Why are more and more people choosing to leave the Web3 industry recently?

Written by: Blockchain Knight

“Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” Using Buffett’s words to describe the current Crypto market is probably the best description. Over the past period, I’ve often heard or seen scattered news about XXX “retreating from the circle.” This kind of news is less about complaints or grievances and instead reflects the current state of the industry.

As for why these people choose to leave the industry, I have roughly tracked it down to a few main reasons.

First, the most common reason is the dismal market conditions in the past period or the changes brought about by the market, which forced some people to temporarily leave this industry to seek “new life”; secondly, Web3 has been in a somewhat unappreciated “pathological” growth for the past one or two years, and some value creators choose to leave this field because they do not see real value growth; additionally, another group of people has seen the rise of AI and believes that Web3 has become a thing of the past, and they will pursue new blue ocean markets.

Of course, the above reasons show significant differences when refined to individuals, but none of these reasons can transform from local to overall, after all, most people in the market still choose to remain on the sidelines or continue to engage in construction, because this industry, which has been developing for more than a decade, is not facing such a dilemma for the first time.

It’s just that some people who have left this industry may be a relatively influential KOL, so it seems to affect a lot of people’s mentality. However, I believe that this stage is the real test for Builders. Putting aside these superficial restlessness, we need to see more things in the industry that are changing or have not been changed. I will briefly elaborate on this from the following three aspects.

Has the Web3 industry moved from a blue ocean to a red ocean?

According to a research report released by the BTC financial services company River in March, currently only 4% of the global population holds BTC, with the highest percentage of BTC holders in the United States, where about 14% of people hold BTC. From the perspective of development stages, the current BTC adoption rate is comparable to that of the internet in 1990 or mobile social in 2005.

Through this simple data analysis, we can see that the adoption rate of digital assets, led by BTC, is still in the early stages, far from what is referred to as a red ocean market. Even from an industry influence perspective, traditional financial giants like BlackRock and Fidelity have only just entered the arena. Just imagine, would they foolishly come in as the ones taking over?

From a logical and data analysis perspective, we must admit that if digital assets are the future direction of development or if Web3 is the intersection of the internet and AI, then the greatest possibility of this race has just run from the starting point to the midpoint, and there is still a long way to go.

Is the Web3 market left with only extravagant MEME narratives?

Of course, for the value creation in this industry, what has been most criticized in the past year is the explosive rise of MEME. MEME has attracted too much attention, and it has also led to many newcomers in this industry experiencing a cleansing, even causing some to lose confidence in the industry. However, as I mentioned in a previous Weekly, MEME is in the process of evolution, and after experiencing a bubble, it needs a new recovery growth, which may bring value to the industry.

Secondly, we should not only see some superficial hot changes, builders are still building, and value projects are still looking for their own breakthroughs. If you look at the change in the number of active developers over the past year, you can see that despite the decline, it is still at a high level.

Although the market currently seems to have cooled down and lacks a groundbreaking narrative like DeFi from the last cycle, looking back at the past from the present is always calm and full of opportunities, while looking at the future from the present feels a bit uncertain. But isn’t this the law of development and change of any matter?

Even looking back at the Web3 industry in 2018, it was still extremely bad, even dozens of times worse than now, but this did not hinder the subsequent explosion. We need time and patience to wait for the process of change from quantity to quality.

Will the Web3 market continue to “fall endlessly”?

Finally, it is naturally a question of price. Over 90% of people feel that this cycle is very different from previous ones and has not much similarity, so many predictions of “carving the boat to seek the sword” have become cannon fodder. However, if the concept of cycles is still valid, then we are likely still in this cycle, just without the crazy universal increase of the past.

Recently, due to issues with GS, the US stock market experienced a sharp decline, evaporating nearly $6.5 trillion in market value over two days. The three major US stock indices recorded their largest two-day drop and largest weekly decline since March 2020, which has also led to extreme conditions in global financial markets. Whether this volatility can improve in the short term needs to be viewed with caution.

So, when BTC has already retraced nearly 30% and the financial market is facing a once-in-several-years upheaval, can the entire Crypto market still remain unscathed? Perhaps this is a very difficult question to answer.

But the earliest economist, Fan Li, also known as the “God of Wealth,” has a classic saying worth pondering: “When the price is extremely high, it turns low; when the price is extremely low, it turns high; treating everything as dirt, while taking the cheap as if it were jewels.” Perhaps we are currently in a subtle moment of viewing everything as dirt.

Will BTC end up at $500,000 a piece? 7 years ago, it sounded like a joke to say that BTC would reach 1 million yuan a piece, but now it seems that it is not far away.