People invested in crypto on the theory that once Republicans replaced Democrats like Gensler at the SEC, the industry would be free to flourish. That thesis, combined with a “crypto President,” a friendlier Fed chair, and institutional adoption, was supposed to add up to a super cycle. Institutional adoption was seen as the industry’s ultimate marker of success, and it arrived via ETFs and broader TradFi integration, the remaining narrative once Bitcoin’s “digital money” and “digital gold” stories had run their course. But even though the regulatory chains came off (the SEC backing off enforcement, for example), nothing actually improved. If anything, a pro-crypto administration just meant crypto was free to get rugged BY the administration itself, and things went downhill from there. I’m still waiting for the next catalyst for small and mid caps, and the CLARITY Act isn’t it: it mainly benefits large players, and there’s no guarantee the benefits trickle down through the rest of the market. At this point, the main hope is that the four-year cycle repeats and retail apes back in on that pattern alone. But the last couple of years, mass rug pulls, mass dilution, security breaches, shrinking ROIs and Trump becoming the industry’s poster child, will probably make retail think twice next time. That said, harder doesn’t mean impossible. Liquid, high-upside utility projects will come around again. The real question is when, and in what form.