Original author: Meltem Demirors

Original translation: Riley, ChainCacher

1. It all started here. Everything we discussed ten years ago when we started building Blockworks, the world's first Bitcoin investment company, has now come true. So why isn't Bitcoin worth $1 million yet?

2. If we exclude Bitcoin and Ethereum, this is what the crypto market has been like over the past five years: the coins may have changed, but the overall numbers haven’t. This is a big problem — there is no growth.

3. The market in 2024 is mainly supported by two continuous buyers - MicroStrategy and BlackRock, but these buyers are not evangelists, but mercenaries. Buyers of MSTR (MicroStrategy) are arbitrage convertible bonds, and buyers of IBIT (iShares Bitcoin ETF) are arbitrage basis. These two hold 6% of the Bitcoin supply. This is our black swan event.

4. Despite the promise of innovation and endless public blockchain hype on Twitter, Bitcoin’s market dominance is rising, not falling.

There is only one Bitcoin industry, one Bitcoin story, and one Bitcoin market.

5. Let’s look at Bitcoin. We’ve experienced many amazing rallies driven by narratives and money flows. But what kind of narrative or money flow can drive us past the high of “the US government holds Bitcoin as a strategic reserve”?

6. Although decentralized finance (DeFi) shows amazing potential, traditional finance (TradFi) is gaining an advantage in terms of revenue. Stablecoins and ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) are expected to bring $9.1 billion in revenue to institutions in fiscal year 2025. In contrast, DeFi protocols are expected to generate $9 billion in revenue in the same period, but this figure depends largely on the trading activity of Meme coins.

7. Institutional investors are pouring in! Yes, they see an opportunity to make money, and they want a piece of the action. Nothing personal — it’s just business. For Trump, he came to the DAS (Digital Asset Summit) because he could make a fortune. Nothing personal — it’s just business.

They are mercenaries, not preachers.

8. Those institutional innovators who tweet about crypto adoption and those frontline warriors who tweet about meme coins have more in common than you think.

We need to stop idolizing and start thinking.

Stop the stupidity. (This includes myself by the way)

9. Do you know what is the most profound thing in cryptocurrency?

Proof of Work.

Bitcoin showed the world how to build the energy-to-computing value chain and created $60 billion in public equity value.

10. I have said this many times: Bitcoin has accelerated the development of artificial intelligence by at least a decade. Bitcoin has created a new data center business model, including behind-the-meter metered hosting, flexible load, demand response, and hedging with underlying assets. This is profoundly transformative.

11. I have never expressed this in public, but now is the time to say it: Proof of Stake is a mistake. Ethereum could have developed into a trillion-dollar protocol with a strong energy-to-computing ecosystem. However, the reality is that the MEV (maximum extractable value) mechanism has squeezed billions of dollars of value from users and applications.

12. Ethereum once led Nvidia's surge, but now it can't drive the market higher.

13. We need to get back to basics. Many markets have reached a moment of reckoning, and crypto is no exception. You can’t defy the laws of physics. But where do we go from here?

14. Our salvation is: energy, computing, cryptocurrency.

It's that simple.

The rest of the story is unfolding – and that’s our job.

15. Ten years ago, I believed in Bitcoin and invested all my time and energy in it. A bunch of crazy people on the Internet made the global reserve cryptocurrency a reality through memes. Imagine what else we can do.

It is important to have faith.