That single idea is precisely what turned John Templeton into a legend in investing.

When a market is clearly doing well, it means everyone can see it, and prices have already reflected that optimism. Everything has been priced in. In other words, you’re no longer buying at a good price. In fact, what once looked attractive may now be High Risk with Low Return.

By distancing himself from the crowd, Templeton searched for opportunities where things were bad or very bad in the present, but had a chance to become less bad or even good in the future. He applied this strategy in 1939, right as World War II broke out and market sentiment was extremely pessimistic. That was the beginning of a legend.

Now, back to the main topic. What stood out this week?

By “truly come back,” I mean strong, organic growth.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the entire market pumping wildly like the Altcoin season of 2021, but at least one or a few sectors that are genuinely strong enough to concentrate market attention the way AI is doing right now.

Otherwise, this scenario remains very plausible:

…while crypto either fails to rise or underperforms even the S&P 500.

There are solid reasons why this could happen.

At the moment, crypto lacks a new narrative with enough traction to pull in mass retail capital.

Meanwhile, outside of crypto, there is a sector that does offer a powerful, world-changing story: AI.

AI is both:

For most retail participants, this translates into a simple belief: “This could be something huge, like the Internet or Amazon.”

Given these three conditions, when the macro backdrop feels optimistic enough, capital flows away from places that feel boring or stagnant, toward places that still offer hope.

This is what led me to my double-click question: What could realistically pull crypto back into a strong uptrend?

What factor could create enough hook and traction - not just rising financial markets lifting crypto passively but something that makes crypto itself feel inevitable again?

This question remains open. I’m not confident enough yet to draw a final conclusion. I’m still researching deeply and will write more about this in a future piece.

At Base Camp in September, Base revealed plans for a Base Bridge to Solana, enabling seamless asset transfers between the two ecosystems. This week, Base Bridge officially launched.

Everything was normal — until Solana reacted.

From Solana’s perspective, Base appeared to be “doing it alone,” framing the bridge as marketing rather than a true partnership. Some even viewed it as a form of liquidity invasion, especially given Base’s prior statements about wanting to surpass Solana, and the perception that the bridge is effectively one-way: from Solana to Base.

Let’s set the drama aside and focus on the real insight here.

The market has changed.

Today, you can’t just:

…and expect capital to flood into your ecosystem.

The market has matured and become far more pragmatic: “If there’s no FOMO, nothing new, and no meaningful differentiation → why should I move my capital there?”

DeFi is now far more mature. Liquidity is deeper. Users are more sophisticated. In practice, users can trade almost anywhere, with almost any asset they want.

This is why I believe crypto is entering the early phase of a “chainless” era, where barriers to capital movement between chains are minimal.

That means ecosystem competition is no longer just about marketing.
It’s about core value and flagship products that can actually retain capital.

This is the foundation of what’s often called product-led growth.

If Base lacks sufficient internal strength, even building this bridge could backfire, accelerating capital outflows toward a more dynamic ecosystem like Solana.

Let’s see what Base plays next.

Despite Prediction Market exploding over the past 1–2 years, its biggest bottleneck remains liquidity, especially for long-duration outcomes.

Kalshi has integrated Dflow infrastructure to tokenize prediction positions directly on Solana. Once positions become tokens, they can be used deeper in DeFi, not just to improve liquidity but also to enable leverage — which many participants find extremely attractive.

This could represent a major next move for Prediction Market, and a new moat for Solana in the race to prove which blockchain truly creates real economic value.

x402 surged into the spotlight for just 1–2 weeks. For those unfamiliar, it originated from Base and was developed by Coinbase engineers.

While attention has cooled, development has not stopped.

Recently, activity has shifted from Base toward Solana. In terms of transaction count, Base still leads by nearly 2×, but in x402 transaction volume, Solana has captured over 55% in under two months.

Don’t forget: x402 targets a multi-billion-dollar market and addresses real internet-native demand.

Current key players include:

Over the past year, Prop-AMM has emerged as one of Solana’s most powerful weapons to make DeFi pricing competitive with CEX.

Kyle (Multicoin Capital) recently announced collaboration with Jump Trading and Galaxy to build another Prop-AMM for Solana. Currently focused on Spot trading, it is expected to expand into Perp trading, similar to Drift.

Prop-AMM offers superior pricing for swaps and trades — a critical step in upgrading DeFi’s quality tier. Better liquidity almost always leads to more interesting things being built on top.

Vitalik explained that Fusaka brings Ethereum closer than ever to sharding, reducing the need for nodes to process full block data.

This makes the network lighter, safer, and better prepared for long-term scaling.
Fusaka doesn’t immediately make Ethereum faster, but it is a necessary foundation for future growth. Over time, better data handling leads to improved cost and speed for applications built on Ethereum.

For the first time, the CFTC has allowed spot crypto trading on U.S. federally regulated platforms.

Bitcoin, Ether, and other assets could eventually be traded directly, rather than only via ETF.

This is significant because it removes one of the biggest institutional barriers: access.
Once major brokerage platforms can support spot crypto, the U.S. capital market moves much closer to crypto.

Blink, introduced by Solana in 2024, allows dApp interactions directly from social links.

It quietly disappeared — until this week.

One highly anticipated use case is Prediction Market: on-chain interaction and voting directly from X. Raydium demos already show what’s possible.

Looking back, $HOOD is up 18× from its 2022 lows and has outperformed many crypto assets in 2025 alone.

I’m now actively searching for a “Robinhood #2” inside crypto. I shared this thesis in detail on X via The Ivy NFT last week. You can read it there.

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