Alts Fall into Another Winter: Current Market Predicament and Solutions for Breakthrough

Since the beginning of 2025, the cryptocurrency market has remained sluggish, particularly evident in the alts sector. Not only have small coins on exchanges performed poorly, but even the on-chain tokens that shone in the fourth quarter of last year have faced significant declines.

The decline of AI-related tokens in the past three months has been astonishing: Virtual down 79.2%, Ai16z down 85.5%, AIXBT down 68%, Griffain down 80.3%, Buzz down 72.4%, Fartcoin down 67.5%, ARC down 62%, Swarms down 45%. This data indicates that the once highly regarded AI sector is facing a sharp decrease in investor interest.

At the same time, the performance of celebrity tokens has been even more dismal. Since their peak, Trump has dropped by 77.1%, Melania by 91%, Vine by 92.7%, jailstool by 93.5%, Jellyjelly by 98%, CAR by 98.5%, and Libra by 94.3%. This phenomenon confirms the characteristic of the crypto market "favoring new over old," but also highlights the fragility of the celebrity coin sector.

The main reason for the current predicament is the prevalence of pure conceptual speculation. AI Agent projects often remain at the concept demonstration and future planning stage, lacking practical and easily promotable products. Even when some usable services are available, they often struggle to retain users due to complex operations and poor user experience. Moreover, some project teams excessively hype the prospects of the integration of AI and blockchain, yet fail to deliver on their promises, ultimately leading to investors losing patience.

In terms of celebrity coins, although the trend was sparked by a certain well-known political figure, subsequent imitators found it difficult to replicate the initial excitement and market response. This "flash in the pan" phenomenon has caused the celebrity coin sector to quickly lose investor confidence.

The deeper issue is that many projects merely remain at the level of conceptual hype, lacking sustainable profit models. Whether it is AI Agent or celebrity coins, their core appeal overly relies on short-term funding and popularity, rather than long-term value creation.

In this market environment, investors should shift their focus to projects that have real returns and are willing to share profits with users. Real returns not only refer to the short-term gains at the time of listing, but more importantly, to the continuous creation of value through actual business models, and returning it to token holders or ecosystem participants.

For example, a certain decentralized perpetual contract trading platform has adopted this model. It uses all trading fees for the buyback of the platform's tokens, effectively linking the coin price closely with the product usage. According to data platform statistics, this platform accounts for nearly half of the decentralized perpetual contract trading volume, with a daily trading volume of 3.78 billion USD and daily revenue of about 1 million USD. Even during the current market downturn, its token price remains relatively stable.

Overall, no matter how popular a concept is, it will eventually cool down. Those projects that can establish a long-term foothold in the cryptocurrency market are still the ones that find the matching point between product and market, have high user stickiness, and can continuously create actual value. When choosing investment targets, focusing on the substantive content and long-term development potential of the project, rather than the short-term speculative heat, may be a wise choice to get through the current market difficulties.