A few days ago, I was drinking with a brother who trades coins. He was holding his glass, looking worried, and said, “Bro, when will there finally be a Shanzhai season? I’ve been hoping since last year, and I still have half of my Shanzhai coins stuck in a loss!” I showed him two sets of data: from last year to now, except for a few Shanzhai coins that hit new all-time highs, the rest have either been sideways for a long time or fallen silent like a “dead water” pond. Especially after the big drop on October 11, many Shanzhai coins wiped out the gains of the past few months in a single day, with some even losing their principal almost to the bottom. It’s not that we’ve waited too long, but that the current market simply can’t support a “Shanzhai season.” In the past, Shanzhai coins surged because market funds were abundant, and retail investors dared to gamble; but now, the landscape has changed dramatically.

First, look at the macro environment: the US economy is weakening, and high US debt yields are draining liquidity from various markets, making it difficult for the crypto space to remain unaffected. Shanzhai coins are far less resilient than mainstream coins; once the market weakens, they are often the first to be harvested. More importantly, the market has lost its “fresh blood”: new funds dare not enter, old retail investors are afraid of being cut, and money is either tightly held or only allocated to BTC and ETH. The problem is—Shanzhai coins’ rise fundamentally depends on retail investors piling in. Now, with no one to absorb the selling, the so-called “Shanzhai season of universal rise” is naturally out of the question. Even ETH, as the leader of Shanzhai coins, has not broken new highs, and most Shanzhai coins remain unmoved—this is the most direct and brutal reality. $btc