Ledgers are not nautical charts; an accountant's perspective cannot reveal new continents.

Author: Daii

The crypto world has never lacked bears.

Some say it's a bubble, some say it's a casino, some say it will eventually go to zero. These kinds of voices have appeared so often that they've become difficult to provoke in the crypto community. Because after every bull and bear market, insiders can find reasons to refute: you don't understand the technology, you don't understand cycles, you don't understand consensus, and you haven't experienced Bitcoin rising from the ashes time and time again.

What's truly uncomfortable isn't an outsider standing on the sidelines calling it absurd.

But an insider, taking out a ledger, calmly asking:

• How much money does this system burn through each year?

• Where does this money come from?

• If the next batch of buyers doesn't appear, who will fill the hole? The truly jarring part of Yang Haipo's *The Endgame of Cryptocurrency* lies here. It doesn't use moral criticism of cryptocurrencies, nor does it judge them with regulatory language, nor does it mock Bitcoin with the arrogance of traditional finance. It uses a colder language: it doesn't talk about freedom, revolution, digital gold, or a new continent for human finance; it only talks about money. Where does the money come from? Where does it flow? Who consumes it? How much is left? How much real margin is behind the market capitalization? In his framework, the crypto market isn't an imaginative future world, but rather a behemoth that needs constant blood transfusions. Miners need electricity, exchanges need to support their teams, project teams need to pay salaries, market makers need funding, compliance requires lawyers, marketing requires budgets, KOLs, summits, cloud services, auditing, security, listing on exchanges—every link consumes real-world money. Therefore, he compressed the crypto industry into an extremely stark equation: Net Inflow = Historical Consumption + Margin Balance. This isn't a strict financial statement identity, but rather a stress test framework for estimating the industry's funding gap. The power of this statement lies in its ability to suddenly make many grand narratives concrete. A project can claim to represent the future of finance, but the flow of funds will ask: Who is actually paying? A token can have a market capitalization of tens of billions of dollars, but the flow of funds will ask: if holders want to cash out, who will buy it? A bull market can be explained as a victory of consensus, but the flow of funds will ask: who exactly is the marginal buyer this time? This is the value of Yang Haipo's article. It drags the crypto world back from mythology to the accounting room, forcing people to admit: the crypto market is not a perpetual motion machine for wealth. Every rise requires buying pressure, every high return has costs, and every huge market capitalization will eventually face the test of liquidity withdrawal. What's even more impressive about Yang Haipo is that he puts the crypto market on a medical examination bed. He clearly sees which projects are anemic, which protocols rely on transfusions, and which market capitalizations are just bloated. The problem is, a medical report isn't a death certificate. It can show that a patient is ill, but it can't alone prove that the species has no future. Because the ledger is important. But the ledger isn't a nautical chart. It can tell us how much food is left on board, how many days of fresh water will last, and how many months the sailors' wages will last; it can't alone prove that there's no new continent at the end of the sea. What this article really wants to discuss isn't whether Yang Haipo's bearish view is correct, but a more crucial question: Can a cash flow perspective liquidate the crypto bubble, but can it pronounce Bitcoin's death sentence? Or to put it more directly: If Bitcoin is truly betting not on the crypto industry itself, but on the repricing of the long-term credit of the fiat currency system, then can a current flow of funds statement provide a final verdict? This is the most noteworthy aspect of this debate. To understand this debate, we must first see what Yang Haipo's article truly raises. 1. What did Yang Haipo see from the perspective of flow of funds? Yang Haipo's article deserves serious consideration because it identifies at least three things. First, market capitalization is not cash. Second, consensus does not operate at zero cost. Third, this round of the crypto market has deeply integrated into the traditional financial system. These three things constitute the most valuable part of the perspective on capital flows. 1.1 Market Capitalization is not Cash: The Easiest Common Sense to Forget in a Bull Market The crypto market excels at creating stories. In a bull market, we hear countless grand terms: decentralized finance, digital gold, on-chain sovereignty, open networks, asset tokenization, permissionless innovation, and global settlement layers. These words aren't all false. But they share a common problem: they make people forget about the ledger. A project can claim to change finance, but servers, salaries, audits, market making, listing on exchanges, lawyers, and marketing all cost money. A high-yield pool can claim to be innovative finance, but if the returns don't come from real borrowing demand, real transaction fees, or real external income, but from subsidies, token inflation, and expected points, then it's essentially packaging future selling pressure as today's returns. The first question raised here from a cash flow perspective is the most basic, yet most brutal: If no new money comes in, can the system continue to function? Once this question is posed, many narratives begin to distort. Because a project's high market capitalization doesn't necessarily mean it has sufficient exit liquidity. Market capitalization is simply: the last traded price × total supply. However, realization depends on sustained buying pressure. If only a small portion of a token's circulating supply is traded on the market, using that marginal trading price to value the entire token is an illusion. The price can be high, the market capitalization can be large, but the actual amount of money exiting the market may be very small. In a bull market, this difference is often overlooked. The numbers on the screen are bright. The unrealized profits in the account are large. The project's valuation is very high. The media headlines are also quite lively. But once the cashing out actually begins, problems arise: Who will take over? How much? For how long? If many people leave at the same time, will the price still hold? Therefore, the first value of the cash flow perspective is separating "how much it looks worth" from "how much you can actually take." Price is the number on the screen. Liquidity is the money you can actually take. These two things seem the same in a bull market; in a bear market, they suddenly diverge. 1.2 Consensus is not zero-cost: Security budgets ultimately need to be paid for. The second thing Yang Haipo observed is that there are indeed huge rigid costs within the crypto industry. He estimates the industry's annual rigid costs at $350-500 billion, including mining costs, trading platform operations, human resources, cloud services, compliance, marketing, project operations, and related services. This estimate is certainly open to debate, but the question it raises cannot be ignored: the crypto industry is not a zero-cost consensus game; it involves real expenses for electricity, equipment, human resources, marketing, and compliance. Taking Bitcoin mining as an example, it doesn't simply operate out of thin air with the slogan "decentralized security." The Bitcoin white paper clearly states at the outset that it aims to solve the problem of enabling peer-to-peer online payments in the absence of a trusted third-party financial institution, and to address the double-spending problem through a peer-to-peer network and proof-of-work. Records created through proof-of-work require recalculation if they are to be altered. This means that Bitcoin was never a "cost-free faith system" from the beginning. It makes the cost of trust explicit. Traditional financial systems entrust trust to banks, clearinghouses, payment companies, and national credit; Bitcoin, however, transforms a portion of the trust cost into computing power, electricity, miner incentives, node verification, and network consensus. Therefore, the electricity consumed by miners is not only an industry cost but also a purchase of security for the entire network's transaction history. Transaction fees are not just user friction but also a payment for irreversible settlements. However, from the perspective of investors and the long-term operation of the system, this still constitutes a real problem: Who pays for the security budget? Today, miners' income mainly comes from two parts: block subsidies and transaction fees. Block subsidies halve approximately every four years, and the long-term trend is definitely downward; whether transaction fees can make up for this shortfall in the long run is one of the core issues that Bitcoin must face in the next decade or so. Therefore, Yang Haipo's concerns on this point are serious. He may not have proven that Bitcoin will collapse as a result, but he reminds us that any system that relies on real resources to maintain security cannot operate forever on faith alone. This is not anti-Bitcoin. This is a serious discussion of Bitcoin. Mature discussions don't avoid costs, but rather acknowledge them and then continue to ask: What do these costs buy? Is the market willing to pay for it in the long run? Can the transaction fee market absorb the safety budget when subsidies decrease in the future? The value of the capital flow perspective lies in its ability to make "consensus" confront the real costs. 1.3 Money Comes, But People Don't Necessarily Come: ETFs Change the Entry Point of Funds The third thing Yang Haipo saw was that the market structure has changed in this round. On January 10, 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the listing of several spot Bitcoin ETPs. Gary Gensler clarified in a statement that the SEC approved the listing of several spot Bitcoin ETPs, but this action was limited to ETPs holding Bitcoin, a non-security asset, and did not mean that the SEC was willing to approve listing standards for other crypto asset securities; he also emphasized that the SEC did not approve or endorse Bitcoin itself. This is crucial. ETFs do open channels for money. Traditional financial investors don't need to learn mnemonic phrases, register with crypto exchanges, or worry about on-chain transfer errors to gain exposure to Bitcoin prices through familiar securities accounts. But ETFs don't automatically open channels for people. Investors who buy IBIT, FBTC, or other spot Bitcoin ETFs may not create wallets, use DeFi, participate in DAOs, research airdrops, or naturally channel their funds into the altcoin ecosystem. Past bull markets typically followed a slope: newcomers entered exchanges, first buying BTC and ETH; after making money, they started researching altcoins; then they entered DeFi, NFTs, GameFi, and Memes; finally, the entire ecosystem expanded together. But the ETF path is more like a pipeline. Money enters Bitcoin's price exposure but may remain in traditional financial accounts. It increases Bitcoin's institutional accessibility but doesn't necessarily increase the number of native crypto users. This explains an important phenomenon: why, despite Bitcoin's increasing institutionalization, many altcoins, airdrops, NFTs, and small DeFi projects are finding it increasingly difficult to secure sustained funding. The money is coming, but the people aren't. In other words, the money is entering Bitcoin but not naturally flowing into the broader crypto marketplace. The value of the capital flow perspective here lies in distinguishing two things: Bitcoin buying and crypto ecosystem user growth. They are related but not the same thing. 1.4 Money in the Stock Market is Becoming Bitcoin Buying Potential Beyond ETFs, digital asset treasury companies follow the same pattern. According to official data disclosed by Strategy, the company holds 818,334 BTC, with an average cost of approximately $75,537 and a total cost of approximately $61.814 billion. (Strategy) This indicates that listed companies using stocks, convertible bonds, and preferred shares to finance their Bitcoin purchases is no longer a marginal phenomenon. It is forming a new capital conversion mechanism: converting stock market funds into Bitcoin spot buying opportunities. This is not a bad thing. But this means that marginal buying of Bitcoin is no longer just from within the crypto community. It increasingly relies on the risk appetite, financing conditions, stock price premiums, bond market environment, and institutional allocation needs of the traditional financial system. If ETFs and digital asset treasury companies are significant buyers in this cycle, then in the future we cannot only look at on-chain data, exchange balances, and miner behavior, but also at US stock market risk appetite, ETF net inflows, treasury companies' financing capabilities, the premium or discount of listed companies' stock prices relative to their BTC net asset value, the interest rate environment, and institutional portfolio rebalancing. This is where Yang Haipo truly got it right: The crypto market is no longer a closed pond. It's increasingly like a reservoir connected to the traditional financial system. Water can come in, and it can go out. This makes the bull market bigger, but also makes the vulnerabilities more complex. 1.5 Summary: He didn't simply predict a downturn, but rather brought the illusion back to reality. At this point, we can give Yang Haipo a fairer evaluation. He didn't simply predict a downturn. He did three valuable things. First, he reminded us that market capitalization is not cash, unrealized gains are not wealth, and price is not the exit from liquidity. Second, he reminded us that the crypto industry has real costs, and all costs must ultimately be paid by someone. Third, he reminded us that ETFs and digital asset treasury companies are important funding channels, but they are more like blood transfusion mechanisms than proof of the industry's own ability to generate revenue. These three points are all worth careful consideration. The perspective of cash flow is a scalpel. It can cut open many abscesses, identify many illusions, and force grand narratives to confront cash constraints again. But the ledger is not a world map. It can tell us where the bleeding is, where the necrosis is, and where it needs to be removed; it cannot judge alone whether a new system will mature. Therefore, the next real discussion should be: Where should this scalpel of cash flow cut? And what should it not be used to misjudge? 2. Where should this scalpel of cash flow cut most? The fund flow perspective is not an anti-crypto tool. It's more like a scalpel. It doesn't care how grand the story sounds or how loud the community slogans are. It only does one thing: separates the path of money. Who is paying? Why are they paying? For how long? What's left in the system after payments stop? Looking at it this way, many things in the crypto market become immediately clear. 2.1 Altcoins without external revenue: The biggest fear is "who will take over" The first type of project most suitable for liquidation through fund flow analysis is altcoins without external revenue. The most common structure for these projects is: First, issue tokens to create market capitalization; then use market capitalization to attract attention; then use attention to attract trading volume; then use trading volume to prove "active ecosystem"; finally, have later investors provide exit liquidity for early investors. This doesn't mean all altcoins are worthless. However, it does mean that any project that can't answer the question of "who is actually paying" must be examined from a cash flow perspective. A protocol having users doesn't equate to a token having value. An ecosystem having activities doesn't equate to token holders capturing cash flow. A project having a TVL (Total Value Locked) doesn't mean the funds will remain long-term. TVL is particularly misleading. While TVL may seem like trust, in many incentive projects, it's more like a temporary parking lot for hot money. It goes wherever there are subsidies; it goes wherever there are more points; it goes wherever the airdrop expectation is high. Once subsidies stop, funds recede like the tide. Therefore, from a fund flow perspective, a harsh but necessary question arises: Without subsidies, how many users would be willing to stay? This question can filter out a significant amount of false prosperity. 2.2 Subsidized High-Yield Projects: APY is unimportant, who pays is important. The second type is subsidy-driven high-yield projects. In the crypto market, "high yield" is the most dangerous yet most tempting term. A BTC annualized return of 8%, a stablecoin annualized return of 20%, and a points pool hinting at a future large airdrop can all create the illusion that the principal is still intact and the returns seem like free money. However, a cash flow perspective breaks this down: Where do the returns come from? If the returns come from genuine borrowing demand, then it's interest. If the returns come from genuine trading volume, then it's transaction fees. If the returns come from project subsidies, then it's marketing expenses. If the returns come from token issuance, then it's inflation transfer. If the returns come from later buyers, it's a relay game. Even with the same 10% annualized return, the source is completely different, and the risks are completely different. Therefore, crypto investors can't just ask about APY. A more important question is: Who pays for APY? If the payer is a real borrower, you bear credit risk, liquidation risk, and protocol risk. If the payer is a project subsidy, you bear the risk of subsidy interruption and exit congestion. If the payer is a new user's principal, you bear the risk of insufficient newcomers. The value of the cash flow perspective lies in transforming "returns" from an attractive number into a traceable cash flow path. 2.3 High FDV, Low Circulation VC Coins: Valuation Space May Only Be Future Selling Pressure. The third type is VC coins with high FDV, low circulation, and no value capture. This is the structure that has hurt ordinary investors the most in the past few cycles. When a project launches, the circulating supply is small, and the FDV is high. There are not many tokens available for trading in the market, so the price is easily maintained. However, a large number of investor, team, advisor, and ecosystem incentive tokens are waiting to be unlocked in the future. In a bull market, people focus on "valuation potential." In a bear market, they realize that's not potential, but a looming threat. Looking at these projects from a capital flow perspective, the immediate question is: How much new buying pressure is needed to absorb the unlocked tokens? If the protocol itself doesn't generate real revenue, the tokens don't share in fees, and there's no necessary governance, then these unlocked tokens will ultimately have to be absorbed by new market funds. In other words, what appears to be "ecosystem development" may actually be an "exit strategy." The most dangerous aspect of these projects isn't that they go to zero from the start. On the contrary, they might start off very promising. It boasts prestigious investment institutions, a beautiful website, major exchanges, complex narratives, KOL promotion, and short-term price performance. However, a capital flow perspective strips away these embellishments, focusing on just one question: Who will absorb these assets in the future? If this question remains unanswered, even the most compelling narrative is merely delayed selling pressure. 2.4 Stablecoin Reservoirs: A Liquidity Indicator, Not an Industry-Wide Safety Net. The fourth category involves the optimistic narrative that misinterprets stablecoin reservoirs as an industry-wide safety net. Stablecoins are indeed one of the most important liquidity pools in the crypto industry. However, it cannot be simply understood as "all stablecoins will buy crypto assets at any time." Stablecoins have multiple identities. They are trading margins. They are on-chain dollars. They are cross-border transfer tools. They are DeFi collateral assets. They are also liquidity reserves for businesses, market makers, traders, and ordinary users. Therefore, a larger stablecoin market capitalization does indicate a more important on-chain dollar network; however, it does not mean that all crypto assets have an equivalent cash cushion. Yang Haipo views stablecoins as margin pools, a direction that is insightful. However, a more accurate statement would be: Stablecoins are both margin for the crypto market and one of the few products in the crypto industry with genuine external demand. Visa's on-chain stablecoin analysis shows that the global circulating stablecoin supply exceeds $272 billion, with adjusted trading volume reaching $10.2 trillion over the past 12 months. Visa also cautions that public chain data contains cross-chain discrepancies and noise, making it complex to interpret stablecoin activity. This indicates that stablecoins are no longer just tools for buying cryptocurrency on exchanges, but are evolving into a layer of global dollar settlement network. However, this does not mean that the market capitalization of stablecoins can be directly equated with the available buying power in the crypto market. It could be margin for buying cryptocurrencies, cross-border payment funds, corporate settlement funds, DeFi collateral, market maker inventory, or ordinary users' USD savings. Therefore, the perspective of fund flows forces us to create a tiered structure: Many altcoins and memes are indeed negative-sum games. Many high-yield, subsidized projects are indeed transfer payments. Many high FDV, low-liquidity projects are indeed exit structures. However, stablecoins, custody, trading infrastructure, compliance access, and cross-border settlement cannot necessarily be summarized as a "casino." This is the truly advanced use of the cash flow perspective: It's not about using it to condemn the entire industry, but about using it to separate different assets. What needs to be removed should be removed. What needs to be observed should be observed. What needs to be repriced should be repriced. 2.5 Summary: The value of the scalpel is in stratification, not in declaring everything dead. The value of the scalpel is not in killing the patient. The point is to tell us: where the necrotic tissue is, where the inflammation is, and where there is still potential for growth. The same applies to the crypto market. From a cash flow perspective, many projects indeed have no future. But if we conclude that the entire crypto world has no future, especially that Bitcoin's problems have been solved, then we've gone from using the tool to making a misjudgment. Because the next step is to face a more difficult question: can the cash flow tool cut through Bitcoin? Can it prove that Bitcoin is just a loss-making company with no revenue? Can it prove that consensus assets necessarily have no long-term value? Can it prove that the institutional insurance demand outside the fiat currency system has been fully released? The answer is not complicated: No. Because a cash flow perspective is necessary, but it is not a panacea. It can defuse bubbles. It can identify subsidies. It can expose exit structures. It can remind us that stablecoin reserves are not a safety net for the entire industry. However, it still cannot answer Bitcoin's most fundamental question alone: ​​In a world where fiat currency credit is constantly being repriced, does humanity need a non-sovereign, self-custodial, and non-arbitrarily inflatable digital hard asset? 3. Don't treat the "ledger" as a "navigation chart." The value of Yang Haipo's article lies in pulling the crypto industry out of its excited narrative and placing it on a calm cash flow table. Who is burning money, who is injecting capital, who is relying on newcomers, and who is mistaking market capitalization for wealth—once these questions are presented, many bubbles will lose their luster. But that's precisely the problem. The ledger is important, but it's not everything. 3.1 Ledgers can perform stress tests, but they cannot replace future judgments. A ledger can tell you how much food is left on the ship today, how many days the fresh water will last, and how many months the sailors' wages will last. But it cannot prove alone that there is no new continent at the end of the sea. This is not romanticism, but a methodology. The cash flow perspective is essentially a stress testing tool. It excels at answering: Under the current structure, can this system be sustained? What are the current costs? What are the current revenues? How much margin is currently held? How many new buy orders are currently placed? Is liquidity sufficient in the event of a concentrated exit? These questions are extremely important. However, it is not good at answering another question: Will an asset that has not yet been fully monetized be repriced in the future due to changes in the institutional environment? This is where Bitcoin's real complexity lies. 3.2 Bitcoin is not a company; it is first and foremost an experiment in trust structures. If we analyze Bitcoin as a business, we naturally ask: Does it have revenue? Does it have profit? Does it have cash flow? Can it cover costs? But Bitcoin was never a company from the beginning. Satoshi Nakamoto's problem in the Bitcoin white paper wasn't "how to make a company profitable," but rather how to enable direct electronic payments between two parties without a trusted third-party financial institution; how to solve the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network, timestamps, and proof-of-work, and how to create an unalterable public transaction history. (Bitcoin Whitepaper) This means that Bitcoin's core problem isn't a profit and loss statement, but a trust structure problem. Traditional financial systems entrust trust to banks, payment companies, clearinghouses, regulatory systems, and national credit. Bitcoin, on the other hand, transforms some of the trust costs into computing power, electricity, miner incentives, node verification, and network consensus. Therefore, Yang Haipo's reminder that "security is not free" is correct. The electricity consumed by miners isn't a waste that disappears into thin air; it's a purchase of security for the entire network's transaction history. Transaction fees aren't just friction costs; they're payments for irreversible settlements. The real debate isn't about whether these costs are meaningful, but rather: How much is the market willing to pay for this security and independence in the long run? This is the core controversy surrounding Bitcoin. 3.3 Bitcoin's lack of cash flow doesn't mean it lacks monetary value. Gold can help us understand this. Gold doesn't have cash flow, but its value doesn't solely come from industrial uses and jewelry consumption. Data from the World Gold Council shows that global gold demand, including OTC gold, exceeded 5,000 tons for the first time in 2025, with a total value of $555 billion, a year-on-year increase of 45%. Global gold ETF holdings increased by 801 tons in 2025, and demand for gold bars and coins also rose to a 12-year high. Central banks and official institutions made net purchases of approximately 863 tons of gold in 2025, lower than the more than 1,000 tons per year of the previous three years, but still representing strong buying. (World Gold Council) This data illustrates that monetary assets cannot be judged solely by whether they generate cash flow. Gold certainly has physical uses. However, if gold were merely an industrial metal, it would not have achieved its current global reserve status. The truly expensive part of gold is that people are willing to pay a premium for an asset that is non-sovereign, has a long lifespan, and low credit dependence. Bitcoin is far less mature than gold. It doesn't have thousands of years of history, the long-term reserve inertia accumulated by the central bank system, or the physical stability and cultural heritage of gold. It is younger, more volatile, and more fragile. But it raises the same kind of question: Beyond sovereign credit, does humanity need another ultimate asset? An ultimate asset refers to an asset that does not rely on the debt commitment of another party and can serve as a long-term store of value or a reference for final settlement. If the answer is no, Bitcoin will certainly be repriced. If the answer is yes, Bitcoin's value cannot be explained solely by today's cash flow gap. 3.4 Ledgers answer cash flow questions, nautical charts answer institutional questions. This is the true meaning of "the ledger is not a nautical chart." The ledger examines today's real-world constraints. The nautical chart discusses future path choices. Yang Haipo's ledger can tell us about the costs of the crypto industry, the pressure of altcoins to absorb losses, whether margin pools can withstand concentrated exits, and whether ETFs and DAT are merely funding mechanisms. These are all important. But Bitcoin's nautical chart asks a different question: Will the fiat currency system continue to expand its debt? Will inflation and currency devaluation recur? Is global capital increasingly in need of transnational, non-sovereign, self-custodial assets? Are financial accounts and payment systems increasingly reliant on identity, authorization, and censorship? In this environment, are people willing to pay a premium for an open, scarce, globally circulating digital asset? One is the industry's cash flow problem. The other is the monetary system problem. The real shortcoming of Yang Haipo's article is that it expanded the answer to the former into the conclusion of the latter. 4. Bitcoin is not betting on the crypto industry, but on the fiat currency system. If you place Bitcoin within the broader context of the crypto industry, it's easily overwhelmed by various noises. Exchange collapses, altcoins going to zero, memes experiencing wild price swings, KOL-driven trading, VC coin unlocking, airdrop-based infighting, contract liquidation, cross-chain bridge hacks, project team absconding, and constant regulatory penalties. These problems are real. It is precisely because they are real that Yang Haipo's perspective on capital flows is so impactful. It reminds us that much of the so-called "crypto wealth" is merely a paper illusion created by marginal prices; much of the so-called "ecosystem prosperity" is simply a liquidity landscape created by subsidies, market making, leverage, and latecomer buying. But what Bitcoin is truly betting on is not the perpetual prosperity of the crypto industry. 4.1 Bitcoin's real battleground is not altcoins and memes. Bitcoin is not competing with altcoins to see whose narrative is more up-to-date. It's not competing with exchanges to see whose cash flow is better. It's not competing with DeFi protocols to see whose TVL is higher. It's not competing with memes to see whose spreads faster. Bitcoin is truly betting on a more fundamental question: Will the fiat currency credit system continue to create demand for non-sovereign hard assets? This is the fundamental difference between Bitcoin and most crypto assets. If, for the next few decades, major global fiat currencies maintain their purchasing power, sovereign debt remains manageable, capital flows freely, financial accounts are sufficiently secure, payment systems are not easily censored, and ordinary people's savings are not diluted in the long term, then Bitcoin's institutional insurance value will naturally be suppressed. However, the real world is not moving in such a clean direction. 4.2 The Era of High Debt: The Real Soil for the Bitcoin Narrative The IMF, in its Fiscal Monitor released in April 2026, pointed out that global public debt approached 94% of global GDP in 2025 and is projected to reach 100% by 2029. The IMF also specifically mentioned that this round of debt accumulation is mainly driven by major world economies, while social spending, defense spending, strategic autonomy, and interest burdens are continuously squeezing public finances. (IMF Fiscal Monitor, April 2026) The data from the United States is even more telling. FRED data shows that in the fourth quarter of 2025, the total public debt of the United States was 122.56815% of GDP, remaining around 120% since 2024. (FRED: Federal Debt as Percent of GDP) This does not simply lead to the conclusion that "the dollar is about to collapse." The US still possesses the world's deepest national debt market, the strongest capital market, the most important reserve currency status, and extremely strong institutional inertia. But this data at least shows that the fiscal structure behind the world's most important reserve currency is no longer what it was during the low-debt era. This is the soil for Bitcoin's long-term narrative. Bitcoin does not need to prove that the dollar will collapse tomorrow. Nor does it need to prove that everyone will abandon fiat currency. It only needs to prove that in a world of debt expansion, currency repricing, capital controls, and rising financial censorship risks, there will be a segment of people, institutions, and balance sheets willing to pay a premium for a digital hard asset that does not rely on sovereign credit. This logic is not the logic of corporate cash flow. It is closer to the logic of institutional insurance. The value of insurance is often not understood when things are calm, but rediscovered when risks are repriced. 4.3 Risks have not disappeared, but risk is not the final proof. Of course, this does not mean that Bitcoin is risk-free. Bitcoin has no cash flow. Bitcoin is extremely volatile. Bitcoin relies on electricity, the internet, miners, nodes, and market consensus. Bitcoin still faces long-term security budgets, mining pool concentration, regulatory pressure, centralized custody, and future technological shocks. However, these risks only indicate that Bitcoin is still under testing; they do not directly prove that the Bitcoin problem has been solved. This is also where Yang Haipo's article most easily slides into over-conclusion. He is right that both Bitcoin and the crypto industry have real costs, and he is also right that security budgets are not free. However, the jump from "there are costs and risks" directly to "the end game is over" lacks a crucial argument: Will the future world continue to pay a premium for such non-sovereign asset networks? This question hasn't been fully answered from a capital flow perspective. 4.4 Stablecoins prove real demand exists, but they answer different questions than Bitcoin. Stablecoins can help us see this distinction. Stablecoins are one of the products in the crypto industry that comes closest to real demand. Visa's on-chain analytics show that the global circulating stablecoin supply exceeds $272 billion, with adjusted transaction volume reaching $10.2 trillion over the past 12 months. However, Visa also cautions that public blockchain data contains significant noise from bots, algorithmic trading, and non-traditional settlement activities, necessitating the filtering of inflated activity through adjusted metrics. (Visa: Stablecoins and the Future of Onchain Finance) Stablecoins demonstrate that the crypto world is not entirely devoid of genuine demand. But stablecoins address a different problem: how to enable faster, more open, and less frictional on-chain flow of the US dollar. It is an on-chain extension of the fiat currency system. Bitcoin, on the other hand, asks: what happens if people not only need a more convenient US dollar but also an asset independent of the US dollar issuance system? One is to put the US dollar on the blockchain. Another is to leave a door outside the US dollar. This door is not wide yet; the wind outside is strong, and those who enter will experience violent fluctuations. But the existence of this door itself has already changed the structure of global asset selection. 4.5 The problem with endgame theory is that it compresses four things into one conclusion. Therefore, Yang Haipo's endgame theory seems premature here. He saw the funding dilemma in the crypto industry. He saw the predicament of latecomers in altcoins. He saw the funding mechanisms of ETFs and DAT. He saw the tension between margin pools and total market capitalization. These are all important. However, he didn't adequately distinguish four things: the cash flow crisis in the crypto industry, the difficulty of finding buyers for altcoins, the real-world application of stablecoins, and the monetization process of Bitcoin. These four things cannot be compressed into a single conclusion. Funding flow can prove that many altcoins have no future. This demonstrates that many high returns are a subsidy illusion. It demonstrates a significant gap between industry market capitalization and exit liquidity. It demonstrates that ETFs and DAT are important channels for injecting capital into the market in this round. However, the flow of funds cannot prove that: Bitcoin's consensus value as an institutional insurance asset has been fully realized. This is the most important dividing line in this article. Yang Haipo correctly diagnosed the problems plaguing the crypto market. But he wrote a death certificate instead of a medical report. A more accurate assessment would be: The crypto industry will be liquidated by cash flows, but the Bitcoin issue will have to be answered by the future of the fiat currency system. Conclusion: The ledger is not the final answer; selection is. Yang Haipo's article deserves respect, not because it necessarily provides the correct conclusion, but because it brings to the table the questions the crypto market least wants to face: Where does the money come from? Where does the money flow? Who is paying the costs? Who is waiting to exit? This ledger is cold, but also necessary. It reminds us that the crypto market is not a perpetual motion machine for wealth. Much of the prosperity is not value creation, but capital migration; much of the high return is not financial innovation, but subsidy packaging; much of the market capitalization is not wealth, but an illusion created by marginal prices. But the ledger is not the end game. When Yang Haipo compressed the entire crypto industry into a flow of funds table, he also compressed Bitcoin's most important question: In a world where fiat currency credit is constantly being repriced, does humanity still need a non-sovereign, self-custodial, non-arbitrarily inflatable, globally circulating digital hard asset? The flow of funds can participate in answering this question, but it cannot end it alone. The flow of funds can see today's wounds, but not necessarily tomorrow's organs; it can see the bubble in the crypto market, but not necessarily the demand being created by the fiat currency system itself. Therefore, what truly needs to end is not Bitcoin's unfinished experiment in monetization. What truly needs to end is the crypto market's illusion of wealth—that "as long as there's a narrative, there's a future." This article doesn't end with a simple "bullish" or "bearish" statement. Rather, it offers a discipline for judgment: use the ledger to filter out illusions, and use the chart to preserve the future. Without the ledger, the so-called future is nothing but gambling. Without a nautical chart, even clear-headedness can slip into conservatism. The endgame isn't the answer. Selection is the answer. Whether Bitcoin can become the ultimate asset outside the fiat currency system remains to be seen. But the illusions in the crypto market—those lacking real demand, value capture, and liquidity exit—are already over once the ledger is opened.