Anyone else feeling like the old BTC -> ETH -> Large Caps -> Small Caps money flow is totally messed up?
We keep holding out hope for a general run, but honestly, I think the whole market vibe has shifted.
Here's what I think:
The big players are just too stable now. BTC and ETH have become institutional assets, and they don’t swing enough to give exchanges the fees they crave.
Exchanges are in it for the thrill: They gotta pump certain narratives or sectors (like AI, Meme coins, or Real World Assets) one at a time to keep the volume and revenue flowing.
So what’s the deal? If you’re not jumping on the latest "hot topic," your portfolio is pretty much stagnant.
The market is crowded. Exchanges can't just sit back and wait for growth anymore; they need to create some excitement in niche sectors to keep us trading.
Do you think we’ll ever get back to a rising tide that lifts all boats, or is this whole "PvP sector rotation" thing just how it is now?
Not only exchanges but even whale traders pump some coins in order to trap newbie traders who get excited to see low marketcap coins getting pumped and put most of their money in such coins. Once the newbie traders put much money in those coins the whale investors and even sometimes exchanges dump the coins that they bought at low value and take the profit. It's a type of rug pull but in a legal way.
Not only traders, but well-known personalities, like Trump and recently, and I don't know if you are aware, you can read it here,
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/former-bitcoin-mayor-eric-adams-052728722.html
So it is still cluster f**k and we don't know what will happen on a project that we invest, and overnight it could literally go to 0. And if I remember in the bull run of 2017, it seems what the OP describe as "flavor of the month" attack did happened. And if my memory serves me right, that time there will be certain coins that will be selected to be pump hard and everyone making money like in a wild wild west scenario. I think what the OP describes here could have been happening in the past already but we just didn't look at it very closely as everyone is enjoying the hype of 2017.
That happened to me in past when I heavily traded meme coins of Solana, I've faced multiple multiple losses and saw many coins going down in value. Some of the coins were sitting at market cap of $5M and in a day they went to marketcap of just $5k.
Exchanges make more money with the listing process and also they can manipulate the prices with those low cap projects and we will never know what is happening, exchanges also need to make money because it is a business to them so another reason why we need to avoid the small cap projects.
And bitcoin doesn't generate enough volume? I guess still bitcoin is the mostly trades crypto on majority of the exchanges.
It's saturated or the people in the crypto sphere are already knowledgeable when it comes to crypto and probably it's getting to be more the traditional sector of trading rather than the wild west that we've seen in the past. Could be pvp to sectors rotation and if that's the case individuals need to pay a close attention on what could be more profitable as I see it will be more on trend rather than the actual rotation that has been handed in the past.
I have seen this pattern on some of the new coins like COAI and RIVER. They seems to be pumping out of nowhere and their project itself is not really good.
The general run is dead, and the sector rotation is created to trigger hopium on people to buy small caps altcoin thinking it will go up like that someday.
What I see right now is: A random project pump so high out of nowhere only for it to go down few days later and nobody saw it coming. So, I agree with you.
It will become the new normal until new bullish cycle come again.
somehow you have a valid point because it is looking like BTC and ETH are becoming too stable lately, they are beginning to feel like a traditional asset in the ecosystem and it clearly makes the old general run pattern feel broken. These days Exchanges just try to keep trading volume alive by pushing hypes into one direction at a time, and the normal big wave in the market does not spread across every sector anymore. I guess the only way to stay alive in the market as of now! is to just chase narratives.
I am not ready to agree about saturation of crypto market. Because, we have went from 16k to 125k for bitcoin on the last bottom to last all time high in last ~18 months and I am sure that exchanges must have capitalized from that and you cannot expect wild volatility on daily basis to generate revenue for exchanges.
Exchanges are having derivative markets along with copy trading, staking, lending, bot trading and etc to generate revenue. Bitcoin is just the backbone and the crypto space is evolving around it and exchanges are innovating new business for their survival. Probably, there have been some dip due to recent stagnant situation of bitcoin but that is part of every business and casinos must have used to such scenarios for many times and gambling must be one of the highly benefited field in crypto space so exchanges as well like a by-product.
Yes you are talking about several aspects of the industry and yes the exchanges sit right in middle to capitalize on everything. My post was specifically about trading trends and markets behavior.
Bitcoin moved from somewhere below $20K to $125K and now back to $90K. Ethereum went from around $1,000 to $4,950, and you call it stable? How much of a pump do you guys want in order for it to be considered a general run? $20K to $1M in 365 days?
The market is not yet saturated, and pump-and-dump coins/tokens have been there since I remember. The narrative is the same; it's only the naming that changes.