I recently dug up an old video I made nearly two years ago on the Upside YouTube channel. If I remember correctly, that video took me a full month to complete.

Most of that time wasn’t spent filming, but researching the fundamental nature of the three classic phases of financial markets. I went through countless interviews, analyses, and sources. Then came post-production, where our media team experimented with a documentary-style format inspired by Netflix… 😅

The video was born out of curiosity: What actually triggers a market to go parabolic? And what ignites a full-scale collapse? I believe these questions matter because they give you a stronger framework to observe and evaluate where the market sits within a cycle. And frankly, it feels especially relevant right now.

I hope the video gives you that weekend Netflix feeling, while also leaving you with something genuinely useful. The link to the video is embedded directly in the image above.

But wait. Before watching it, let’s first walk through some of the key observations and perspectives from this week.

Based on what we have so far, here are my thoughts on the market this week.

A major concern that continues to linger beneath the surface is “recession.” It’s the reason the market keeps climbing, but with caution.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I want to go a bit deeper this time, because “recession” is often used as a headline-grabbing tool by the media.

So what is a recession?

A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth.

With the latest data release, U.S. real GDP for Q2 showed strong growth, the best in the past two years. This alone is clear evidence that there is no recession right now.

But that’s the present. What about the future?

Anyone who confidently declares “a recession is coming” or “the economy will be just fine” is making a heavily biased claim. Even professional economists consistently fail to predict recessions:

Monetary policy works with what economists call “long and variable lags.” Its real effects take time to fully materialize in the economy. Whether those effects ultimately turn out positive or negative is something no one can know in advance.

It’s like marinating meat. You need hours before the flavor fully sinks in. Only after that time can you judge whether you seasoned it well or not.

That’s why a rising market that still feels restrained and cautious actually makes sense.

Your job, then, is to prepare for both scenarios: recession and no recession.

Preparation doesn’t mean clinging to vague predictions or recycling narratives from the past. It means staying close to the data and truly understanding the market’s underlying structure.

With what we have today, there is no data strong enough to confirm an incoming recession. On the contrary, there appears to be more upside ahead as the Fed continues its rate-cutting path.

The economy remains fundamentally healthy even with high interest rates. So what happens when rates continue to fall?

The answer: Lower costs → Higher profit margins → Stronger businesses.

I also want to highlight a chart I came across this week comparing Job Openings with the S&P 500, a proxy for U.S. equity markets.

Since the emergence of ChatGPT, we’ve seen a structural shift in society that I believe could lead to two important outcomes:

What about you? What do you think about the market right now?

This week didn’t feature one or two singular headline events, but rather several parallel developments worth paying attention to. Below are my observations and thoughts:

Zcash is one of the oldest projects in crypto. After staying quiet for a long time, it has recently resurfaced in conversations among prominent figures such as Naval.

The thesis driving $ZEC’s rally is its potential role as a hedge against Bitcoin’s transparency in an era of increasing surveillance and control by governments and traditional institutions.

I don’t yet have a strong personal view on Zcash. If you want to explore this narrative further, I’ve linked an article that’s been widely discussed on this topic.

Prop AMM has become a new competitive weapon for Solana in its push to build the most efficient environment for trading. Its emergence aligns well with Solana’s broader push toward the Internet Capital Market narrative.

Prop AMM now accounts for roughly 50% of liquidity used for spot trading. If you’re farming airdrop expectations, the only way to interact with these Prop AMM systems is through aggregators like Jupiter and Titan.

Hyperliquid made waves this week by airdropping 4,600 NFTs to top wallets in its ecosystem, with individual NFTs valued from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This was Jeff’s subtle way of reminding the market who Hyperliquid is during the current FOMO around Perp DEX.

It further reinforces my belief that the Perp space will become even more interesting. No single protocol has fully secured dominance yet. Several players are rising, each still holding unrevealed “ace cards” to attract and vampire users from competitors.

From the project side, this phase resembles the early Uniswap vs. Sushi battles. From the farmer’s side, however, there’s a risk of disappointment similar to the airdrop FOMO cycles around Starknet, Zksync, Sui, Sei, Scroll, Bera, and others.

After Robinhood highlighted strong demand for Prediction Market trading on its app (via its partnership with Kalshi), total volume hit a record $4 billion, and Robinhood stock surged 10%.

Notably, Vlad (Robinhood’s CEO) has begun actively evangelizing Prediction Market across mainstream media.

The deeper I dive into Prediction Market, the more compelling it becomes. It shouldn’t be narrowly dismissed as “gambling.” When used correctly, it functions as a legitimate hedging tool for investments.

I’ll be publishing a dedicated piece on this soon.

Meanwhile, Limitless has sparked FOMO after receiving over 100x oversubscription for its presale on Kaito. The project has drawn attention due to backing from Coinbase Ventures and expectations that it could compete with Polymarket and Kalshi.

Liquidity remains the biggest bottleneck for NFT markets and a key reason their growth has stalled.

A new NFT Strategy trend has emerged around blue-chip NFT, most notably Punk Strategy ($PNKSTR).

The model closely mirrors SOL or ETH DAT strategies. Instead of issuing shares, these projects acquire NFT, lock them in custody, and issue corresponding tokens.

I don’t see long-term potential here, but in the short term, it provides a speculative narrative. The game remains simple: buy high and hope someone more foolish buys higher.

Everything is green again. As markets recover, TVL across ecosystems has risen. Solana now ranks second in TVL. While Ethereum still maintains a clear lead, Solana shows more active capital flows through higher daily volume.

(BNB Chain is excluded here due to excessive noise from Binance Alpha.)

The most notable observation here is Hyperliquid. Volume on the Hyperliquid ecosystem (HyperEVM) has declined overall after several periods of explosive growth.

If Jeff aims to turn Hyperliquid into a “home for global finance,” there’s still substantial work to be done beyond perpetual trading, particularly in spot trading and the broader HyperEVM ecosystem.

This also means opportunities may emerge from projects built on HyperEVM, given how early-stage the ecosystem still is.

Since receiving public support from CZ, Aster has pulled far ahead of all competitors in the Perp DEX segment. Its volume is now roughly 10x that of Hyperliquid.

This figure reflects little more than speculative FOMO.

When evaluating a Perp DEX, volume alone is insufficient. You should also look at Open Interest (OI) to better assess real demand. I’ve discussed this on X before, which you can read here.

The IVY team has recently attended multiple major industry events, meeting and speaking with builders across different projects.

Perspectives from those actively building, rather than observing from the sidelines, offer a more multi-dimensional view of the market.

All of these insights are compiled in The Spotlight series produced by Upside.

You can read it in full here.

Have a great weekend.

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