New Logic of Web3 Entrepreneurship under the New Global Trade Order

The Deterioration of the Macroeconomic Environment - A Crisis is Forming a New Order

The financial world is beginning to enter a chaotic era.

Since Trump re-entered the White House, a series of unexpected economic policies have caused continuous turmoil in global markets. Among them, the most shocking measure is the upgrade of tariff policies: starting from April 5, 2025, the United States will impose a unified "baseline tariff" of 10% on all imported goods, and higher "reciprocal tariffs" on certain countries. This decision triggered enormous fluctuations in the global market: U.S. Treasuries faced sell-offs, U.S. stocks experienced violent turbulence, and the dollar index continued to decline. Although the U.S. subsequently postponed the imposition of new tariffs on certain countries, investors remain deeply concerned about future uncertainties, and the global financial system seems to have entered an "era of chaos."

The international economic system established after World War II, centered around the United States, is facing the risk of collapse: the rise of emerging economies has weakened the relative advantage of the U.S., and the long-term accumulation of massive debt and fiscal deficits is continuously eroding the credibility of the dollar, with the U.S. dollar's share in global foreign exchange reserves declining. In particular, China's gradual approach to and even surpassing of the U.S. in various technological fields has triggered deep anxiety among the American elite.

Against this backdrop, the U.S. decision-makers began to brew a new trade and financial order to maintain their global dominance. The strategic goal of the Trump administration is not only to negotiate better terms in trade talks but also to "start anew"—by establishing a new rule system to re-establish the central position of the United States. This includes two main intentions: first, to strike at major competitors and weaken the momentum of countries like China that are rapidly rising by leveraging the existing globalization dividends; second, to seek new value anchors to provide new support for the shaky credit of the dollar and global trade. Under this line of thought, traditional dollar credit needs to be backed by stronger endorsements; the U.S. has begun to turn its attention to assets such as 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 his inauguration, Trump publicly expressed concern about the development of virtual currencies, reversing his previous critical stance on Bitcoin. Some factions 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 preemptively laying the groundwork for a potential new financial order by 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 cornerstone for the dollar with "dual asset anchoring": it includes traditional gold reserves as well as 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, with the U.S. Treasury's gold reserves being an important card in the game of dollar hegemony. Today, Bitcoin is being granted a similar strategic position – regarded as the "digital gold" of the new era. By the end of 2024, Bitcoin's total market capitalization is approximately $2 trillion, which is about one-tenth of the market value of gold, approximately $20 trillion. From a long-term potential perspective, if Bitcoin's market value one day reaches parity with gold, its price still has several times the growth space. Because of the optimistic outlook on this growth potential, coupled with Bitcoin's unique advantages of decentralization, limited issuance of 21 million coins, and high liquidity, the United States is beginning to seriously consider incorporating it into its national reserve system.

In March 2025, the U.S. government rolled out a series of significant 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 following day, the White House held a high-profile cryptocurrency summit, inviting industry giants as well as congressional members and officials to participate. Trump publicly expressed his support for the development of the cryptocurrency industry at the summit, committing to push Congress to quickly pass legislation on a regulatory framework for stablecoins and digital assets 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 view the Bitcoin reserve as the gold of the digital age. This statement marks Bitcoin's formal entry into the national strategic level of the United States, being endowed with a status similar to that of gold.

This series of actions indicates that the United States intends to use Bitcoin alongside gold as a cornerstone asset of the new financial system. In practice, the U.S. government has held a substantial amount of Bitcoin reserves, primarily sourced from law enforcement seizures and other channels, and plans to further increase its holdings. Market rumors suggest a goal of accumulating control over approximately 1 million Bitcoins, which would account for 5% of the total supply, a scale close to the proportion of the U.S. official gold reserves in global gold. Although this goal has not yet been fully realized, the trend is already evident: some state governments in the U.S. 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 are working to "legitimize" Bitcoin. If the U.S. dollar can partly anchor to physical gold and digital gold, namely Bitcoin, and further establish a new international clearing system through blockchain technology, then the U.S. is likely to seize the initiative in future global financial contests, extending the vitality of the dollar system.

Of course, the inclusion of Bitcoin also helps the United States solve its own problems. For example, the enormous national debt burden carried by the U.S. government is becoming increasingly heavy, leading to a credit crisis. If the U.S. controls enough Bitcoin reserves and raises its price in the future, it could cleverly mitigate debt risks by selling part of its reserves to fill the debt black hole. This idea of "diluting debt with crypto assets" has become a new vision for U.S. financial strategy. At the same time, the U.S. is also making efforts in digital currency regulation: a recent bill proposed to regulate stablecoins with a circulation exceeding $10 billion, indicating that the U.S. wants to control the issuance rights and rule-making authority of crypto dollars ( and stablecoins ) to consolidate the dollar's dominant position in the crypto world. Dollar stablecoins + gold + Bitcoin, together outline the prototype of a new order for the dollar—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 experienced a dramatic shift from frenzy to calm. The total market value of crypto assets has fallen from a historic peak of around $3.71 trillion to about $3.04 trillion (. Source: CoinMarketCap, Data Date: 2025.04.23 ). The market has entered a deep correction and liquidation phase. Macroeconomic turbulence (, such as rising inflation and interest rates ), coupled with tightening regulations, has caused many projects lacking real value support to disappear during this round of adjustments. However, for entrepreneurs who firmly believe in the long-term value of blockchain, this moment is actually the best time to build and prepare for new opportunities— as the bubble of the previous cycle has dissipated, it presents a good chance to calmly refine products and accumulate strength to stand out.

In such a "second half" environment, entrepreneurs should consider: what is suitable to do in the second half? Simple traffic tactics have become difficult to sustain, and instead, the entrepreneurial logic revolves around hard-core value. In the current market environment, the following directions contain new opportunities:

• Bitcoin ( BTC ) ecosystem: Financial innovation 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 efficiency and the essence of profitability on public chains like Ethereum, breaking away from merely "competing for traffic" and creating sustainable decentralized financial ( DeFi ) applications oriented towards products.

• 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 flow.

• Cryptocurrency concept stocks: Focus on the rising wave of "blockchain concept stocks" in the traditional capital markets, as well as the new path of stockization for Web3 startups.

Next, we will analyze the above ideas and discuss 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 functionality is relatively simple, recent technological and application advancements are injecting new vitality into the Bitcoin ecosystem. Around the BTC network, we see three major entrepreneurial opportunities:

• 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. Recent protocols such as BRC-20 and Runes have sparked a trend for issuing token assets on the BTC mainnet; the Taproot Assets protocol)TA protocol( launched by Lightning Labs makes it possible to issue stablecoins, bonds, and other financial assets within the Bitcoin ecosystem. This indicates that the Bitcoin mainnet is expected to undertake more value-bearing functions in the next cycle, upgrading from "digital gold" to a value storage network that supports a rich variety of assets. Representative projects such as Bedrock and Solv focus on building decentralized financial services like lending, trading, and derivatives on the Bitcoin network, driving a leap in BTC financing and asset issuance capabilities.

• BTC Infra)Bitcoin Infrastructure(: Reshaping the intelligent infrastructure on Bitcoin. To address the shortcomings of BTC's native functionalities, the industry is attempting to create a smart contract layer for Bitcoin similar to that of Ethereum. One path is to develop EVM-compatible Bitcoin sidechains or Layer2) such as BTC L2(, which possess Ethereum-like smart contract capabilities, expanding the DApp development space on the BTC network. Another approach involves solutions native to the Bitcoin protocol family, such as the RGB protocol and the Lightning Network, which are Bitcoin-native Layer 2 technologies focused on enhancing privacy, scalability, and payment efficiency, constructing a lightweight and economical on-chain execution layer for the BTC mainnet. Representative projects like Unisat, Merlin, and B² focus on building Bitcoin's Layer 2, middleware tools, and enhancing the development ecology 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 emerging, such as the tokenization of U.S. Treasury bonds and physical assets, with Bitcoin providing a globally verifiable clearing mechanism as a settlement layer, endowing these assets with 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 – for example, by integrating AI agents )AI Agent### with Bitcoin micropayments, enabling real-time small payments between machines and between humans and machines, thus providing efficient payment solutions for scenarios like SaaS services and data exchanges. Representative projects like LNFi focus on enhancing the practical application efficiency and user experience of Bitcoin in RWA and payment scenarios, empowering the payments and circulation of BTC.

Overall, the Bitcoin ecosystem is awakening comprehensively from the underlying protocol to the application layer. Whether it's issuing assets on the BTC mainnet, building smart contract layers, or using BTC for settling real assets and instant payments, Bitcoin has the potential to become a fertile ground for the next phase of innovation and entrepreneurship. For entrepreneurs, re-evaluating the possibilities of the Bitcoin network may uncover underestimated golden opportunities.

( Entrepreneurial opportunities around other public chains: efficiency-driven and product-oriented entrepreneurial logic

Besides Bitcoin, other public chains ) such as Ethereum, BSC, Solana, etc. ( are leading.