The grass that donkeys can never catch — A cold reflection on the never-ending cycle of the crypto market

The Power of Traffic Does Not Equal the Wisdom of Traffic

This is one of the most thought-provoking perspectives during the recent meme coin craze. Following this line of thought, a bigger question emerges: does the crypto industry really have a “end of history” day?

Back then, Japanese-American scholar Fukuyama proposed the “End of History” theory, and the crypto world also experienced a similar sense of fate — in every cycle, someone despairingly says: the coins are all issued, the opportunities are gone, this track is dead.

After Bitcoin, there are no more cryptocurrencies. After Ethereum, no more smart contract public chains. After XX, no more meme coins.

It sounds painfully true. But it’s wrong. All wrong.

Scarcity Always Exists

Since the wave of coin issuance in 2017, with the standardization of ERC-20, inscriptions, zero-threshold launch platforms… token supply has exploded like a geyser. Thousands of tokens emerge daily, and theoretically, the market should be saturated by now.

But just when people declare “there’s no room for innovation,” clever minds always find new angles, creating new explosive points and new stories of sudden wealth. Why?

Because what is truly scarce is not the coin itself, but the opportunity to make money.

Having more coins is useless. Hot money chases scarcity — that kind of scarcity that can make people rich overnight. As long as this scarcity exists, hot money will always chase it, and new opportunities will always arise in the market.

The Blind Donkey Turning the Mill

From another perspective, the whole game is like this: hot money is a donkey with its eyes covered, constantly circling and turning the mill. A piece of grass hangs just out of reach in front of its forehead, and the donkey keeps running and turning in circles for that grass.

Each round of the mill is called the “last chance” or the “ultimate track.” But new mills always appear, pulling the donkey to turn again.

You can never be sure whether the current mill is the last one. Because those who see through the essence of the game and have the ability to play their cards can always design new stories to attract hot money.

As long as the donkey’s descendants are endless, the opportunity to set up mills (or schemes) will always exist.

It is the donkey that produces the mill, not the mill that produces the donkey.

Just as there are endless leeks to harvest, there are always operators; not the other way around. The reason new games keep emerging is because hot money keeps running. Each new game is packaged as a new legend of wealth, heavily promoted.

Reality Is Harsh

The problem is — the donkey pulls the mill its whole life, chases that piece of grass its whole life, and in the end?

Losses. Bankruptcy.

The donkey’s life is finite, but the mill is endless. Using the finite to chase the infinite is destined to be a tragedy.

The only people who truly make big money are three types: the mill owner, the schemer, and the platform that creates dreams.