Well, there you go—altcoins have basically fallen back to square one.

Back in early October, I said, “Bitcoin and altcoins: eating dirt, but having a good time.” Looking back now, Bitcoin is doing okay—it’s only pulled back by around 20%, just a scrape; it can get back on its feet after a bit of rest. Altcoins, though, have really taken a beating. Plenty have gone straight back to where they started their rally, without even managing a decent bounce.

Let's talk a bit more today.

Can altcoins still be worth playing after this? Yes. But let me make one thing clear upfront: it’s not that they’re “back in play”—you have to be selective. There’s no fresh money coming in now, and projects held up by nothing but stories will slowly be drained dry. The ones that can make it are those that generate their own revenue and then use it to buy back their own tokens. We’re already seeing signs of this, and most likely that’s the direction things will go from here: buyback-and-burn models.

No fluff—just three things. Anyone willing to put in a little effort can check them:

First, did it actually bring in any money? Don’t look at TVL, how many tokens it issued, or daily active users juiced by incentives. Look at how much real fee revenue the protocol brought in. A quick look at DefiLlama and a couple of quarterly reports will tell you. Don’t be lazy about this step. If it has low revenue and is staying alive on a narrative, move on.

Second, how much of the money it earns does it use to buy back its own token? The percentage alone is useless—you need to compare that amount with the size of its market cap. If the market cap is huge, even a pretty-looking percentage is barely a dent. A modest percentage can be more meaningful if the market cap is small and they’re buying every month.

Third, do they actually burn the tokens they buy back? I know someone’s going to ask: are there buybacks that don’t burn tokens? Yep—ARB, for example. They buy tokens back and stick them in a separate wallet. That’s not a burn; it’s just moving them to another pocket. They still hold the keys, and they can dump the tokens whenever they want. So don’t just look for a “buyback” announcement—check the on-chain address. That tells you more than anything.

Only talk about position size if it passes all three checks. Miss even one, and it’s just a story.

Now, stablecoins. There are really only two worth talking about right now: ENA and CRCL. But they’re not the same thing. ENA is an on-chain protocol (its USDe is the dollar-pegged coin, just to be clear—don’t nitpick me on that). CRCL is Circle stock, which you buy on the US stock market. People call these “crypto stocks.”

Why bring this up all of a sudden? It’s not because some new coin just came out. It’s because the people actually using stablecoins have changed. Europe and the US are working on regulations, Southeast Asia is rolling them out, and plenty of big companies are settling some business payments directly in stablecoins. Even people in coastal China who get paid for their export businesses have quietly started using them. Why? Not to profit from price moves—they want lower costs, faster payments, and not to have to wait until T+2 to reconcile everything. Once the rules are in place, this won’t just be crypto people getting excited among themselves. It’ll be payment infrastructure moving real money, on a completely different scale.

And that fill-in-the-blank question has been making the rounds lately: “Who’s most like Bitcoin was ten years ago?” If you ask me, I’d put CRCL.

It’s not that I’ve calculated how many times it could go up. It’s that the position it occupies is similar. Who took Bitcoin seriously ten years ago? But it happened to be on the path of “this could be how money moves in the future.” The path gradually opened up, and the price followed later. CRCL is now right at the intersection of compliant token issuance and dollar payments.

But let’s be clear about the risks, too: if Trump’s side loses both chambers of Congress, his hands will be tied, and the Clarity Act will probably be delayed. That would have a real impact on CRCL. If it passes, well, you know—off it goes. Until then, it could be a grind. Don’t force yourself to hold if you can’t take it. That’s just my personal view, not advice. I’m not out of the woods yet myself.

Last, that thing all over everyone’s feed today. We can’t confirm whether the gossip about Mr. Huang is true, but I do think it popped up at a telling moment. When even this kind of celebrity gossip can drown out earnings reports across everyone’s feed, it shows the hardware hype has pretty much run its course. Most of the people who were going to leave have already left.

So I’ll say it again: for US stocks, AI is the main thing to watch. It’s more or less in the bottoming range. I’m not saying you can nail the exact bottom—it’s just that you don’t have to keep avoiding it anymore.

But don’t dream about it, either. The hardware names that went up dozens of times? If you missed them, you missed them. It’s not realistic to expect the same thing to happen all over again. The next leg is about how this stuff makes its way into people’s lives.

The more I follow AI glasses lately, the more excited I get. Not because they look cool when you wear them, but because they can genuinely fit into everyday life—you don’t have to pull out your phone; just look up and you’re using them. First-person view, and lightweight. After all the hardware got built, what was always missing was an “entry point.” Glasses are much more personal than phones. Don’t just listen to the hype at launch events. Look at shipments, whether people wear them every day, and whether other companies start building for them. That’s what counts.

That’s basically it: pick your altcoins carefully, and only trust the ones that earn real money, do real buybacks, and actually burn the tokens. Keep an eye on when stablecoin regulations land. AI is moving from stacking up chips to putting it on your face—just watch how things develop.

Bitcoin is having a correction; altcoins are getting shaken out. There’s still dirt to eat, so just don’t keep your head down and shovel it in.$ENA $CRCL #ENA #CRCL