New Logic of Web3 Entrepreneurship under the New Global Trade Order

Deteriorating Macroeconomic Environment - A Crisis is Forming a New Order

Finance begins to enter a chaotic era

Since Trump returned to the White House, a series of unexpected economic and political measures have caused continuous turbulence in the global market. The most shocking is the escalation of tariff policies: starting from April 5, 2025, the United States will impose a uniform "baseline tariff" of 10% on all imported goods, and impose higher "reciprocal tariffs" on 60 countries including China and Vietnam (with tariffs on China once reaching as high as 125%). In the short term, this measure triggered huge fluctuations in the global market: U.S. Treasuries faced a wave of sell-offs, and the 10-year Treasury yield soared above 4.5%, marking the largest weekly increase in 20 years; U.S. stocks experienced severe volatility, nearly triggering a circuit breaker; the U.S. dollar index continued to decline, recording the largest single-day drop in several years. Although the U.S. later announced a delay in imposing new tariffs on some allied countries in exchange for a breather, investors remain deeply concerned about future uncertainties, as the global financial system seems to have entered a "chaotic era".

The international economic system established after World War II centered around the United States (such as the Bretton Woods system and the WTO framework) is facing the risk of disintegration: the rise of emerging economies has weakened the relative advantage of the United States, and the massive debt and fiscal deficits accumulated by the U.S. over the long term are continually eroding the credibility of the dollar, with the dollar's share in global foreign exchange reserves declining. Particularly, China's rapid development after joining the WTO, gradually approaching or even surpassing the U.S. in many technological fields, has triggered deep anxiety among the American elite. Breakthroughs by Chinese companies like Huawei in key technologies such as 5G chip design and communication base stations are signals that alert the U.S.: the previously significant technological gap has been rapidly narrowed, putting America's traditional manufacturing advantage in jeopardy, while a younger generation of Americans is increasingly engaging in fields like finance and the arts, showing less willingness to work in manufacturing. This series of changes indicates that the old order upon which America's dominance is based is becoming unstable.

Against this backdrop, U.S. policymakers have begun to contemplate building a new trade and financial order to maintain their global dominance. The strategic goal of the Trump administration is not only to secure better terms in trade negotiations but also to "start anew"—by establishing a new rules system to re-establish America's central position. This has two main intentions: first, to strike at major competitors, weakening the momentum of countries like China that are rapidly rising by leveraging existing globalization benefits; second, to seek new value anchors to provide new support for the shaky dollar credit and global trade. In this line of thought, traditional dollar credit needs stronger endorsements, and the U.S. has begun to turn its attention to assets like gold and Bitcoin, hoping to rebuild the trust foundation of the global financial system.

It is worth noting that since Trump took office, the U.S. government's attitude towards the cryptocurrency sector has undergone a significant shift. Shortly after taking office, Trump publicly expressed concern about the development of virtual currencies, contrary to his previous critical stance on Bitcoin. Some forces within the Republican Party and several state governments have gradually embraced Bitcoin in recent years, viewing it as "digital gold" to hedge against the risks of the dollar. It can be said that the U.S. is laying the groundwork for a potential new financial order, incorporating Bitcoin into its national strategic vision.

Bitcoin and Gold: The New "Dual Anchor" of the US Dollar

As global trade and financial rules face reconstruction, the United States attempts to create a new credit foundation for the dollar through "dual asset anchoring": incorporating both traditional gold reserves and emerging Bitcoin reserves. This strategy aims to strengthen the credibility of the dollar in the new order through a combination of physical assets and digital assets.

Gold has long been widely held by central banks as a means of storing value, and the U.S. Treasury's gold reserves (stored in the famous Fort Knox) are a crucial underpinning of the dollar's hegemony. Today, Bitcoin is being assigned a similar strategic position — regarded as the "digital gold" of the new era. By the end of 2024, the total market value of Bitcoin is approximately $2 trillion, which is only about one-tenth of gold's market value (approximately $20 trillion). From a long-term potential perspective, if Bitcoin's market value one day equals that of gold, its price still has several times the room for growth. It is precisely because of this growth potential, along with Bitcoin's unique advantages of decentralization, limited issuance (21 million coins), and high liquidity, that the U.S. is seriously considering incorporating it into its national reserve system.

In March 2025, the U.S. government rolled out a series of major initiatives in the cryptocurrency sector: On March 6, President Trump signed an executive order announcing the establishment of a "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve" and a "U.S. Digital Asset Reserve." The next day, the White House held a cryptocurrency summit, inviting certain trading platforms, industry giants like MicroStrategy, as well as members of Congress and officials to participate. Trump publicly expressed his support for the development of the cryptocurrency industry at the summit and pledged to push Congress to pass legislation on the regulatory framework for stablecoins and digital assets as soon as possible, to provide a clear legal environment. More notably, Trump stated at the summit: "Establishing a Bitcoin reserve is like establishing a virtual Fort Knox"—in other words, the U.S. intends to treat the Bitcoin reserve as the gold of the treasury in the digital age. This statement marks Bitcoin's formal entry into the U.S. national strategic level, being endowed with a status similar to that of gold.

This series of actions indicates that the United States intends to anchor Bitcoin alongside gold as a new financial system asset. In practice, the U.S. government has already accumulated a considerable amount of Bitcoin reserves (mainly from law enforcement seizures and other channels) and plans to further increase its holdings. Market rumors suggest a target of accumulating control over approximately 1 million Bitcoins (accounting for 5% of the total supply), a figure that approaches the proportion of the U.S. official gold reserves in global gold. Although this target has not yet been fully realized, the trend is evident: some U.S. state governments have even taken the lead in approving the purchase of Bitcoin with public funds for reserves; at the federal level, administrative orders and legislative proposals have been made to "normalize" Bitcoin. If the U.S. dollar can partially anchor physical gold and digital gold (Bitcoin) in the future, supplemented by blockchain technology to establish a new international clearing system, then the U.S. is expected to seize the initiative in future global financial games and extend the vitality of the dollar system.

Of course, the inclusion of Bitcoin also helps the United States address its own challenges. For example, the enormous national debt burden carried by the U.S. government is becoming increasingly heavy, triggering a credit crisis. If the U.S. controls a sufficient reserve of Bitcoin and pushes its price up in the future, it could cleverly mitigate debt risks by selling part of its reserves to fill the debt gap. This idea of "using crypto assets to dilute debt" has become a new imagination of the U.S. financial strategy. At the same time, the U.S. is also working on digital currency regulation: a recent bill proposed to bring stablecoins with a circulation exceeding $10 billion under Federal Reserve supervision, indicating that the U.S. aims to control the issuance rights and rule-making of crypto dollars (dollar stablecoins) to consolidate the dollar's dominant position in the crypto world. Dollar stablecoins + gold + Bitcoin, these three together outline the prototype of a new dollar order—maintaining the legal status of the dollar while being supported by physical and digital assets to enhance risk resistance.

Market Environment Correction and "What to Do in the Second Half"

In the past year, the global cryptocurrency market has undergone a dramatic shift from frenzy to calm. The total market capitalization of crypto assets has fallen from a historical peak of about $3.71 trillion to around $3.04 trillion (data source: CoinMarketCap, data date: 2025.04.23), and the market has entered a deep correction and liquidation phase. Macroeconomic turbulence (such as rising inflation and interest rates) combined with tighter regulation has led to the disappearance of many projects lacking real value support during this round of adjustment. However, for entrepreneurs who firmly believe in the long-term value of blockchain, this moment is actually the best opportunity to build a foundation and gather strength, nurturing new opportunities— as the bubble of the last cycle has faded, it is a great chance to calmly refine products and emerge with strength.

In such a "second half" environment, entrepreneurs should consider: what is suitable to do in the second half? Simple traffic strategies are no longer sustainable, replaced by entrepreneurial logic centered around hard-core value. In the current market environment, the following directions contain new opportunities:

• Bitcoin (BTC) ecosystem: Financial innovations around the Bitcoin network ("BTC Fi"), infrastructure upgrades, and the reconstruction of real assets and payment networks based on BTC.

• Other public chain ecosystems: Innovations that return to the essence of efficiency and profitability on certain public chains, breaking away from purely "traffic competition" and creating sustainable decentralized finance (DeFi) applications that are product-oriented.

• Real World Assets (RWA) and Payment Finance (PayFi): Combining on-chain technology with real assets and payment scenarios to develop a new model supported by stable cash flows.

• Cryptocurrency concept stocks: Pay attention to the rise of "blockchain concept stocks" in the traditional capital markets, as well as the new path towards stock listing for Web3 startups.

Next, we will analyze the above ideas and explore specific entrepreneurial opportunities worth paying attention to during the macro pullback period.

Entrepreneurial Opportunities Surrounding BTC: BTC Fi, BTC Infra, BTC RWA & PayFi

Although Bitcoin has long been regarded as "digital gold" and its mainnet features are relatively simple, a series of recent technological and application advancements are injecting new vitality into the Bitcoin ecosystem. We see three major entrepreneurial opportunities surrounding the BTC network:

• BTC Fi (Bitcoin Finance): Creating new types of financial assets on the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin is no longer just a static store of value, but is evolving into an underlying platform for issuing various financial assets. Recently emerging protocols such as BRC-20 and Runes have sparked a trend of issuing token assets on the BTC mainnet; a protocol launched by a certain company, Taproot Assets (TA Protocol), has made it possible to issue stablecoins, bonds, and other financial assets within the Bitcoin ecosystem. This means that the Bitcoin mainnet is expected to take on more value-carrying functions in the next cycle, upgrading from "digital gold" to a value storage network that supports a rich array of assets. Representative projects like Bedrock and Solv focus on building decentralized financial services such as lending, trading, and derivatives on the Bitcoin network, promoting a leap in BTC financing and asset issuance capabilities.

• BTC Infra (Bitcoin Infrastructure): Reshaping the smart infrastructure on Bitcoin. To address the shortcomings of BTC's native functionality, the industry is attempting to build a smart contract layer for Bitcoin similar to certain public chains. One path is to develop EVM-compatible Bitcoin sidechains or Layer 2 (such as BTC L2 with certain public chain smart contract capabilities), expanding the DApp development space of the BTC network. Another path involves solutions native to the Bitcoin protocol family, such as the RGB protocol, Lightning Network, and other Bitcoin-native second-layer technologies, which focus more on enhancing privacy, scalability, and payment efficiency, creating a lightweight and cost-effective on-chain execution layer for the BTC mainnet. Representative projects like Unisat, Merlin, B², etc., focus on building Bitcoin's Layer 2, middleware tools, and enhancing the development ecosystem and scalability of Bitcoin.

• BTC-Powered RWA & PayFi: Unlocking the potential of Bitcoin in the realm of real-world assets and payments. RWA based on the Bitcoin network is gradually rising, such as the tokenization of U.S. Treasury bonds, physical assets, etc., with Bitcoin providing a globally verifiable settlement mechanism as the settlement layer, endowing such assets with a highly credible value anchoring. At the same time, the "PayFi" model emerging from payment infrastructures like the Lightning Network brings Bitcoin back to the payment stage—such as integrating AI agents with Bitcoin micropayments to facilitate interactions between machines and between humans and machines.