Thoát khỏi Bitcoin: Logic nền tảng của thế giới tiền mã hóa đã được viết lại

Original author: nikshep

Original translation: Luffy, Foresight News

AI has taken over Bitcoin's risk-speculative properties, while USD stablecoins have replaced Bitcoin as the universal medium of exchange in the crypto market. The anchor that once silently held together the fragmented crypto world is no longer Bitcoin. This is the most favorable structural change the industry has seen in years, yet very few understand the logic behind it.

This week, Bitcoin fell below $70,000, a sharp decline of about 45% from its October 2024 high, causing widespread lament in the market. Spot ETFs have experienced historic large-scale capital outflows, marking the longest redemption cycle since the product's launch. The so-called 'digital gold' Bitcoin is underperforming, while physical gold continues to surge.

But the market's regret is misplaced.

Just as Bitcoin was steadily declining, a lesser-known on-chain exchange surpassed Coinbase in trading volume last year. A prediction market platform saw its valuation reach $20 billion, with annualized fee income hitting $365 million. A privacy coin, once viewed bearishly by the market, surged 70% in a single week, charting its own independent path while Bitcoin traded sideways. Another long-underestimated underlying network enabled cross-chain private transfers, allowing users to move assets without even purchasing its native token.

The crypto industry has not sunk with Bitcoin. Crypto no longer needs Bitcoin.

This statement sounds bearish at first glance, but the reality is the exact opposite. Crypto is maturing, moving away from the primitive era where all tokens were tethered to Bitcoin's price swings and speculative trading. It is evolving into a real-world economic ecosystem denominated in USD. Projects now rise and fall based on their own fundamentals, and a new underlying interconnection infrastructure is replacing Bitcoin as the glue binding the entire crypto world together.

This year, Bitcoin has lost two core functions, replaced by two new phenomena. The resulting void in the ecosystem is creating new opportunities.

AI Has Captured Bitcoin's Risk-Speculative Capital

Bitcoin itself generates no cash flow, has no earnings, dividends, or interest. Its price fluctuations are almost entirely determined by the ebb and flow of speculative capital. It is a classic capital reservoir: prices soar when liquidity is abundant and corrects deeply when liquidity tightens. In 2026, the AI sector emerged strongly, continuously diverting the speculative hot money that once flowed into Bitcoin.

Global AI infrastructure spending this year is estimated between $700 billion and $830 billion, roughly half the size of the entire US investment-grade bond market, and could reach $7 trillion by 2030. The AI industry contributes about 5% to US GDP, and its impact on US economic growth has already surpassed that of consumer spending. Nvidia alone accounts for 8% of the S&P 500 index weight. AI is no longer just another sector; it has become a super-strong gravitational field for capital, reshaping the pricing logic for all market capital.

AI continuously drains capital from Bitcoin in three major ways:

1) AI has captured the core narrative. Bitcoin's past central selling point was 'betting on future asymmetric opportunities,' but AI offers real revenue, continuously exploding market demand, and policy support from various countries. Investors can easily gain exposure through index funds. Now, institutions classify Bitcoin alongside speculative penny stocks without earnings support. Within the same risk pool, one side offers realized profits while the other relies purely on expectations. Capital naturally flows away from Bitcoin, which is the root cause of the consecutive ETF redemptions.

2) AI needs capital. AI expansion relies heavily on debt financing. The bond issuance by cloud giants has already surpassed last year's total, and private credit directed towards the AI industry has exceeded $200 billion. High-quality targets absorb top-tier capital through massive bond issuance, leaving progressively less capital available for high-risk assets like Bitcoin.

3) AI forces a high-interest rate environment. The AI industry drives up production costs for items like electricity, water, and memory chips. Price increases for related categories are generally between 5% and double digits, anchoring US inflation around 3.8%. The Federal Reserve is compelled to maintain a high benchmark interest rate of 3.50%–3.75%, leaving the market with almost no expectations for rate cuts throughout the year. AI not only competes with Bitcoin for capital but also locks in tight liquidity from the macroeconomic environment.

Furthermore, there is a revolution on the computing power front. Both Bitcoin mining and AI computing power fundamentally involve converting electricity into computational power, competing for the same electrical resources. However, the economic efficiency per unit of electricity for Nvidia servers is far higher than for mining rigs. Last quarter, the all-in cost for top listed mining companies to mine one Bitcoin was around $80,000, while the market price was only $70,000, resulting in a loss of $19,000 per coin. A large number of mining companies are pivoting to AI computing power: the industry has signed cumulative cooperation orders for AI supercomputing exceeding $70 billion. Top mining companies expect AI-related revenue to account for up to 70% of their total by the end of the year. Core Scientific spent $10.2 billion converting a 300-megawatt Bitcoin mining facility into an AI data center. Riot has sold its own Bitcoin holdings and subleased land to AMD. These computing power entities, once the guardians of Bitcoin's network security, are collectively fleeing.

Compared to the feared risk of quantum computing, AI represents a permanent structural change. Even if a future quantum computer could crack Bitcoin's encryption algorithm, the industry could patch the protocol through post-quantum cryptography standards and soft forks. However, AI's capture of narrative, capital, and power resources is irreversible; no protocol upgrade can reclaim them. Bitcoin's first core value is completely lost.

USD Stablecoins Replace Bitcoin as the Base Currency of the Crypto Market

This is the most easily overlooked key change. Throughout crypto's development history, Bitcoin has long served as the industry's reserve asset and the intermediary for fiat on/off ramps: fiat currency is first exchanged for Bitcoin, which is then used to trade other altcoins. All tokens were priced in BTC, and off-chain capital had to buy Bitcoin first to enter the market. This was the root cause of the synchronized price movements across the entire market.

Stablecoins have severed this link. USDC trading volume surpassed USDT for the first time since 2019, with global stablecoin annual transaction volume exceeding $30 trillion. The user on-ramp path has now become: Fiat → USDC → Various Assets. Bitcoin is completely removed from the circulation chain. Polymarket revamped this year to launch a platform-native USD stablecoin (backed 1:1 by USDC reserves). Hyperliquid settles all platform transactions in USD. As an industry summary states: stablecoins have become the universal reserve currency at the application layer, with various platforms merely applying their own labels on top.

Consequently, when market risk aversion increases, the dominance chart shows Bitcoin's share falling while stablecoins' share rises. Capital isn't leaving the crypto market; it's simply shifting to dollar-denominated assets within the industry. Investors wanting exposure to the crypto space no longer need to hold Bitcoin; USD stablecoins have taken over this function. All on-chain transactions operate in USD, and on-chain capital flows no longer generate buying pressure for Bitcoin. Bitcoin's second core function has officially concluded.

The Crypto Economy Thrives Without Bitcoin

Setting aside Bitcoin, the products currently being deployed are no longer speculative chips tied to token prices, but commercial projects with genuine cash flow.

The existence of Hyperliquid is enough to debunk the narrative that 'cryptocurrency is dying'. This on-chain spot and derivatives exchange offers order book depth and execution speed comparable to top-tier CEXs, while users retain self-custody of their assets. Its total trading volume last year was $2.6 trillion, higher than Coinbase's $1.4 trillion, with an annualized revenue of $0.8–1.3 billion. The platform uses 97% of its trading fees for open market buybacks and burns of its native token, HYPE. The annual buyback volume is approximately $1.3 billion, accounting for 7% of the token's total market cap. Its burn rate is 4-5 times that of Ethereum and 14 times that of Solana. The project had no venture capital investment, relying solely on community airdrops and fee-based buybacks to create a value loop. Its trading volume fluctuates entirely based on trader demand, completely independent of Bitcoin's price. The platform's scale grew counter-cyclically during Bitcoin's bear market.

Another key player is the prediction market leader Polymarket. Valued at $20 billion, it has an annual trading volume of $250–300 billion, annualized fees of $365 million, and daily active users that have doubled 2.5 times in five months. It launched a platform USD stablecoin, and its token is expected to launch soon. Polymarket's products revolve around betting on elections, sports events, and global occurrences, with demand unrelated to Bitcoin's price.

Such projects are now evaluated using traditional enterprise valuation logic: revenue, user base, valuation multiples. This is a clear sign of industry maturation.

New Sector Dividends: Privacy Becomes a Scarce Resource

If Bitcoin's transparent and monitored ledger was the default option of the past, then privacy is the new upgraded option. This is a sovereign, untraceable form of money only achievable on-chain. However, the ways to acquire this 'privacy' money differ vastly, and this distinction is crucial.

Self-Custodied Privacy. Zcash (ZEC) surged 70% in a single week, pushing its market cap close to $10 billion, a gain of over 45 times from its 2024 lows, charting an independent path while Bitcoin traded sideways. Its fundamentals are solid: the volume of private transactions rose from 11% to 30% since November. Most privacy assets are not converted back to the transparent chain, resulting in a continuously shrinking circulating supply coupled with increasing demand. The regulatory compliance pressure that once suppressed privacy coins has ironically boosted their value proposition: Robinhood listed ZEC spot, and Grayscale filed for the industry's first privacy coin spot ETF. Privacy has upgraded from a single-use case to a long-term investment thesis. However, ZEC requires users to separately purchase the token and switch to a different blockchain for use.

Universal Cross-Chain Privacy. NEAR doesn't require users to buy a specific privacy token or bridge assets to a different chain. Leveraging on-chain signature technology, a single NEAR account can directly control native assets on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana without wrapped tokens or cross-chain bridge risks. This is achieved through a decentralized multi-party computation network for key management. Combined with confidential intent protocols, users can privately transfer assets on any public chain, with transaction counterparties and routing information fully隐匿 (obscured), executed via privacy sharding. User assets remain on their original blockchain, making privacy a stackable, universal underlying service.

Compared to a single privacy coin, this model is far more disruptive. Users don't need to hold ZEC, they don't need to leave the native Ethereum or Bitcoin ecosystems. Privacy transforms from a property of a specialized asset into a native feature available for all transactions across the board.

The Multi-Chain Era's Base Coordination Layer Replaces Bitcoin's Hub Role

Looking at the broader crypto landscape: the industry is no longer converging towards uniformity but is characterized by parallel multi-chains and continuous ecosystem expansion. USD stablecoins have become the underlying universal currency, and AI agents acting as autonomous entities holding credentials, calling interfaces, and transferring funds have emerged as new participants.

This vast multi-chain and agent ecosystem urgently needs an interconnected infrastructure. For the past decade, Bitcoin played this role. Now, the void is being filled by a new coordination and privacy layer, offering cross-chain signatures, USD settlement, private transactions, and automated agent execution.

NEAR is targeting this赛道 (track/sector). It supports AI agents settling privately using USDC, enables confidential computation via hardware secure enclaves, and positions its signature network as the key management hub for the agent economy, providing chain-agnostic, cross-chain, and privacy services for both users and bots.

Another project in this space is Venice. It focuses on privacy-preserving AI applications, attracting a large base of native Web2 users. Staking the platform's token, VVV, allows users to share in AI inference revenue. The project has burned over 40% of its token's circulating supply through product buybacks. Demand is driven by AI usage, decoupling the token price from Bitcoin.

The new center of gravity for the industry is taking shape. It is no longer a single token, but the underlying infrastructure upon which various real-world projects attach to create genuine value.

Summary

Putting it all together: The USD serves as the industry's circulating cash. Tokens like HYPE, POLY, ZEC, NEAR, and VVV represent corporate equity. The privacy cross-chain layer functions as the backbone infrastructure connecting the entire industry. Bitcoin has become just one sector within this ecosystem. Squeezed by AI capturing macro speculative capital, physical gold absorbing safe-haven demand, and stablecoins monopolizing the reserve currency function, Bitcoin's former glory is fading.

For the past decade, the entire industry fixated on Bitcoin's price, with all altcoins following its lead. That era is definitively over. Now, evaluating a project's quality aligns with standards used for traditional real-world companies: does it have real revenue, active users, and can its token capture the project's growth value?

Stop judging the health of the crypto industry by Bitcoin's price movements. Focus on project revenue, user growth, and the underlying infrastructure that connects all chains: achieving universal cross-chain private transfers, USD settlement, and a human-and-machine-compatible cross-chain foundation.

AI has taken the macro speculative capital, the USD has taken the reserve currency status, and a new underlying protocol has assumed the critical role of interconnecting the entire industry. Bitcoin falling below $70,000 is not the end of the crypto industry; it is a historic turning point where crypto finally breaks free from Bitcoin's dominance.