ETH Denver Recap and Reflection, Crypto in the Midst of a Structural Shift

By: blockbeats|2025/03/05 08:30:02
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Original Article Title: The Last Cycle: An ETH Denver Retrospective
Original Article Author: TraderNoah, Theia Team Member
Original Article Translation: ChatGPT

Editor's Note: ETH Denver reflected the shift in the crypto industry—reduced speculation, increased pragmatism. Market participants can be divided into old-timers, technical builders, newcomers, and speculators, with fewer and fewer actually making money. The crypto industry has entered a new stage, with a clear trend towards institutionalization and a slowdown in pure crypto-native market growth. With regulatory clarity, stablecoins and on-chain finance will see widespread adoption, and the traditional VC exit model is now well recognized. The surge in 2024 was more of a financial game, and after the bubble burst, the industry faces a reality check: either create real business value or continue to wait for the next speculative cycle.

Below is the original content (slightly restructured for ease of comprehension):

There are few new faces, reduced extravagant marketing spending, and a shift in industry trends towards pragmatism. Legacy projects from the past still exist (e.g., lingering infrastructure projects from 2018 or VC firms that have just been overfunded burning cash on marketing), but compared to previous years, this phenomenon has diminished.

Background

Currently, there are primarily two main groups in the industry: the crypto-native group and newcomers.

These can be further subdivided into four subcategories:

Crypto-native Mercenaries

Crypto-native Technocrats

Low-quality Newcomers

High-quality Newcomers

Crypto-native Group

This group is mainly composed of technocrats (VC/investors, VC-backed projects), focusing on significant market opportunities and dedicated to building tangible products. In this event, they accounted for over two-thirds of the crypto-native group, primarily focusing on AI/DeFi and FinTech directions.

The number of mercenaries is significantly lower than in previous years, which could be due to:

· A subdued on-chain market

· Future growth leaning more towards institutionalization

· Most mercenaries have either been liquidated or have earned enough money, leaving few behind, and few are willing to go all-in on this game anymore.

Newcomers

Newcomers can be divided based on their skill level.

Low-Quality Newcomers: Primarily engaged in soft-skill-related work (BD, Growth, Ecosystem, etc.), usually working for a declining L1/L2 project or a well-funded but directionless company. These individuals may be crypto enthusiasts, or they may simply be staying due to the industry's high salaries and low job intensity.

High-Quality Newcomers can be divided into Technocrats and Mercenaries:

· Technocrats mainly come from traditional finance, building in areas such as DeFi, Stablecoins, or are infrastructure experts in AI, DeFi, security, focusing on technologies and capital deployment in early-stage projects with significant market potential.

· Mercenaries are usually young entrepreneurs aged 18-25 who witnessed the wealth accumulation of their predecessors in 2021 and are looking to replicate that success. They are charismatic, intelligent, and even slightly antisocial. This group is not large in size but often garners significant industry attention.

Reassessment Phase

Why is blockchain technology seeing widespread adoption while our token prices are plummeting? Why are some groups remaining optimistic while others are pessimistic? The answer is simple: we are at the end of one S-curve and the beginning of another.

ETH Denver Recap and Reflection, Crypto in the Midst of a Structural Shift

Retrospective of the Crypto Industry

2009-2011: Early Tech Geeks

2011-2016: Dark Web / Gambling Era

2017-2019: Mainstream's First Cycle

2020-2021: DeFi Summer, Mainstream's Second Cycle

2022-2024: Speculators / Vulture Capital, Mainstream's Second/Third Cycle

The above is a highly summarized classification, but I believe it is fundamentally accurate. People who entered the crypto industry early on usually fell into one of three categories: tech geeks, criminals, or just lucky timing.

Those who entered the crypto industry before 2017 can now be roughly divided into three scenarios:

Already financially free, choose to retire

Consider cryptocurrency as a way of life

Still struggling to make money

After the DeFi Summer, a large number of newcomers entered the crypto industry, indicating that those who entered after 2020 are more akin to the general public compared to earlier adopters. Many in this group have seen wealth growth, but extreme wealth accumulation is less common compared to the early adopters.

Their current status can be roughly divided into:

A few have achieved financial freedom and retired

Most are in the middle of the wealth spectrum, holding the power of choice

Some are in a state of "pre-affluence" but are gradually becoming disillusioned with the industry

From 2024 onwards, people from all walks of life will come into contact with cryptocurrency, but only those who can identify business opportunities and have exceptional abilities will survive. We may see a large number of executives with traditional finance or Web2 experience entering the space.

Looking back at the participants in the crypto industry, those who are still active can be roughly divided into three categories:

"Pre-affluent" but entered before 2022: In the past 5-10 years, they missed opportunities, and many are disillusioned with the industry.

"Post-affluent" and deeply believe in crypto (like religious believers, e.g., ETH Maximalists, Link Marines): These individuals still consider ETH as "money" but have not been actively involved for years, disconnecting from the market.

Newcomers seeking business opportunities: They have not been influenced by past market fluctuations and remain optimistic.

Among these, the most pessimistic are usually the first category, as they harbor deep jealousy and resentment towards the industry, realizing that their wealth accumulation largely came from luck or shady means.

The second category firmly believe that ETH is still "money." They speak grandiosely on podcasts or work in fund companies but have long been out of touch with market reality.

The third category remain optimistic because they have not been worn down by past market cycles, or they still focus on their beliefs. Today, as regulatory frameworks become clearer, stablecoins see widespread adoption, and the financial markets accelerate towards tokenization.

Future Development Directions?

The entire industry has essentially reached a consensus on the direction in the coming years, but those who cannot benefit from the new landscape often choose to selectively ignore reality. In the future, the marginal new users will pay more attention to how cryptocurrency can create value in their real lives. We may see:

· Significant growth in on-chain financial applications

· More applications of crypto technology in security and reducing backend operational costs

However, the growth of the purely crypto-native market may slow down, which is not very favorable for token fund inflows and may also be one of the reasons for the sluggishness of the liquid market.

The current industry is in a transition period where regulation has not yet been fully established but is imminent. In the future, liquidity may shift towards compliant public market stocks rather than tokenized assets. Additionally, many on-chain financial products may require identity verification to attract institutional clients, leading to a split of the on-chain financial market into gray/black market and compliant market.

Uncertainty implies risk, and although the industry's long-term trend is positive, this may not necessarily benefit everyone's investment portfolio.

ETH Denver: A Wake-Up Call for the Industry

ETH Denver and its surrounding market trends have sounded an alarm for the entire crypto industry. Market participants are now facing a stark choice:

· Shift towards building or investing in real businesses to drive the practical application of blockchain technology;

· Continue to pray for the "crypto casino" to restart, hoping for windfall profits in the next bull run.

As genuinely business valuable projects gradually emerge and the "crypto casino" opportunity relatively diminishes, this choice becomes increasingly clear.

In fact, many industry participants (companies, traders, funds) have long been in decline, merely hesitant to accept reality due to the market's long feedback loop or overcapitalization.

This transformation all began with the Bitcoin ETF in 2024 and culminated with Trump's inauguration in 2025. The market is slowly evolving towards a more rational direction, with less and less room for blind speculation.

In the early cycles (2017, 2021), the "average person" might have willingly immersed themselves in the Ponzi game, pretending ignorance. However, eight years have passed since the first crypto frenzy, and more and more people have come to terms with reality:

VC -> TGE (Token Generation Event) -> Cash Out, the old routine, is fundamentally a funding game. But as long as this path remains profitable, it won't change, yet fewer and fewer people are willing to continue being duped.

The crypto industry is undergoing a structural transformation, and the era of the casino is fading as genuine business models rise.

The 2024 market surge was primarily driven by the wealth effect brought by Bitcoin and the meme coin hype cycle. But this time around, traders are all too aware; they're only participating when there's money to be made, having no faith in any narrative.

Today, the era of free money is over, the gamblers have left the building, and industry participants relying on market liquidity must now reassess the impact on their investment portfolios.

Original Article Link

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$COIN Joins S&P 500, but Coinbase Isn't Celebrating

On May 13, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Coinbase would officially replace Discover Financial Services in the S&P 500 on May 19. While other companies like Block and MicroStrategy, closely tied to Bitcoin, were already part of the S&P 500, Coinbase became the first cryptocurrency exchange whose primary business is in the index. This also signifies that cryptocurrency is gradually moving from the fringes to the mainstream in the U.S.



On the day of the announcement, Coinbase's stock price surged by 23%, surpassing the $250 mark. However, just 3 days later, Coinbase was hit by two consecutive events: a hack where employees were bribed to steal customer data and a demand for a $20 million ransom, and an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) into the authenticity of its claim of having over 100 million "verified users" in its securities filings and marketing materials. These two events acted as mini-bombs, and at the time of writing, Coinbase's stock had already dropped by over 7.3%.


Coincidentally, Discover Financial Services, being replaced by Coinbase, can also be considered the "Coinbase" of the previous payment era. Discover is a U.S.-based digital banking and payment services company headquartered in Illinois, founded in 1960. Its payment network, Discover Network, is the fourth largest payment network apart from Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.


In April, after the approval of the acquisition of Discover by the sixth-largest U.S. bank, Capital One, this well-established digital banking company of over 60 years smoothly handed over its S&P 500 "seat" to this emerging cryptocurrency "bank." This unexpected coincidence also portrayed the handover between the new and old eras in Coinbase's entry into the S&P 500, resembling a relay race scene. However, this relay baton also brought Coinbase's accumulated "external troubles and internal strife" to a tipping point.


Side Effects of ETFs


Over the past decade, cryptocurrency exchanges have been the most stable "profit machines." They play a role in providing liquidity to the entire industry and rely on trading fees to sustain their operations. However, with the comprehensive rollout of ETF products in the U.S. market, this profit model is facing unprecedented challenges. As the leader in the "American stack," with over 80% of its business coming from the U.S., Coinbase is most affected by this.



Starting from the approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs, traditional financial capital has significantly onboarded users and funds that originally belonged to exchanges in a more cost-effective, compliant, and transparent manner. The transaction fee revenue of cryptocurrency exchanges has started to decline, and this trend may further intensify in the coming months.


According to Coinbase's 2024 Q4 financial report, the platform's total trading revenue was $417 million, a 45% year-on-year decrease. The contribution of BTC and ETH's trading revenue dropped from 65% in the same period last year to less than 50%.


This decline is not a result of a decrease in market enthusiasm. In fact, since the approval of the Bitcoin ETF in January 2024, the inflow of BTC into the U.S. market has continued to reach new highs, with asset management giants like BlackRock and Fidelity rapidly expanding their management scale. Data shows that BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) alone has surpassed $17 billion in assets under management. As of mid-May 2025, the cumulative net inflow of 11 major institutional Bitcoin spot ETFs on the market has exceeded $41.5 billion, with a total net asset value of $1214.69 billion, accounting for approximately 5.91% of the total Bitcoin market capitalization.


Chart showing the trend of net outflows for Grayscale among the 11 institutions


Institutional investors and some retail investors are shifting towards ETF products, partly due to compliance and tax considerations. On one hand, ETFs have much lower trading costs compared to cryptocurrency exchanges. While Coinbase's spot trading fee rate varies annually in a tiered manner but averages around 1.49%, for example, the management fee for IBIT ETF is only 0.25%, and the majority of ETF institution fees fluctuate around 0.15% to 0.25%.



In other words, the more rational users are, the more likely they are to move from exchanges to ETF products, especially for investors aiming for long-term holdings.


According to multiple sources, several institutions, including VanEck and Grayscale, have submitted applications to the SEC for a Solana (SOL) ETF, with some institutions also planning to submit an XRP ETF proposal. Once approved, this may trigger a new round of fund migration. According to a report submitted by Coinbase to the SEC, as of April, the platform's trading revenue from XRP and Solana accounted for 18% and 10%, nearly one-third of the platform's fee revenue.



However, the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs passed in 2024 also reduced the fees for these two tokens on Coinbase from 30% and 15% to 26% and 10%, respectively. If the SOL and XRP ETFs are approved, it will further undermine the core fee revenue of exchanges like Coinbase.


The expansion of ETF products is gradually weakening the financial intermediary status of cryptocurrency exchanges. From their original roles as matchmakers and clearers to now gradually becoming mere "on-ramps and off-ramps" for funds, exchanges are seeing their marginal value squeezed by ETFs.


Robinhood Takes a Stand, Traditional Brokerages Join the Fray


On May 12, 2025, SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins gave a keynote speech at the Tokenization and Cryptocurrency Working Group roundtable. The theme of his speech revolved around "It is a new day at the SEC," where he indicated that the SEC would not approach enforcement and regulation the same way as before but would instead pave the way for cryptocurrency assets in the U.S. market.



With signs of cryptocurrency compliance such as the SEC's "NEW DAY" declaration, an increasing number of traditional brokerages are attempting to enter the cryptocurrency industry. One of the most representative cases is the well-known U.S. brokerage Robinhood, which began expanding its crypto business in 2018. By the time of its IPO in 2021, Robinhood's crypto business revenue accounted for over 50% of the company, with a significant boost from the Dogecoin "moonshot" promoted by Musk.


In Q1 2025 earnings report, Robinhood showcased strong growth, especially in revenue from cryptocurrency and options trading. Fueled by Trump's Memecoin, cryptocurrency-related revenue reached $250 million, nearly doubling year-over-year. Consequently, Robinhood Gold subscription users reached 3.5 million, a 90% increase from the previous year, with the rapid growth of Robinhood Gold providing the company with a stable source of income.



Meanwhile, RobinHood is actively pursuing acquisitions in the cryptocurrency space. In 2024, it announced a $2 billion acquisition of the long-standing European cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp. Additionally, Canada's largest cryptocurrency CEX, WonderFi, which recently went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange, also announced its integration with RobinHood Crypto. After obtaining virtual asset licenses in the UK, Canada, Singapore, and other markets, RobinHood has taken a proactive approach in the compliant cryptocurrency trading market.



Furthermore, an increasing number of brokerage firms are exploring the same path. Futu Securities, Tiger Brokers, and others are also dipping their toes into cryptocurrency trading, with some having applied for or obtained the VA license from the Hong Kong SFC. Although their user bases are currently small, traditional brokerages have a natural advantage in user trust, regulatory licenses, and low fee structures. This could pose a threat to native cryptocurrency platforms in the future.



User Data Breach: Is Coinbase Still Secure?


In April 2025, security researchers discovered that some Coinbase user data was leaked on the dark web. While the platform initially responded by attributing it to a "technical misinformation," it still raised concerns among users regarding its security and privacy protection. Just two days before Dow Jones Indexes announced Coinbase's addition to the S&P 500 Index, on May 11, 2025, Coinbase received an email from an unknown threat actor claiming to have obtained customer account information and internal documents, demanding a $20 million ransom to keep the data private. Subsequent investigations confirmed the data breach.


Cybercriminals obtained the data by bribing overseas customer service agents and support staff, mainly in "non-U.S. regions such as India." These agents abused their access to Coinbase's internal customer support system and stole customer data. As early as February this year, blockchain detective ZachXBT revealed on X platform that between December 2024 and January 2025, Coinbase users lost over $65 million to social engineering scams, with the actual amount potentially higher.


Among the victims was a well-known figure, 67-year-old Ed Suman, an established artist in the art world for nearly two decades, having been involved in the creation of artworks such as Jeff Koons' "Balloon Dog" sculpture. Earlier this year, he fell victim to an impersonation scam involving fake Coinbase customer support, resulting in a loss of over $2 million in cryptocurrency. ZachXBT critiqued Coinbase for its inadequate handling of such scams, noting that other major exchanges have not faced similar issues and recommending Coinbase to enhance its security measures.


Amidst a series of ongoing social engineering incidents, although there has not been any impact on user assets at the technical level so far, it has raised concerns among many retail and institutional investors. Especially institutions holding massive assets on Coinbase. Just considering the U.S. BTC ETF institutions, as of mid-May 2025, they collectively hold nearly 840,000 BTC, and 75% of these are custodied by Coinbase. If we price BTC at $100,000, this amount reaches a staggering $63 billion, which is equivalent to the nominal GDP of two Iceland in the year 2024.


Visualization: ChatGPT, Source: Farside


In addition, Coinbase Custody also serves over 300 institutional clients, including hedge funds, family offices, pension funds, and endowments. As of the Q1 2025 financial report, Coinbase's total assets under management (including institutional and retail clients) reached $404 billion. The specific amount of institutional custodied assets was not explicitly disclosed in the latest report, but it should still be over 50% based on the Q4 2024 report.


Visualization: ChatGPT


Once this security barrier is breached, not only could the rate of user attrition far exceed expectations, but more importantly, institutional trust in it would undermine the foundation of its business. Therefore, after a hacking event, Coinbase's stock price plummeted significantly.


CEXs are All in Self-Rescue Mode


Facing a decline in spot trading fee revenue, Coinbase is also accelerating its transformation, attempting to find growth opportunities in derivatives and emerging assets. Coinbase acquired a stake in the options platform Deribit at the end of 2024 and announced the official launch of perpetual contract products in 2025. This acquisition fills in Coinbase's gap in options trading and its relatively small global market share.



Deribit has a strong presence in non-U.S. markets, especially in Asia and Europe. The acquisition has enabled Coinbase to gain a dominant position in bitcoin and ethereum options trading on Deribit, accounting for approximately 80% of the global options trading volume, with daily trading volume remaining above $2 billion.


Meanwhile, 80-90% of Deribit's customer base consists of institutional investors, with their professionalism and liquidity in the Bitcoin and Ethereum options market highly favored by institutions. Coinbase's compliance advantage, coupled with its already robust institutional ecosystem, makes it even more suitable. By using institutions as an entry point, it can face the squeeze from giants like Binance and OKX in the derivatives market.



Facing a similar dilemma is Kraken, which is attempting to replicate Binance Futures' model in non-U.S. markets. Since the derivatives market relies more on professional users, fee rates are relatively higher and stickiness is stronger, making it a significant source of revenue for exchanges. In the first half of 2025, Kraken completed the acquisition of TradeStation Crypto and a futures exchange, aiming to build a complete derivatives trading ecosystem to hedge the risk of declining spot transaction fee income.


With the surge of Memecoin in 2024, Binance, OKX, and various CEX platforms began massively listing small-market-cap, highly volatile tokens to activate active trading users. Due to the wealth effect and trading activity of Memecoins, Coinbase was also forced to join the battle, successively listing popular tokens from the Solana ecosystem such as BOOK OF MEME and Dogwifhat. Although these coins are controversial, they are frequently traded, with fee rates several times higher than mainstream coins, serving as a "blood-boosting" method for spot trading.


However, due to its status as a publicly traded company, this practice is a riskier endeavor for Coinbase. Even in the current crypto-friendly environment, the SEC is still investigating whether tokens like SOL, ADA, and SAND constitute securities.


In addition to the forced transformation strategies carried out by the aforementioned CEXs, they are also starting to lay out RWAs and the most talked-about stablecoin payment fields, such as the PYUSD launched through a collaboration between Coinbase and Paypal, Coinbase's support for the Euro stablecoin EURC by Circle that complies with EU MiCA regulatory requirements, or the USD1 launched through a collaboration between Binance and WIFL. In the increasingly crowded trading field, many CEXs have shifted their focus from just the trading market to the application field.


The golden age of transaction fees has quietly ended, and the second half of the crypto exchange platform game has silently begun.


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