rendered the debate meaningless。

The stable currency continues the pattern of development over the life cycle: steady and resilient growth is maintained, with no explosive rise. By the end of 2029, total circulation had roughly doubled from mid-2027, with a steady annual growth rate of about 20 per cent. The growth cap is not insufficient market demand, but rather a consensual policy choice between the two parties: the modest development of private dollar coins meets practical needs while avoiding competition with the sovereign monetary system. The policy certainty of a chain-based United States dollar-trenchment policy is stable and sustainable in 2029。

Speculative plates continue to exist, shrunk to fixed subdivisions, with occasional short-term improvisation, but the overall impact is only equal to a subdivision of the entertainment industry. Speculative traders are diverted to forecast markets, completely new private secondary markets, and there is an unpredicted alternative to 2026: qualified investors。

The third central question that has been raised at the beginning of this paper is how to transform encrypted money into a traditional financial infrastructure, which is ultimately answered in a silent way: the question is completely out of discussion. The liquidation function depends on customizing the payment path, the public chain or a combination of the two, the bottom structure details being clear only to the operating team, and ordinary participants neither know nor care, as if ordinary people would not look into the clearing institutions behind the issuer. The industrial integration, which began gradually at the end of 2026, culminated in the “total invisibility” of the land. The ultimate victory of the financial infrastructure is to become flat and unheeded. What's left in the public view is that the encryption industry, after a cycle of speculation, is really building a core product -- the asset trading market。

So all three of these core issues are answered by the logic of this exercise:

• What determines the value of the token? The immutable core: the market now eliminates all currencies that do not meet the conditions for legally enforceable claims for proceeds against real assets。
• How does front-line technology fall into regional chains? Level-II private collection markets complete their landings: SKOs do not themselves need a token, they need only a channel of circulation; when they have access to legal and public publicity, the front-line firms naturally complete their trades。
• What happens when encrypted money becomes a traditional financial infrastructure? There will be no landmark events, the bottom function will be completely abstract, and the public will no longer discuss the proposition alone。

Part of the reasoning is necessarily biased, as explained at the beginning. The whole logic of the evolution has a core test: if, by the end of 2028, ordinary investors are still not involved in legal channels for the collection of private assets, and all funds are still dependent on the flow of long-term offshore synthetic contracts and sealed products, then the central argument that the industry bottlenecks are in law rather than technology is not valid, and the whole exercise needs to be significantly downgraded。

Just keep an eye on this core variable and check the rest by 2029. I would rather give a clear and perjury prejudicing than a vague one that never goes wrong。