Looking at the US election from the perspective of Web3: What changes have taken place in the industry landscape?

Original title: Returning from the United States to talk about the impact of the election on the Web3 industry

Original author: Meng Yans thoughts on blockchain

I just returned to Australia after my trip to the United States. Before I set off, I was fully confident that I would be able to write a few short essays with unique viewpoints and profound thoughts after this trip, and explain the current situation and trends of crypto in the United States. As a result, when I really picked up the pen, it seemed that many images floated in front of my eyes, but I felt that my mind was empty. In the past two years, I have traveled to many places with crypto as the perspective, but no place is as difficult to write as the United States. This country is so big, so rich, and so important that it gives me a kind of psychological pressure, that is, before I put pen to paper for any point of view, a bunch of faces and materials will emerge in my mind to refute it. With such entanglement, it is difficult to form any text. In this case, if you are a person who has high demands on yourself, you will never use your own confusion to make others clear, and force output to mislead others. But I don’t have high demands on myself, and I am thick-skinned. Even if I mislead others, I don’t feel ashamed, but proud. So I decided to force myself to write something anyway, like a blind man touching an elephant, not seeking correct views, and not afraid of being scolded, just talking about the facts I saw and heard and some simple ideas.

Where to start? This one-month trip to the United States happened to be before the 2024 US election. Almost everyone I met talked to me about this topic, and I heard a lot of new and interesting opinions. In this case, I will first write an article to talk about my observations on the US election from the perspective of the Web3 industry.

Crypto? A small matter

If there is any widely held consensus about this election, it is that many people realize that this is an extremely important election in the history of the United States and even the world, and it is likely to affect the direction of history in the next few decades. Before I came to the United States, from the perspective of the Web3/crypto industry, I was most concerned about the impact of this election on this industry. But when I really arrived in the United States, I made a cup of coffee and called a friend who lives in the United States. He analyzed the far-reaching impact of this election from various aspects such as economy, politics, immigration, social security, Sino-US relations, and the Russian-Ukrainian war. Even I gradually felt that compared with these major topics, crypto is actually a small matter. Even if we are most closely related to the interests of this industry, we should not ignore those bigger topics. Therefore, let me start with a few big topics. Of course, my output is definitely one-sided, but I just tell the truth and am not responsible for objectivity and fairness.

Public security is not a problem, the economy is the big problem

During my stay in the United States, I only visited two states, California and Washington, both of which are deep blue states politically. I exchanged views on the election, AI, and Web3 with more than a dozen people, most of whom were Chinese, but there were also two white people and one Indian. I must admit that my English is still a bit difficult to discuss these topics. The depth of communication in English is much worse than in Chinese, so the most inspiring and interesting opinions for me mainly came from Chinese friends.

The most interesting point of view I heard was that a friend defined this election as a choice between Trumps second term and Obamas third term. When I was in the United States, the only televised debate between Trump and Harris happened to take place. It is generally believed that Harris won this debate. But according to this friends recollection, in the 2019 Democratic Party primary, Harris performed very poorly in the multi-person televised debate and was beaten by her opponents in the party. With her own ability, she could not even pass the party primary. She was able to have the opportunity today because of Obamas promotion and recommendation. Even her extraordinary performance in this TV debate must be inseparable from the pixel-level support and training of the Obama team behind her. In other words, judging from Harriss resume and ability, her source of power is Obama. In officialdom, people must be responsible for the source of their power, so if she is elected, she will definitely look up to Obama and fully implement Obamas will in governing. So it is better to say that it is a campaign between Trump and Obama than a campaign between Trump and Harris.

This also directly led to some people denying Kamala Harris. Because the US presidential election has a mature system, candidates start from the party primaries, and then openly accept the screening of party members in rounds. The final winner accepts the party nomination and competes for the presidential election. Kamala Harris was first the vice president and now the presidential candidate. She did not go through the test of the party primaries, but was promoted by Obama behind the scenes. Some friends sighed, how come the American Democratic Party with thick eyebrows and big eyes is now also engaging in small circle court politics? I have to say that I had never thought of this before, and after listening to my friends comments, I also felt a little weird.

So how would people choose between Trump and Obama? This is a matter of opinion. Some people think Obama is not bad, quite decent. However, this friend, as well as another Chinese American friend I met, are quite fierce. They believe that Biden, as a representative of the Hillary faction, embodies the proposition of the Democratic establishment, and has generally scored positive in the past four years. However, choosing Obama as president in 2008 and letting him serve for eight years was the biggest mistake the American people have made in history. As for why they said that, they did not elaborate on it. They only said that Obamas harm to the United States was deep-rooted. The gnashing of teeth reminded me of the words that Prince Gong Yizhen said before his death, holding Emperor Guangxus hand, It is difficult to make such a big mistake even if all the iron in the nine provinces is gathered.

However, this is an extreme opinion. Others believe that Biden/Harris has done a much better job than Trump in actively promoting US investment in high-tech industries, rationally managing Sino-US competition, and repairing relations with allies. In particular, the new Cold War-style competition between China and the United States is a core event in international affairs today and in the next 20-30 years. It has a profound impact on everyone in the world, especially for Chinese people. In my opinion, the work done by the Biden administration on Sino-US relations should be recognized by most people. Of course, I have heard some people on social media criticizing Biden for being too weak on China, but I have not seen this view in the real world, especially among Chinese friends in the United States.

When it comes to domestic affairs, my feeling is that everyone is generally dissatisfied with the Democratic Partys governance over the past four years. The complaints are mainly focused on the economy, illegal immigration and social security. Among them, illegal immigration and the related homeless, drugs and social security issues are what they complain about the most. Of course, they are also the hot topics about the ugly country on the Internet in simplified Chinese. Free America, shooting every day has long become a golden sentence in the domestic online comment area.

But I have to be honest. I dont have much say on illegal immigration and public security issues because I havent encountered any problems. Of course, when homeless people gather near Little Saigon in Seattle, it does look like a street party for ragged people, but when I walked through them with my bags, they ignored a bald Asian rough guy and ignored him. There were no threatening words or body movements. As for a person who was camping on the streets of Westwood in Los Angeles, he kindly taught me how to pay parking fees. However, I have to explain that his teaching level was really bad, which caused me to receive the only parking ticket on this trip. What really touched me about the problem of homeless people was a black lady I met on the train at San Francisco Airport. She was fat, dirty, and sloppy. The skin on her exposed calves was ulcerated and purple. There was pus and blood on her heels, and her whole body exuded an indescribable stench. This stench was not even smelled on Chinese migrant workers in the 1980s and 1990s, and it was enough to form a deadly chemical attack on decent people. I knew at a glance that this woman had severe diabetes. If she didnt get effective treatment, she would probably have to have her limbs amputated to save her life within a few months. From the tip of the iceberg, we can see that the homeless problem in San Francisco must be very serious. Im sure the rumors about fentanyl zombies, car smashing, and shootings are not groundless, but I didnt see any of them.

What I have personally experienced is the soaring prices. The last time I came to California was in 2018. This time, I looked again and found that the prices have risen so much compared to that year that I cant even recognize them. From restaurants to hotels, from car rentals to gasoline, from price tags to tipping options, every price tag reminds you that this is a crime scene of massive inflation.

In fact, for my generation who experienced Chinas economic boom, rising prices are not unfamiliar. In the early 1990s when I was in high school, hot dry noodles near Hubu Lane on Zhonghua Road in Wuchang cost 18 cents for 2 taels. I would eat 4 taels for 36 cents, and I could enjoy one of the ultimate happiness that a teenager could get at that time. Now the same amount of hot dry noodles costs 5-6 yuan, which has increased more than ten times. However, this increase has occurred little by little over a few decades, and is accompanied by a greater increase in peoples income, so apart from complaining that the taste of hot dry noodles is not as good as it was back then, no one has much opinion on the price.

But its different in the United States. After a long period of stability, the price level in the United States has suddenly soared in the past three or four years. I remember that Professor Zhiwu Chen of Yale University once used his personal experience to introduce the stability of prices in the United States in the past. He said that when he went to Yale to study in 1986, a bowl of beef noodles next to the school cost $5. In the early 2010s, he returned to the store after becoming a professor and found that the bowl of beef noodles was still $5. He was filled with emotion. It can be seen that the United States has maintained low inflation for decades. I didnt go to New Haven this time, so I dont know how much that bowl of beef noodles costs now. However, in the Bay Area, meals that cost less than $10 in 2018 are now generally more than $17 to $20. If you treat people to a special restaurant, note that it is just a restaurant, not fine dining, you can easily spend $100 per person with tips.

Hotel prices have also skyrocketed. In China, you can stay in a five-star hotel, but here you are just squeezed into a motel room, which reminds you of the scene in the movie No Country for Old Men where the mushroom-headed man carries a high-pressure gas tank and a silencer to chase Thanos. In addition, some hotels charge you an additional $30-40 parking fee per day on the grounds of valet parking. In the classic BP of AirBnbs financing that year, it was written in black and white that the average room rate per night was $70. Now, this average price has to be multiplied by three. Anyway, its just one word: expensive. To be fair, we cant just complain about hotel prices, because Australian hotel prices are also expensive. But a friend in Seattle told me that hotel prices have suddenly doubled in the past three or four years.

Other tourist expenses: car rental, which cost $35 a day in 2008, now costs $65-80. 87 regular gasoline, $4-5 a gallon, about 7.50-9.20 RMB a liter, I dont know how it compares to China, but its more expensive than Australia. Overall, if I make a blind test, as a tourist, the cost of travel in the United States may be 50-80% more expensive than six years ago.

The situation of residents will definitely be better, and the things in the supermarket will definitely not increase that much. But the food prices I saw in Trader Joes, a very good local food supermarket, are also higher than the level of Woolworth/Coles in Australia, about 10-30% higher. I checked and found that from 2018 to 2024, the per capita GDP of the United States increased by 36%. But I believe that a large part of this increase was eaten up by inflation. A famous Chinese economist said that in 2024, Chinas GDP calculated based on purchasing power parity will be 1.3 times that of the United States. Although some people say that his main business is swimming and talking tough, and his economic views are not very reliable, I think that in this case, it is probably not too far from the facts.

Everyone has read about the devaluation of the US dollar in China in the media, but it is difficult to realize how serious the problem is without experiencing it yourself. The American friends I have contacted also feel the pain of this matter. Therefore, this is definitely the biggest economic failure of the Democratic Party in the four years of its rule.

But some friends also believe that Trump is the initiator of the inflation. The trade war with China, the poor epidemic control, and the pressure on the Federal Reserve to flood the market with money are all things that happened during Trumps tenure. These are the root causes of this round of inflation in the United States. How can Biden be blamed? I am powerless to analyze this debate.

If there is still some controversy about whether Trump or Biden should bear the responsibility for inflation, then the most profound and powerful criticism of the Democratic Party’s economic policies that I have heard is about tax reform.

A friend of mine who started a business in the crypto industry, R (his name is hidden without his permission), gave me a detailed interpretation of the Democratic Party’s series of “extreme left” reforms in corporate income tax and capital gains tax since the Obama era, which made me shudder and sweat. In short, during Biden’s administration, the United States revised the deferral system of corporate income tax, and now is considering taxing unrealized capital gains on stocks. According to my friend’s explanation, the reform of these two systems will severely hit the enthusiasm of startups and their employees, have a squeezing effect on employment in the high-tech industry, and undermine the enthusiasm of American stockholders for long-term investment, encourage speculation, and even severely suppress the valuation level of the US stock market. Tax issues are very complex and professional issues. I don’t have the ability to describe them accurately, but if his analysis is correct, then even as a layman, I think these tax reform measures are fundamental to the US economic system. I feel that people who don’t have a deep hatred for the United States can’t do such a thing.

However, I still have some doubts about this without serious research. Can these people really do this? So on this topic, I still need to learn more and dare not draw conclusions easily.

There are many other problems, such as undermining the rule of law with political correctness, misaligned social welfare systems, manipulation of the media, waste of public budgets, official corruption, etc. Many of these problems are deeper. In short, after listening to them, I feel that the Democratic Party has accumulated a lot of contradictions in the past few years of governance. Even in deep blue states, you can hear so many complaints. But unfortunately, I only visited the United States briefly and was unable to form my own opinion on these issues, so I will not expand on them.

Of course, after reading the above description, one may get the impression that the US economy is terrible and the public is dissatisfied. So I have to correct it. This is not the case. The US economy is currently developing strongly and thriving, presenting a scene of vigorous vitality and all things competing. If we compare the US with Australia, the US economy is obviously on the rise, and the Americans are obviously more motivated. However, as the most mature large-scale mass democratic practice in the world, the US election, driven by various campaign organizations and media mechanisms, has fully mobilized the enthusiasm of the public to participate in politics, so the problems accumulated in the past few years have been put on the table for discussion, creating an atmosphere that the United States has reached a crossroads of life and death, which highlights the seriousness of these problems. If this year is not an election year, I am afraid that no one will talk to me about these issues.

Trump, a generation of mediocrity

Even in deep blue states, the majority of my friends who supported Trump were in the majority, while those who supported Kamala Harris were in the minority. But I found that in fact, everyone was not satisfied with either candidate, and they just chose the less bad one out of the two options. Therefore, the disagreement between them was mainly about who was worse.

When I mentioned this discovery to a friend, I added that it would be great if a Reagan could come out at this time. When he heard this, his eyes briefly flashed. People of our age can understand this emotion.

Now the whole world has entered an era of mediocrity. What kind of foundation will these mediocre people lay for the future world? I dare not think about it, and it is hard to say.

Among this generation of leaders, Trump is certainly not the most mediocre, but the word mediocre is reflected in him in a relatively concrete way.

Among the friends I met, even those who support Trump, they criticized his many shortcomings without hesitation, such as his reckless words, lack of respect for others, love of boasting, and not looking like a monarch, etc. However, these are just minor details. The big issue that everyone criticized more severely was his attitude towards the Russia-Ukraine war.

I believe that Trumps current appeasement attitude towards Russia represents the public opinion of some Americans with isolationist tendencies. But to be honest, I have not met such a person. Only one Indian friend has given a hypothesis about this matter, that is, Trump probably wants to quickly stop the war and win over Russia to concentrate its forces on dealing with China. But even this Indian guy himself said that if this is really the case, Trump is too wishful thinking. Putin had a famous saying in the previous Sino-US trade war: sitting on the mountain and watching the tigers fight. If he gets out of the quagmire of Ukraine, will he throw himself into the arms of the United States?

Let’s not speculate on Trump’s logic on this issue. His communication with the outside world is really poor.

So this brings up another widely questioned question about Trump, which is whether he is already too old.

Many people believe that Trump played a good hand in this election, but his moves were bad. Not to mention the once-in-a-lifetime highlights of dodging bullets with his head tilted and waving the national flag, even the domestic inflation issue, if he just keeps on catching it and pursuing it relentlessly, he will win the election. But for some reason, Trump seems to have lost his previous sharp street smarts in this election, especially in the debates, where he repeatedly released koi at the critical moments, and instead made a fuss about some trivial topics, which is really incomprehensible. Back to the Russia-Ukraine issue, if he had just talked about some strategy and read The Forerunner of History, he would have scored high marks on this issue. But he just didnt do it, which really lacks oriental wisdom. Even if you have to tell the truth, can you explain your logic? You talk big every day, saying that you can achieve peace on the first day of your presidency, and that I am friends with Emperor Putin. What impression does it give people? Isnt it just Chamberlain with a gray beard and Truman with a white head? So many people wonder whether he has also been surrounded by the information cocoon he has created, losing his sense of reality and his strategic flexibility and agility?

But no matter what, among the people I have contacted, the majority still support Trump, not because they like Trump or dislike Kamala Harris, but because they sincerely believe that if the Democratic Party continues to govern, some of the underlying institutional structures in the United States may be destroyed. Let me put it this way, someone told me that the logic of the Democratic Partys canvassing is that although you dont know Kamala Harris, you hate Trump, so please vote for me. But after communicating with all the Trump supporters this time, I found that their logic is exactly the opposite: I may not like Trump very much, and I dont know Kamala Harris very well, but I know too well what kind of person Obama is, so I must vote for Trump.

All in all, the US election is really too complicated. I think if I had a ballot, after hearing so much information, I might be hesitant now. Fortunately, I dont have this ballot, so I dont have to worry about it.

Crypto topics enter the election: a breakthrough from zero to one

Finally, I can return to the topic of Web3/crypto, which I am more confident about. In fact, I wrote so much before just to give my fellow Web3 colleagues a background, so that everyone can understand that compared with the big topics mentioned above, Web3/crypto is a small matter and will not have any decisive impact on this election.

However, although it is small, it is also a breakthrough from zero to one. After all, crypto has become a topic of this election, which is the first time in the history of the US election. I hope everyone will not ignore the significance of this matter. I believe that with the development of the industry, in a few years, every US presidential candidate must propose a crypto strategy to win over voters.

At present, both candidates have expressed their views on crypto. Trumps statement is very positive. He not only participated in the Bitcoin Conference to support BTC and used BTC to buy hamburgers for diners, but also criticized the SECs attitude towards crypto and declared that he would replace the chairman with someone who is friendly to crypto. Harris only mentioned digital assets and blockchain in a few recent speeches. It is difficult to judge whether it is a well-thought-out policy oath or a perfunctory speech to attract votes. Based on these superficial phenomena alone, if Trump wins the election, he should adopt a more crypto-friendly policy. Not only is the crypto market more likely to usher in a bull market, but the development of the Web3 industry may also accelerate. If Harris is elected, the development of the crypto market and the Web3 industry will definitely be slower, but there will be development.

Of course, people will question whether these statements of the two candidates will be implemented or just fudged. I think Trump should have formed a firm opinion on crypto, and if elected, he will intend to implement a series of his policy proposals. However, Kamala Harris, that is, the Obama team, has not actually figured it out yet, so they have left more flexibility. If Kamala Harris comes to power, there are all kinds of possibilities. If Trump comes to power, the certainty is relatively high.

Why do you think so? Precisely because crypto is a small topic and will not have a decisive impact on the election results, the two candidates are not willing to fool around with this issue to win votes, so their statements are more credible. Especially Trump, he is too lazy to say nice things on the Russia-Ukraine issue, let alone be hypocritical on the crypto issue. On the other hand, the statements of the two are actually in line with the value propositions of their respective parties. The Republican Party itself emphasizes personal freedom, which is more in line with the value system of crypto. The Democratic Party is a disciplined organization, and its values advocate the expansion of government power and strengthening of regulation, which has some friction with crypto. But the Biden/Harris government is indeed more attentive to supporting the development of high-tech industries. So if Web3 proves itself to be a high-tech industry direction with strategic value in the next few years, Harris also hopes that the current caliber will reserve enough flexibility.

In such a situation, how do we judge the impact of the election on the crypto industry and market? My opinion is that no matter what the election result is, BTC will usher in a greater development. This matter is less affected by the election result and has a higher degree of certainty. However, for other Web3 tracks other than BTC, whether they are bulls or bears, big bulls or small bulls, the impact of the election result is more dramatic.

BTCFi: The Blue Ocean is Coming

BTC is currently the largest consensus common denominator between the crypto industry, Wall Street and the SEC, which will send BTC into a relatively stable cycle. In this cycle, BTCFi will usher in great development. Even if the industry environment deteriorates, BTC as digital gold can remain unscathed.

The logic of BTCFi is this: Wall Street regards BTC as a commodity in order to put BTC into the asset framework they are familiar with. After this work is completed, BTC assets interact with funds from Wall Street institutions. Compared with the previous support from the currency circle, BTC has gained support from another dimension, just like a table with an extra leg, the stability will be greatly improved. But dont forget that BTC is a programmable digital asset. Before, the relationship between BTC and DeFi was relatively weak, BTCFi did not develop much, and people did not explore and understand the programmability of BTC enough. Wall Street looked at the dull BTC and felt that it was no different from gold, wheat, and crude oil, so they put it in the commodity. But BTC is not gold, wheat, or crude oil after all, but a programmable digital asset. Now that Wall Street has straightened BTC and the Trojan horse has entered the city, it is time for the crypto industry to play the advantages of BTCs programmability. Based on BTC, through programming, we can realize a series of financial businesses such as reserves, pledges, loans, transactions, derivatives, etc. on the chain to create a prosperous BTCFi.

The essence of BTCFi is to add leverage on the basis of BTC. Different businesses are all different forms of leverage. The programmability of BTC facilitates the development of these leverages, and the openness and transparency of blockchain greatly reduce its trust friction. This is the core advantage of BTCFi. When leverage is added, the most feared thing is that the foundation is not solid and the earth shakes. The participation of Wall Street has consolidated this foundation, so the matter of BTCFi adding leverage has become very imaginative. In time, the value of BTCFi and BTC will show a multiplier relationship, that is, several times the total value of BTC itself. This situation has appeared in other major asset classes, and it is only a matter of time in BTC.

Of course, this requires a long period of incubation of a benign external environment. If Trump comes to power, such an external environment may appear earlier. On the one hand, Wall Street itself is bound to make some derivatives around BTC and provide more abundant tools to consolidate the foundation of BTC. On the other hand, in the crypto industry, the construction of BTCFi will be based on builders, giving full play to programmability, and will definitely produce a series of innovations. Compared with other DeFi branches, BTCFi is easier to gather consensus and gain legitimacy, with a more solid foundation, and its development is certain. When Trump comes to power and governs for four years, BTCFi will form a climate. If Kamala Harris comes to power, this matter will develop more slowly, but it will definitely happen.

What is the worst case scenario? It is what Trump threatened, world war and chaos. In this case, the development of Web3 may need to grope in the dark for a longer time, but BTC, as digital gold, will highlight its value. BTCFi, as BTCs decentralized reserve, transaction, and lending infrastructure, will obviously be more viable than the centralized system in the situation of chaos.

Of course, I really don’t think that something like a world war will happen soon, so we still plan the development of BTCFi according to the optimistic branch.

The famous marketing expert Geoffrey Moore has a very famous chasm model, which means that for a new technology, there is a deep chasm between early supporters and the mass market, and most technologies and products cannot cross this chasm. I think if Trump comes to power, the BTC ecosystem will cross this chasm in the next four years. If Kamala Harris comes to power, it may take longer, but it will definitely cross it. According to general rules, once a technology product crosses this chasm, the total scale will reach more than ten times the previous one. As for BTC, part of this scale of growth will come from the appreciation of BTC itself, but mainly from the development of BTCFi.

By the way, the above analysis is also the basis for Solvs long-term development strategy. Solv is now the largest TVL protocol in BTCFi, but we think this is just the beginning. Solv has made many infrastructure-level innovations for BTCFi. If you just think of it as a reserve protocol, it is hard to understand why we do these things. But in fact, Solv believes that BTCFi is about to usher in a big development, so it prepares these infrastructures in advance, which is also a typical blue ocean strategic thinking. So from a selfish point of view, I still hope that King of Understanding will enter the palace again.

Web3 needs orderly colonization

The biggest task for Web3 now is to create large-scale application products with a large number of users and practical application value. A large number of users is easy to understand, but what does practical application value mean? It means having real consumption scenarios and income models. In other words, users pay not to invest and make more money, but to spend money to enjoy, buy happiness, and gain satisfaction. It can be said that as long as this level is broken through and the external environment improves, Web3 will be able to usher in a real explosion.

So what is the current situation of Web3 development? It is a situation where one leg is long and the other leg is short. The long leg is technology, and the short leg is industry order.

I have repeatedly told my friends that you should not look at Web3 technology with old eyes. Many people were deceived by the ICO scam in 2017-2018, which was so bad that their understanding of Web3 has remained at the stage of air ICO project. Even those who know that Web3 has applications have a bad impression of its technical maturity and user experience. Yes, just two or three years ago, the main DAPPs were still low in performance, high in cost, and poor in user experience, exuding a geeky flavor. But in just these two or three years, Web3 technology has made great progress in almost all key branches. Some technical verification products I have seen recently have a user experience that is infinitely close to Web2. Therefore, I think the main contradiction of the entire Web3 has now transformed into the contradiction between the ever-changing Web3 technology development and the seriously lagging product and application ecology.

Many people are wondering why Web3 cannot produce large-scale application products. People have found many reasons and analyzed them over and over again, trying to conclude which products are suitable for Web3 and which are not. But I think the core reason is not the product itself, but the corruption of the industry order.

Although Web3 technology has made great progress, developing technology into a successful product requires a whole set of industry orders, including investment, incubation, RD, operation, promotion, marketing, supervision, and listing. The most important of these is the order of the listing process. We say that Silicon Valley is the global innovation center, not because the talents there are really supernatural, but because Silicon Valley has established a set of orders that are most conducive to rewarding innovation, and has linked up with the SEC and Wall Street to provide innovators with a full set of order support from cradle to listing. This set of orders was once exported to China, which led to the glorious 20 years of Chinas Internet. So order is crucial and decisive.

When Bitcoin and Ethereum were successful, many of us thought that blockchain brought a new order that was freer, more open, more equal, and more transparent. But you sow dragon seeds and reap fleas. After seven or eight years of practice, the crypto industry has not only failed to breed a new order that surpasses Silicon Valley, but has instead established a more distorted, ugly, and fraudulent order that reverses right and wrong. After Token 2049 in Singapore this year, many participants published summary essays. If you read these essays from the perspective of order summary, it is not difficult to get a glimpse of how bad and desperate the real order of the crypto industry is now. This bad industry order is the real reason that hinders the breakthrough and development of Web3.

Order is a product, and it is the most important and expensive product. Some countries and regions have not been able to establish a healthy order for thousands of years, and have always been struggling in the quagmire of history. Similarly, what worries me most about the Web3 industry is that it cannot evolve a healthy order by itself. At least for now, I don’t see any hope.

The practical solution to this problem is to open our arms, introduce external builders, welcome order colonization, quickly cleanse the existing five turbidities and evil world, and establish a new set of rules. The closest thing to this goal that I have seen so far is the Token Safe Harbor plan proposed by the US SEC. This plan allows crypto projects to enter a three-year safe harbor, raise funds and incentivize through the issuance of tokens, and not be pursued by securities law for the time being. But after three years, the project must meet a series of conditions before it can leave the safe harbor and enter a normal operating cycle. If a project in the safe harbor is suspected of fraud, the person responsible will be severely punished by law. I think people who understand the crypto market should not find it difficult to see that such a plan grasps the key and lays the foundation for the emergence of a new order.

It is in this sense that we can grasp the key by examining the impact of the US election on Web3. If BTCFi will develop well regardless of whether Trump or Harris comes to power, then the difference between Trump and Harris is huge for the future of Web3. If Trump fulfills his promise and replaces a crypto-friendly SEC chairman, then we may see suggestions like Token Safe Haven implemented in a short time, and a new and benign industry order will be slowly established, stimulating countless Web3 innovations. If Harris comes to power, the SEC will most likely continue to pursue todays policies, regardless of whether it changes people or not, that is, based on the dogma of the old order, crypto will be pushed out without compromise and flexibility, and this new field will be whipped from time to time. If this is the case, then I think the establishment of a new Web3 order will probably take a long time to grope in the dark.

Therefore, most crypto comrades hope that Trump will win the election, probably purely out of expectations for currency prices and liquidity. But I am more concerned about whether Trump can really change the SECs attitude towards crypto once he is elected, which is the key to whether Web3 can take off quickly.

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