The truth about the crypto world: what is truly scarce is not the coin, but the opportunity to make money

Recently, I have read many discussions about the meme coin wave and suddenly recalled the concept of the end of history—that is, the kind of determinism that “everything is over, no new opportunities left.”

Such voices are indeed common in the crypto world. Some say there will be no revolutionary cryptocurrencies after BTC, some say there will be no truly public chains after ETH, and others say there will be no new tracks after meme coins. But all these assertions are mistaken.

The core issue is this: BTC is not the end point of cryptocurrency history, but the starting point.

Think about the 2017 coin issuance boom to understand this. At that time, there were few tokens, a lot of hot money, and supply did not meet demand. And now? ERC-20 standard tokens, inscriptions, zero-threshold launch platforms… What’s the result? Thousands of coins popping up daily, tens of thousands emerging—by all rights, the market should have been saturated long ago.

But the reality is quite the opposite—whenever people feel there are no more opportunities, clever individuals find new angles and create new explosive points. Why?

Because what is never scarce is the coin itself. What is scarce is the opportunity to make money, the possibility of getting rich overnight.

No matter how many coins are issued, it’s useless. Hot money is not chasing coins per se; it’s chasing “scarcity”—that kind of scarcity that can make people rich overnight. As long as this scarcity exists, there is room for the market to create new opportunities. And this scarcity is almost eternal because those who profit are always a minority.

It’s like a vicious cycle: hot money is always chasing, and the market is always creating new game rules. In a sense, hot money is like a donkey blindfolded at a mill—there’s always a piece of grass just out of reach, so it keeps turning in circles without stopping.

Informed speculators see through this. They are like the owners of the millstone—once the donkey gets used to the millstone, they immediately switch to a new one and continue turning the donkey in circles. The millstone exists because of the donkey, not the other way around. Without the green shoots, there would be no one to harvest them. The existence of the prey comes before the predator, not vice versa.

Therefore, new games and new opportunities will always appear. Each one is packaged as a “new hot spot” or “get-rich-quick opportunity” and heavily promoted. This logic is disturbingly self-consistent.

But the harsh reality is: most pursuers will ultimately end up with losses. The rules of making money are very clear—donkeys have limited lives, but the ways to operate the mill are endless.

In the end, only three groups truly make big money: the mill owners, the scheming speculators, and the dream-making platforms. Everyone else will eventually have to give it back.