Crypto Market Q3 Macro Research Report: Alt Season Signals Have Emerged, Institutions Adopt to Drive Selective Bull Run Eruption

1. The macro turning point has arrived: Regulatory warming and policy support resonance

As the third quarter of 2025 begins, the macro landscape has quietly changed. The policy environment that once pushed digital assets to the margins is now transforming into a systemic driving force. With the Federal Reserve ending its interest rate hike cycle, fiscal policy returning to a stimulus path, and global crypto regulation accelerating the construction of a "inclusive framework", the crypto market is on the eve of a structural reassessment.

First, the macro liquidity environment in the United States is entering a crucial turning point. Although the Federal Reserve still emphasizes "data dependence", the market has reached a consensus on interest rate cuts within 2025. The lag of the dot plot and the increasingly widening divergence between the futures market's anticipations create an upward channel for the valuation of risk assets, especially digital assets.

At the same time, efforts on the fiscal side are also underway. A fiscal expansion represented by a certain bill is bringing about an unprecedented capital release effect. The government is making significant investments in sectors such as manufacturing repatriation, AI infrastructure, and energy independence, creating a "capital flood channel" that spans traditional industries and emerging tech fields. This not only reshapes the internal circulation structure of the dollar but also indirectly strengthens the marginal demand for digital asset classes.

The fundamental shift in policy signals is more reflected in the changes in regulatory structure. A certain regulatory agency has undergone a qualitative change in its attitude towards the crypto market. The official approval of the ETH staking ETF marks the first recognition that digital assets with yield structures can enter the traditional financial system. The promotion of a certain public chain ETF has provided historically significant opportunities for assets that were once regarded as "high Beta speculative chains" to be institutionalized. Regulatory agencies are working on establishing unified standards for simplifying the approval of token ETFs, aiming to build a replicable and mass-producible compliant financial product channel. This is an essential transformation of regulatory logic from "firewall" to "pipeline engineering."

The compliance race in the Asia region is also heating up, with multiple financial hubs vying for the compliance dividends of stablecoins, payment licenses, and innovative projects. Several tech giants have applied for stablecoin-related qualifications, indicating that the trend of integration between sovereign capital and internet giants has begun. This means that in the future, stablecoins will no longer be just trading tools but will become part of payment networks, corporate settlements, and even national financial strategies.

In addition, there are signs of a recovery in the risk appetite of traditional financial markets. The S&P 500 has reached a new historical high, tech stocks and emerging assets have rebounded simultaneously, the IPO market is warming up, and user activity on retail trading platforms is increasing, all of which signal that risk capital is returning. This round of inflow is no longer solely focused on AI and biotech but is beginning to reassess blockchain, crypto finance, and on-chain structured yield assets.

As monetary policy enters a loose channel, fiscal policy fully relaxes, the regulatory structure shifts to "supervision equals support", and overall risk appetite recovers, the overall environment for encryption assets has long since departed from the predicament at the end of 2022. Under the dual drive of policy and market, the brewing of a new bull run is not driven by sentiment, but rather a process of value re-evaluation driven by the system. The spring of the crypto market is returning in a more gentle yet more powerful way.

2. Structural turnover: Enterprises and institutions are leading the next bull run

The most noteworthy structural change in the current crypto market is that chips are shifting from retail and short-term funds into the hands of long-term holders, corporate treasuries, and financial institutions. After two years of clearing and restructuring, the participant structure of the crypto market is undergoing a historic "reshuffle": speculative users are gradually being marginalized, while institutions and enterprises aiming for allocation are becoming the decisive force driving the next bull run.

The performance of Bitcoin has said it all. Although the price trend has been calm, its circulating chips are accelerating the "lock-up" process. According to data tracking from multiple institutions, the total amount of Bitcoin purchased by listed companies recently has surpassed the net inflow scale of ETFs during the same period. Many enterprises are viewing Bitcoin as a "strategic cash alternative" rather than a short-term asset allocation tool. Behind this behavior pattern is a deep understanding of the expectation of global currency depreciation, as well as a proactive response based on the understanding of the incentive structures of products like ETFs.

At the same time, financial infrastructure is clearing obstacles for the accelerated inflow of institutional funds. The approval of a staking ETF on a certain public blockchain not only expands the boundaries of compliant products but also signifies that institutions are beginning to incorporate "on-chain yield assets" into traditional portfolios. The anticipated approval of another mainstream public blockchain spot ETF further opens up the imagination. Once the staking yield mechanism is packaged into the ETF, it will fundamentally change traditional asset managers' perception of crypto assets as "yieldless and purely volatile" and will also prompt institutions to shift from risk hedging to yield allocation.

More importantly, enterprises are directly participating in the on-chain financial market, breaking the traditional separation between "over-the-counter investment" and the on-chain world. A certain company directly increased its holdings of ETH through a private placement of 20 million USD, while another company splurged 100 million USD on the acquisition of an ecological project and platform equity buybacks, representing enterprises' actual actions to participate in building a new generation of crypto financial ecology. This is no longer the logic of venture capital participating in startup projects in the past, but rather a capital injection characterized by "industrial mergers and acquisitions" and "strategic layout," intending to secure the core asset rights and profit distribution rights of new financial infrastructure.

In the derivatives and on-chain liquidity space, traditional finance is also actively positioning itself. The open interest of public chain futures on a certain exchange has reached a historical high, and the monthly trading volume of a certain asset futures has also exceeded 500 million dollars for the first time, indicating that traditional trading institutions have included crypto assets in their strategic models. The driving force behind this is the continuous entry of hedge funds, structured product providers, and multi-strategy funds. These players operate based on volatility arbitrage, capital structure games, and quantitative factor models, fundamentally enhancing the "liquidity density" and "market depth" of the market.

From the perspective of structural turnover, the significant decrease in the activity of retail investors and short-term players further reinforces the aforementioned trend. On-chain data shows that the proportion of short-term holders continues to decline, the activity of early large-holder wallets has decreased, and on-chain search and wallet interaction data are stabilizing, indicating that the market is in a "turnover sedimentation period". Although the price performance during this phase is relatively flat, historical experience shows that it is precisely this period of calm that often breeds the greatest market starting points.

It is also worth noting that the "productization capability" of financial institutions is rapidly being implemented. From traditional banks and asset management giants to emerging retail financial platforms, all are expanding their capabilities in trading, staking, lending, and payment of crypto assets. This not only makes crypto assets truly usable "within the fiat currency system," but also provides them with richer financial attributes. In the future, mainstream crypto assets may no longer be merely "volatile digital assets," but will become a "configurable asset class," possessing a complete financial ecosystem with derivatives markets, payment scenarios, yield structures, and credit ratings.

This round of structural turnover is essentially a deep expansion of the "financial commoditization" of crypto assets, representing a complete restructuring of value discovery logic. The dominant players in the market are no longer the "quick money crowd" driven by emotions and trends, but institutions and enterprises with medium to long-term strategic planning, clear allocation logic, and stable capital structures. A institutionalized, structured bull run is quietly brewing, which will be more solid, more lasting, and more thorough.

3. The New Era of Alt Season: From General Rise to "Selective Bull Run"

The current "alt season" is entering a new phase: the blanket rally is no longer, replaced by a "selective bull run" driven by narratives such as ETFs, real yields, and institutional adoption. This is a reflection of the crypto market gradually maturing, and it is also an inevitable result of the capital selection mechanism after the market returns to rationality.

From the structural signals, the chips of mainstream altcoin assets have completed a new round of accumulation. The ETH/BTC pair has welcomed a strong rebound for the first time after several weeks of decline, with large addresses accumulating millions of ETH in a very short time. Large on-chain transactions are frequently occurring, indicating that the main capital has begun to reprice certain first-tier assets. Meanwhile, retail sentiment remains low, with search indices and wallet creation volumes yet to show significant recovery. However, this creates an ideal "low-interference" environment for the next market cycle: without overheating emotions and without retail explosion, the market is more easily dominated by institutional rhythms.

However, unlike previous years, this alt season will not be "taking off together", but rather "each flying on their own". ETF applications have become the anchor point for a new round of thematic structures. In particular, the spot ETF of a certain public chain has been regarded as the next "market consensus event". With the staking mechanism likely to be incorporated into the ETF structure, its "quasi-dividend asset" attribute is attracting a large amount of capital for preemptive layout. This narrative not only drives the spot itself of the public chain but also impacts the governance tokens of its staking ecosystem. It is foreseeable that in this new narrative cycle, asset performance will revolve around "whether there is ETF potential, whether there is real income distribution capability, and whether it can attract institutional allocation", rather than a wave of market sentiment lifting all tokens. Instead, it will be a differentiated evolution where the strong remain strong and the weak are eliminated.

DeFi is also an important arena in this round of "selective bull run", but its logic has fundamentally changed. Users have begun to shift from "point airdrop DeFi" to "cash flow DeFi", with protocol income, stablecoin yield strategies, and re-staking mechanisms becoming the core indicators for assessing asset value. Liquidity providers no longer blindly chase high-yield bait, but instead place more importance on strategy transparency, yield sustainability, and potential risk structures. This shift has spawned a wave of new projects that do not rely on aggressive marketing or hype, but rather attract continuous capital inflow through structured yield products and fixed-rate vaults.

The choice of capital is quietly becoming more "realistic". On one hand, stablecoin strategies backed by real-world assets (RWA) are beginning to gain favor among institutions, and some protocols are attempting to create "quasi-government bond products" on-chain. On the other hand, cross-chain liquidity integration and user experience unification have also become key factors in determining the direction of funds. Some middleware projects are emerging as new hubs for concentrated funds by leveraging seamless bridging and embedded DeFi capabilities. It can be said that in this "selective bull run", the trend is no longer dominated by L1 public chains themselves, but rather the infrastructure and composable protocols built around them have become the new core of valuation.

At the same time, the speculative part of the market is also undergoing a shift. While Meme coins still have popularity, the era of "everyone pulling up the price" is gone for good. Instead, there is a rise in the "platform rotation trading" strategy, where Meme contracts listed on certain exchanges often see funding rates quickly turn negative, with the core operational method being to inflate prices for selling, which carries extremely high risks and lacks sustainability. This means that even though speculative hotspots still exist, mainstream capital's interest has clearly diverged. Capital is more inclined to allocate towards projects that can provide sustainable returns, have real users, and strong narrative support, preferring to forgo explosive returns in exchange for a more certain growth path.

In summary, the core feature of this alt season is not about "which public chain will take off", but rather about "which assets have the potential to be incorporated into traditional financial logic". From the structural changes of ETFs, re-staking yield models, simplification of cross-chain experiences, to the integration of RWA and institutional credit infrastructure, the crypto market is ushering in a deep value reevaluation cycle. A selective bull run is not a weakening of the bull market, but rather an upgrade of it. The future will no longer belong to those playing the fool's game, but to those who understand the narrative logic, comprehend the financial structure, and are willing to quietly build positions in a "quiet market".

4. Q3 Investment Framework: From Core Allocation to Event-Driven

The market layout for the third quarter of 2025 is no longer simply betting on "market sentiment warming up" or "Bitcoin leading the bull run".