13 BEAR MARKET OBSERVATIONS ON CRYPTO'S CURRENT STATE

Summary from the TLDR Crypto newsletter

Crypto is at "peak depth," with sellers exhausted but no marginal buyers yet, early-stage fundraising near-dead as VCs chase AI instead, and hackathon/grant funding down ~95%, risking a shrinking, "legacy industry" outcome if capital doesn't return by Q1 2027. Crypto has narrowed to four markets with product-market fit: memecoins/spot, perps, yield, and prediction markets, plus stablecoin payments. Non-financial protocols (governance, social, identity, and gaming) are effectively dead. The field is consolidating around "everything exchanges" (Coinbase, Robinhood, Solana, and Polymarket) and yield packagers (USDT, USDC, Aave, and Morpho), with only community-led chains (ETH and Solana) and distribution-led chains (Base, Robinhood's Tempo, and BSC) surviving.