Opinion: The crypto market rewards not followers, but those who see through the illusions.

Author | hitesh.eth

Editor | Saoirse, Foresight News

The core of cryptocurrencies is faith. They are the purest financial instruments ever created, designed to extract hope from humanity and convert it into liquidity. Price fluctuations are not driven by utility value but by stories, manipulation, and those who know how to turn “attention” into a weapon to manipulate the market. This is not a normal market but a psychological battlefield. Most people are completely unaware that they are prey on this battlefield, waiting to be slaughtered.

Price Discovery

No matter how elaborate the promotional narrative, all crypto tokens follow the same price discovery cycle. The cycle begins with the “0–1 Stage”: at this point, hype dominates, and actual utility is nearly zero. Prices soar solely based on market sentiment, communities form around fictional “future blueprints,” and promotional rhetoric completely overshadows reality. Then, a brutal correction arrives as expected — eliminating uncommitted holders and exposing investors who entered blindly on a single “promise.”

Deep downturns are often critical turning points. Projects without real demand quietly fade away: stopping updates, halting development, and gradually disappearing from the market, with liquidity shifting to other projects. However, a few tokens survive and enter the “1–10 Stage” — where hype cools, and real applications begin to emerge. These tokens experience a slow, steady growth period until genuine demand reignites a second wave of “faith.” It is this second wave of faith that fuels a long and strong upward trend. Only such tokens can endure multiple cycles; most tokens never reach this stage.

The Hidden Truth

Looking ahead, tokens will become meaningless for most projects. Once private enterprises can directly tokenize equity and raise liquidity on-chain, the vast majority of cryptocurrencies will become worthless. Currently, only two sectors of tokens hold real value: decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) and certain segments of decentralized finance (DeFi) — because they promote participation and collaboration on the supply side. All other token-related activities are essentially disguised “innovative” fundraising schemes.

Most tokens exist primarily because founders want to quickly raise funds — but this era is coming to an end. Better fundraising methods are emerging, and regulatory policies are on the horizon. However, Meme coins and trash tokens will not disappear; in fact, they will proliferate — because gambling is human nature. The only change is that the boundary between “gambling” and “investment” will become clearer: when you gamble, you can no longer hide behind “long-term investing.” You must choose: either admit you’re gambling or genuinely invest. Currently, everyone pretends to be an investor, even those chasing Meme coins and hype.

Psychological Traps

Cryptocurrencies are essentially “promissory data strings,” designed to manipulate human behavior. The token supply unlocking mechanisms are meant to control people’s “hope”; the lock-up schedules are intended to slowly inject “faith” into the market. The so-called “incentives” are not just financial temptations but carefully crafted emotional traps. The real “product” of such projects is not the token but “faith.” All promotional narratives aim to target people’s “reactive thinking” — that part of your mind driven by fear, anxiety, guilt, desire, and other emotions.

People are not buying tokens; they are buying “the opportunity to escape current reality.” That’s why the spread of tokens is faster than logic — because the spread of faith is faster than the truth. This is also why “collaborative hype” exists: venture capitalists pre-enter, market makers manipulate prices, exchanges time their listings, influencers stir greed, whales quietly accumulate, and retail investors enter at the end of the chain, becoming “bagholders” (providing exit liquidity). This is not a conspiracy but an inherent market process — the normal state of the entire system.

The Demise of Tokens

Speculation, not utility, drives token growth. All tokens are fighting in the same “attention grab” — those that cannot hold attention will eventually perish. In this market, attention is more important than “actual utility,” more important than “returns,” and more important than “product usage.” But most project teams do not understand this; they focus solely on price fluctuations while ignoring user growth.

Some projects fake “growth” through incentives, but once users start caring more about token prices than the product itself, the game is over. Incentives should be a “bridge to promote real application,” but they are often used as a “substitute for genuine demand.” When a project loses control over its token dynamics and becomes a “prisoner” of its own price chart, its core mission collapses: founders stop focusing on development, instead just going through the motions; the project’s vision dies, and the token becomes a curse. For projects that “could succeed without tokens,” tokens ultimately become their grave.

Exit Liquidity

If you don’t know “who you are buying tokens from,” then you are someone else’s “exit liquidity” (bagholder). The price discovery process of tokens is essentially a “cooperative game” controlled by insiders: venture capitalists, exchanges, market makers, investment alliances, whales, and core influencers coordinate secretly to manipulate the market. When retail investors see a token “surging in popularity,” insiders have already built their positions, waiting for retail to enter and provide liquidity. The seed round is the stage to generate maximum wealth, but retail investors never get to participate — projects raise funds at very low valuations, yet upon listing, they can reach multi-billion-dollar fully diluted valuations.

Retail investors always think they “got in early,” but in reality, they are already late — their entry only provides exit opportunities for those who entered at lower levels. To survive in this game, you must anticipate narrative trends early, enter before influencers start promoting, and build positions before liquidity incentives kick in. If you wait until YouTube influencers start recommending a token, you are already lost. If you don’t do your own research, it’s not “investment” — you are just “borrowing others’ faith,” and that borrowed faith will ultimately cause you to lose everything.

Future Differentiation

The crypto space is splitting into two worlds: “Regulated Crypto” and “Crypto Anarchy.” The former is controlled by governments, with compliant infrastructure, approved tokens, and comprehensive monitoring; the latter is primitive, brutal, and free — driven by privacy, true decentralization, and practical developers, all surviving in this realm. Tokens initially symbolized “counterculture,” but that culture has long vanished. Cryptocurrency has betrayed its original intent, turning into “Wall Street on the blockchain.” However, a “purification” is imminent: tokens without real demand will perish, projects without core goals will disappear.

Narratives without substantive content will die out; only tokens tied to “real applications, real cash flow, and genuine objectives” will survive. The rest will vanish. You need to think clearly about why you are here — because tokens are like a mirror, exposing your greed, impatience, and illusions. Most people come here for “freedom” but get trapped in speculation; for “wealth” but lose themselves in greed; for “truth” but indulge in lies. This market cannot save you; narratives cannot save you — only discipline and insight can. The survival rule is simple: learn the rules, act before the crowd, never be a bagholder, understand who you are, and then commit to this “battle.”

Epilogue

The crypto market rewards not followers but those who “see through illusions.” The crowd is always slow to act, always chasing hype, and always becoming someone else’s bagholder. Don’t be part of the crowd: establish your own process, build your advantages, and cultivate patience. If you understand this game, you won’t fear it — instead, you can leverage it.

This “purification” will not destroy you; it will create opportunities. The road ahead will be tough: the market will test your faith, your timing judgment, your patience, your emotional control, and your ability to stick to the truth when “noise” floods the crowd. Now is not the time to pray for a bull market but to build your own “faith.” The only question remaining is: when the next cycle begins, will you be an “early entrant” or again a “bagholder”?