The following was originally published on X by Andrei Grachev, Managing Partner at DWF Labs.

The Great Restructuring

From believers, to extraction, to hyper-competition.

Forget about cycles, mining costs, and all the other outdated frameworks. October 10, the wave of hacks, the arrival of TradFi, and IPO perps have already changed the game. But let's walk through it carefully.

The age of belief

In previous cycles, the market was driven by retail, by VCs, and — most importantly — by dreams and stories. Projects appeared selling things big and small: promises to change the world, or simply the fun of a meme. And for a long stretch, it worked. People were excited. VCs deployed capital. Traders traded. Markets moved up and down.

Above all, the top-tier exchanges ran frequent listings, and those listings drove capital to builders. That capital let teams build, reinvest in new crypto ventures, and fund new projects. Money flowed into crypto assets and circulated inside the market, changing hands from one participant to the next.

The shift to extraction

As the market drew more attention, more sophisticated financial players arrived. The game changed from "believe in something" to "extract from everything."

That is not a bad thing in itself — every healthy market needs both narratives. But liquidity-collapse events like October 10, when tens of billions were flushed out of the market, sharply reduced the number of people with the capital, and the appetite, to believe in something.

Consider the hundreds of teams, funds, and companies holding large long positions or token bags that only keep sliding. Many are close to bankruptcy, and for them there is no choice but to start selling. The OTC market shifted with them — from "no hedging allowed, we want a long-term partner" to "we don't take deals without a hedge and funding-rate protection." Combined, all of this only added pressure to an already illiquid market.

The exchange problem

And what about the exchanges? Their core revenue stream is trading fees. But when people are consistently losing money and assets only fall, traders leave and volume dries up.

This is exactly why a spot listing on a top exchange has become so hard to secure: too much risk to brand health, for too weak an outcome. If I ran an exchange right now, I wouldn't list anything either.

Enter the perps

But financial markets are vast, and another black swan arrived — perps on commodities, stocks, and IPO names. They are everything the current market wants: volatile, trending up, driven by FOMO, and fed by a constant stream of global events that keep trader interest high.

And so: welcome silver perps, welcome the Tesla perp, welcome the oil perp, and of course, welcome the SpaceX perp. Their share of volume is climbing fast — SpaceX alone accounted for roughly 10% of total perps volume on top exchanges in a single day recently. People trade, people are happy, and there's no rug-pull risk, no founder risk, no listing due diligence. Just let people trade and watch revenue grow.

What this means for builders

It sounds good — crypto becomes a 24/7 venue for trading, hedging RWAs, and more. But it creates a very hard environment for new crypto projects.

I expect that as revenue from TradFi-related perps grows, exchanges will become stricter with new listings and may even delist existing coins. Traders will keep migrating toward these assets. Founders who already have tokens will have little left to do but cash out as much as they can before it's too late — and the bar for new projects will rise even higher.

A different stage, not a worse one

In general, this is neither good nor bad. It is a different stage for the market and its participants, one that forces everyone to be smarter, stronger, and ready to compete against very capable players.

Strong companies will make more and more. Others will make less and less. From believers, to extraction, to hyper-competition — and we are now near the end of the extraction stage.