Exiting the Crypto "Dark Age": Moving Beyond P/E Ratio Thinking to Reassess $ETH and $fxUSD

TechFlow Summary: Since the Federal Reserve's rate hikes in 2022 and the consecutive implosions of Luna and FTX, the crypto industry has shifted towards emphasizing cash flow and "Real Yield" amid survival anxiety, even valuing Ethereum using traditional P/E ratios. As Vitalik recently reiterated that $ETH should ground itself in the core narratives of decentralization and "Store of Value," the market is beginning to re-examine the imaginative space compressed by pessimism.

In practical implementation, the author starts with the decentralized stablecoin $fxUSD created by AladdinDAO, dissecting its censorship resistance, zero-cost private transfers, and zero-interest leverage architecture against the five pillars of CROPS. Facing the upcoming era of high-frequency trading by AI agents, this article explores what market capitalization tier Ethereum and decentralized stablecoins ultimately point toward.

Two tweets over the past few days truly touched me and sent me into deep thought.

The first came from Vitalik regarding $ETH, where he elaborated on why the market should further rely on and strengthen Ethereum's "Store of Value" narrative.

Quoting @VitalikButerin (View Original Tweet): “To elaborate, I believe focusing on '$ETH as a Store of Value asset' is far more reasonable than positioning it as a 'fee-burning token'.”

“There are three core reasons: First, the logic of $ETH as a fee-burning token was never as solid as it appears on the surface; second, blindly pursuing fee burning would inevitably force Ethereum to compromise on mechanisms that conflict with decentralization and capture resistance.”

"Third, optimizing around SoV completely aligns with Ethereum leveraging its most unique advantages (decentralization and CROPS)."

"EIP-1559 and its burn mechanism are good and should be retained, but there is no need to be discouraged even if fee burning remains below 10% of the breakeven point for the long term. Ethereum's true core moat lies in the certainty converted from decentralization and CROPS. In an era of disruptive AI changes, this stability will be highly valued."

I was deeply inspired to see Vitalik post this tweet, not only because I highly agree with its reasoning but also because it prompted me to re-evaluate the entire crypto industry from a broader perspective.

My core judgment framework is: Essentially, since 2022, we have been living through a prolonged crypto "Dark Age."

It was precisely in that year that Fed Chair Powell initiated an aggressive rate hike cycle (in my view, interest rates remaining at elevated levels today are still the largest variable in the current market); immediately following that, Luna and FTX collapsed one after another.

The entire crypto industry was once declared dead by mainstream opinion, reduced to a laughingstock, and constantly labeled with tags like "air coin concept" and "proven worthless."

Precisely because of this, facing this chaotic and heavily questioned industry wreckage, we were desperate back then to grasp anything that appeared "tangible."

Fig: Internet meme depicting Fed Chair Jerome Powell riding a nuclear bomb in a black-and-white movie style, spoofed in 2022

The Rise of the "Real Yield" Narrative

The aforementioned industry dilemmas and survival anxiety directly pushed us to embrace the "Real Yield" narrative.

We began fervently praising tokens like $GMX and $GNS that genuinely generate organic protocol revenue and distribute cash flow dividends back to holders (I must add that these were two high-quality assets I proudly held).

Suddenly, the market plunged headfirst into the obsession of viewing $ETH as a "yield-maximizing machine," elevating this new narrative as the most critical bullish thesis for Ethereum.

All things considered, the industry-wide shift toward focusing on "Real Yield" was largely a positive development and an important step in the crypto market's maturation process.

But the reality is that the value embedded in cryptocurrency goes far beyond that. As this "Dark Age" continues to drag on, we inadvertently forgot a higher-dimensional value proposition. The current debates surrounding the valuation logic of $ETH are the clearest reflection of this collective amnesia.

Fig: Community memes from late 2022 to early 2023 showing three young women devoutly praying to a GMX-style blue avatar in a frame, reflecting how the market worshipped "Real Yield" like it does Hyperliquid today, even valuing $ETH like traditional railway stocks

Fully Expand Our Imagination

It was understandable to previously try to understand $ETH through the "Real Yield" framework, but the fundamental issue lies in this:

Ethereum is neither a chain of self-service laundromats nor a pest control company, and certainly not a competitor to Walmart or Home Depot.

The traditional "P/E Ratio" is simply not an effective valuation model applicable to Ethereum.

On the contrary, $ETH is the decentralized and permissionless economic aether behind the forming human "telepathic hive mind" known as the internet.

Our species has evolved a completely new layer of consciousness, which is precisely the era landscape shaped jointly by the internet and AI.

In this new architecture, Ethereum occupies the core position of the foundational economic infrastructure and will serve billions of humans and billions of AI agents in completing value transactions, exchanges, creation, and storage.

$ETH represents both the "fuel" driving the high-speed operation of this magnificent digital cosmos and the "partial ownership" of the vast network ecosystem itself.

This is the foundational bedrock of Ethereum's value and the essence of the "Store of Value" narrative that Vitalik fiercely defended in his earlier tweet.

Fig: Pepe the Frog wearing a blue mage robe waving a glowing spellbook in a library, symbolizing crypto natives wielding the "magic" to reshape the financial landscape

All we truly need to do is open our minds and break free from the mental paradigms of the current "crypto Dark Age."

Through this lens, $ETH fully deserves a market cap comparable to gold and should logically far surpass any single tech giant like Apple ($AAPL) or Microsoft ($MSFT).

This assessment might seem overly ambitious today, but thirty years ago when people first envisioned the internet, or even ten years ago when general AI was first discussed, didn't the outside world find it equally fantastical?

Fig: Screenshot of global asset market cap rankings (gold leads at $28.52 trillion, followed by giants like Apple, NVIDIA, and Microsoft), author believes $ETH's final market cap should rank at the top alongside gold

The Entry and Evolution of Stablecoins

The second tweet that strongly resonated with me came from my friend @cyrille_briere (working at @protocol_fx), focusing on their team's decentralized stablecoin $fxUSD.

This tweet perfectly aligns with Vitalik's viewpoint, as the evolution of stablecoins is inherently intricately woven with $ETH and that "economic aether" mentioned earlier.

From this perspective, stablecoins can be called the culmination of centuries of economic history and countless streams of monetary thought flowing freely.

As Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek once wrote: "I believe that we shall never again have really good money until we take the art of issuing money out of the hands of governments."

"We cannot forcibly snatch currency away from governments by violent means. The only feasible way is to introduce something they cannot stop through some clever detour."

This spark of thought—building a "permissionless, decentralized alternative to escape government fiat control"—was the core driving force behind the birth of Bitcoin back then.

However, relying solely on Bitcoin itself was still insufficient to independently support all the financial conditions needed for cryptocurrency to unleash its full potential.

As one early industry participant pointed out in an early discussion on decentralized stablecoins: "Many businesses operate on razor-thin margins and simply cannot afford BTC's severe price volatility; low-income populations often lack the ability to save and rely heavily on cash to maintain purchasing power between paydays."

"Therefore, censorship-resistant stablecoins will become highly valuable financial tools, capable of not only replacing physical cash and bank accounts but also serving as medium-to-short-term savings assets, complementing BTC as a long-term store of value. Perhaps one day BTC will stabilize enough to no longer need stablecoins, but until then, BTC-backed decentralized stablecoins firmly occupy a legitimate and crucial position."

Obviously, this argument back then primarily revolved around $BTC.

Since then, however, I believe $ETH has already assumed the role $BTC once played across many practical dimensions.

Today, Ethereum has become the primary underlying economic settlement network for holding and circulating stablecoins, and simultaneously the most crucial on-chain Store of Value (SoV) collateral supporting decentralized stablecoins.

As I joked under the "Ethereum Chef" meme below: Bitcoin undoubtedly possesses a mythic "flawless genesis" origin, making it hard to entirely abandon; but let's face reality, the vast majority of genuine "crypto activity" now occurs on Ethereum, and it is rapidly becoming a superior store of value vehicle.

If we could have made the "EVM" run successfully on Bitcoin back then, people might have welcomed it; but the fact is that path never materialized, and Ethereum has clearly established its status as the "world computer."

Fig: Black-and-white tough guy image wearing a chef's hat with the Ethereum logo, metaphorically implying Ethereum has taken over as the "world computer" for on-chain economy and stablecoin settlement

Meanwhile, decentralized stablecoins have also faced heavy lessons during their evolution, with the most memorable being the disastrous collapse of Luna and its $UST.

That catastrophe prompted Vitalik to write an article discussing the mechanics of decentralized stablecoins in May 2022, in which he evaluated:

"While there are indeed many automated stablecoin designs fundamentally flawed in their underlying mechanisms destined for collapse, and many theoretically viable yet extremely fragile high-risk models; the market equally boasts stablecoins that are theoretically highly robust and pass real extreme conditions unscathed. What we need is neither blind hype nor blanket pessimistic doom-saying, but rather a return to rigorous design based on first principles."

Almost simultaneously with Vitalik writing this, I myself dove headfirst into fanatical research on stablecoins, convinced at that time that stablecoins were the most core, most bullish super-variable in the entire crypto industry.

Archival look back at author's 2022 post (@rektdiomedes): Back in August 2022, I published a long tweet titled "Ten Reasons Why Stablecoin Market Cap Will Ultimately Break Through $10 Trillion," systematically explaining the economic and social structural drivers behind the explosive expansion of stablecoins over the next 5 to 10 years.

Current Landscape: $fxUSD Born from Crisis

In the years since Vitalik wrote the above assessment, although the entire crypto market has been enduring a protracted bottom-fishing phase in the so-called "Dark Age," the stablecoin sector itself has never stopped iterating, with technology and risk control mechanisms becoming increasingly sophisticated. As of 2026 today, the vast majority of mechanism puzzles that once plagued the industry have been resolved.

The industry naturally faces new troubles now (such as North Korean hacker cyber warfare, quantum computing threats, and recent widespread spy rumors), but purely in terms of stablecoin design, we already possess mature industrial-grade solutions and a series of outstanding products.

One end of this product spectrum features larger but shocking-scale centralized giants (like $USDT and $USDC), whose growth ceilings are almost entirely constrained by the volume of underlying US Treasuries; the other end consists of highly decentralized, permissionless protocols that rely directly on native crypto Store of Value assets like $ETH for full backing.

Among the latter decentralized camp, I believe the representative with the best comprehensive performance is $fxUSD launched by @protocol_fx.

$fxUSD is painstakingly crafted by AladdinDAO's elite technical team. From its inception day one, it has aimed to become the ultimate choice for all users pursuing true decentralization and permissionless censorship resistance.

As described in the team's official manifesto: "The f(x) Protocol was born during the peak of the USDC depeg crisis, carrying a simple yet radical original aspiration: to build a 'last line of defense' stablecoin that operates normally under any extreme environment."

"fxUSD does not rely on any commercial banks, is not attached to any sovereign government, and requires no manual intervention or operations. It is fully backed by ETH and BTC collateral, and every line of the protocol's operational logic can be publicly verified on-chain. Even if the entire centralized financial system halts, it will continue to operate perpetually."

Fig: Gothic stained glass art illustration centered on the rotating @protocol_fx logo, $fxUSD developed and built by the AladdinDAO team

Why $fxUSD is the Best Stablecoin in DeFi Today

I firmly believe that $fxUSD has already become the finest stablecoin in today's DeFi ecosystem and is poised for a comprehensive scale explosion in the coming years.

This is precisely the core proposition focused on in the aforementioned tweet from @protocol_fx core member @cyrille_briere.

Click here to view the full tweet, and below is a brief screenshot presentation of its key data points by me:

Fig: Screenshot of @cyrille_briere's tweet detailing AladdinDAO's bootstrapping from scratch without VC funding since 2021, and milestones such as $fxUSD hitting a $127M peak (market cap ~$62M at the time), ~8% organic APY on fxSAVE, and zero-fee fiat on/off ramps

As he emphasized in the tweet, AladdinDAO as a long-term builder has always stood at the very core alignment of Ethereum's "CROPS" philosophy. If we apply this evaluation framework to test $fxUSD, its score is virtually maxed out across the board.

To briefly recap, the five letters in "CROPS" respectively represent the five most valued principles of Ethereum:

Fig: Screenshot listing CROPS five core values: Censorship Resistance, Capture Resistance, Open Source, Privacy, and Security

Censorship Resistance & Capture Resistance: Unlike $USDT or $USDC, $fxUSD does not have a centralized issuer capable of freezing accounts or blacklisting addresses.

Its minting and redemption operate fully on $ETH and $WBTC collateral in a permissionless manner, meaning no single entity can unilaterally seize funds or shut down the system.

Open Source: It is a quintessential model of open-source engineering. Smart contract code running on Ethereum mainnet and Base network is completely public, accompanying technical documentation is transparent and detailed, and all asset-liability statuses are verifiable in real-time on-chain.

Privacy: Beyond inheriting the permissionless nature of on-chain DeFi, $fxUSD, through deep collaboration with @RAILGUN_Project (see two posts below), is leading the forefront of the new narrative of "Stablecoin x Privacy Payments."

Quoting @cyrille_briere (Original Tweet): In May 2026, privacy decentralized stablecoin minting was completed on Ethereum for the first time in DeFi history, achieving a fully trace-free collateralized borrowing process on-chain (View On-chain Tx Hash).

Quoting @protocol_fx (Original Tweet): Many abandon Ethereum privacy features due to high costs, whereas $fxUSD deployed on @RAILGUN_Project is fully subsidized monthly by the protocol in $FXN for shield pool entry/exit fees, becoming the lowest-trust-cost privacy transfer tool on Ethereum.

Security: This might be $fxUSD's most solid line of defense. The protocol achieves endogenous overcollateralization via the f(x) constant formula, pioneered soft liquidation/rebalancing and a "liquidation brake" mechanism to avoid cascading liquidations, and features a hard guarantee path as an explicit repayment safety net.

Even more commendable is that, thanks to AladdinDAO team's extremely strict requirements for engineering security, they have built and maintained multiple complex protocols over the past five years, maintaining an impeccable record of zero security breaches/exploits to date (knocking on wood as usual).

Fig: Screenshot of @cyrille_briere forwarding @protocol_fx tweet, emphasizing five-year zero incident record across three protocols, and disclosing 72-hour timelock and multi-sig protection introduced for contract upgrades and parameter changes

Furthermore, at the most fundamental cornerstone of stablecoins, $fxUSD dominates in exchange rate pegging performance.

While many decentralization-focused stablecoins drift violently with market volatility, even during recent heart-pounding volatile markets, $fxUSD's price pegging remains rock-solid (see live chart feedback from my bro @PhilMrlo below, don't forget to give him a follow).

Fig: Live tweet screenshot from user @PhilMrlo praising $fxUSD's steadfast $1 peg and zero forced liquidations despite severe market fluctuations, Curve platform fxUSD/USDC pool 24h volume exceeding $145M

Not only is its resilience astonishing, but as shown in his post, $fxUSD's trading volume on Curve has recently seen explosive growth, with the fxUSD/USDC liquidity pool frequently topping the daily volume leaderboard of this veteran decentralized exchange:

Fig: Screenshot of Curve official retweet of @protocol_fx data poster, showing fxUSD/USDC single pool 24h volume reaching $57M and ranking first on the platform, with an anchor exchange rate of $1.001 at the time

Even more exciting is that @protocol_fx's ingenious protocol architecture and solid utility continue to cultivate the most fertile soil for yield strategies in today's crypto market.

The root of all this yield comes from fxSAVE's stable 6% to 9% organic base annual percentage yield (APY). Once leveraged through a loop loan strategy, this yield can be significantly amplified; coupling it with Pendle for yield splitting (Pendle-maxxing) pushes the ceiling to astonishing heights.

The tweet from early October below clearly breaks down the specific operational path, and in the subsequent weeks up to today, such highly cost-effective high-yield strategies have continued to run steadily:

Quoting @protocol_fx (Original Tweet): How to break down a stablecoin APY exceeding 43%.

Collateralize fxSAVE at a 4.13% cost on Morpho to borrow USDC and deposit back fxSAVE (base yield 6.59%), scaling with 10x loops reaches 28%+, then switching to Pendle's PT-fxSAVE can touch annual returns above 43%.

Beyond that, as @protocol_fx gains more recognition, more DeFi traders are starting to discover an extremely tempting feature: they can directly collateralize $ETH or $WBTC here to enjoy 0% borrowing interest (requiring only minimal open/close fees), further driving $fxUSD's long-term market cap upward.

Quoting @protocol_fx (Original Tweet): Visual comparison of current capital costs for holding leveraged longs on $ETH or $BTC.

Borrowing USDC on Aave carries an annual interest rate as high as 10.4%, requiring roughly $104k in annual interest for a $1M loan; whereas using f(x) xPOSITION has a 0% funding rate, reducing annual interest expenditure directly to zero.

More Bullish Catalysts for the f(x) Ecosystem

Aside from the fundamentals reviewed above, @protocol_fx is currently advancing construction across several highly promising new directions simultaneously.

First, the team is highly focused on the emerging agentic economy, aspiring to establish $fxUSD as the preferred settlement stablecoin for autonomous trading among machine agents.

Earlier this year, the team already wrote a highly forward-looking in-depth article specifically targeting this track, well worth close reading:

Quoting @protocol_fx X Long Form (Click to View Original Post): "The Great Decoupling: Why AI Agents Won't Use 'Human' Currency," sharply pointing out the complete subversion the traditional human financial system will face when future core commerce and payment entities shift from humans to high-speed autonomously operating AI agents.

Second, the team is transplanting @protocol_fx's proprietary liquidation protection technology (which previously supported up to 7x low-friction leverage trading within a CDP architecture) in its entirety to the brand-new sibling project @FX100Perp.

@FX100Perp just concluded an exceptionally well-received testnet pilot phase and is now sprinting fully toward its upcoming mainnet launch.

Relying on this anti-liquidation protection core, it will allow up to 100x extreme leverage trading while providing users with a 15-minute golden liquidation protection window, fundamentally eradicating the wick liquidation pain points of traditional perpetual contract leverage models.

This design is incredibly cool. Interested friends can explore deeper via the tweet below or visit fx100.club:

Quoting @FX100Perp (Original Tweet): Just as an F1 pit stop can save a race, FX100's exclusive 15-minute liquidation buffer allows traders to calmly rescue their positions; the team has currently launched a six-week pre-mainnet mission scoring season on Guild.

Considering all the above progress, I believe the $FXN ecosystem has firmly established its status as the most exhilarating DeFi project in today's crypto world, perfectly demonstrating just how far we should cast our gaze when evaluating the industry's future.

The Massive Incremental Future Laid Before Us

Let me reiterate: In my view, for these entire four years, we've actually been trapped in a dark age for the crypto industry.

As for when this gloomy period will truly turn a page (though I vaguely suspect everything boils down to the Fed rate cycle, waiting for capital costs to drop will naturally bring a turning point), I cannot give an exact date; but my long-term conviction in the ultimate fate of the crypto industry is completely different from the lethargy currently displayed on charts.

I sincerely and firmly believe that in the future tangible world, the vast majority of physical labor and daily "actual work" will eventually be handed over to AI and robots, causing a structural upheaval in the focus of human economic activity.

Admittedly, offline will retain some economically activities based on real human-to-human interaction, but the vast majority of value creation and circulation will irreversibly migrate into the internet, this "telepathic hive mind" network covering all humanity.

In fact, this migration has already begun: 15 years ago, only a tiny minority could earn a living purely relying on the internet, while today these digital natives have become a force not to be underestimated.

Looking another 15 years ahead, I believe the vast majority of all humanity will mainly rely on the online world to generate income, and beside them operating in coordination, initiating trades every second, will be tens of billions, incalculable AI agents.

When that era arrives, Ethereum will logically assume the role of the foundational economic settlement layer and kinetic fuel for that entire massive online world.

It will transform into the magical "aether" blood that sustains the smooth circulation of this global consciousness economy. At that time, its corresponding market cap will likely surge upward 100-fold or more, and it will very possibly surpass gold in one fell swoop.

And along the same historical timeline, stablecoins will also completely fulfill their destiny to "devour the traditional financial world."

By then, the vast majority of sovereign fiat currencies worldwide will either have vanished or be on the verge of accelerated decline, replaced by various stablecoins with diverse forms circulating efficiently.

In this brand-new monetary landscape, colossal entities like $USDC and $USDT backed by US Treasuries will undoubtedly remain indispensable, but simultaneously, native stablecoins fully collateralized with high-quality crypto assets like $ETH, perfectly aligned with CROPS principles, decentralized and permissionless, will similarly hold half the field.

Scanning the entire DeFi track, I believe no other decentralized stablecoin is better suited to carry this banner than $fxUSD.

Extending along this endgame blueprint, $fxUSD's market cap absolutely has room to expand 100-fold, 1000-fold, or even more exaggerated multiples from its current base; if this truly happens, the governance token $FXN powering the @protocol_fx ecosystem, as well as the many high-quality crypto assets we hold dear, will likewise welcome unimaginable waves of revaluation.

At the end of the day, our ambition currently is simply too small and too conservative.

Fig: Golden sailboat illustration shrouded in colorful neon clouds, blessing "Expand Your Imagination"

Conflict of Interest Disclosure & Disclaimer: I hold a heavy position in substantial amounts of $ETH and $FXN, and am still actively increasing my holdings of both assets, plus I personally deeply collaborate with the @protocol_fx team! Therefore, my projections for the prospects in this article are 100% biased toward this stance, and this piece is fully cheering on the assets I'm bullishly positioned on.

But speaking of which, every word I've written comes straight from the heart: I am indeed such a thoroughgoing, unreserved permabull.

Fig: Meme mocking the author as a "long-term permabull", Pepe frog pointing to the extreme left tail of a normal distribution IQ curve saying "I'm here"

Fig: Another "long-term permabull" mockup, a cartoon bull strapped into a straitjacket locked in a padded isolation room

Fig: "Long-term permabull" companion image, a photo of a Belgian Blue cow with extremely exaggerated muscular bulges

Conclusion

The years-long "crypto Dark Age" has unconsciously domesticated all of us, locking our imagination firmly into an extremely narrow cage.

We learned to humbly pray daily for the charts to rise just a little, taught ourselves to actively lower the macro dreams and grand ambitions for the industry, and even subconsciously got used to equating "idealism" directly with "niche scale" and "doomed to never reach mainstream elegance".

Yet all of this is fundamentally turned upside down right from the root.

It is precisely the inherent idealistic glow of the crypto industry, and that "big-picture perspective" daring to reshape old orders, that constitute its initially captivating soul.

Humans have always yearned in their hearts to believe in something that can truly change the world, and this is cryptocurrency's most authentic mission.

In recent years, AI has undoubtedly monopolized the world's spotlight, but essentially it is just one facet of the same greater era truth: technological progress is sprinting forward at light speed, and the entire world is undergoing unprecedented, thorough reshaping.

It was only during a brief period of confusion that we once forgot cryptocurrency was originally also a brilliant link in this technological revolution; but before long, everything will become self-evident again, and by then we will all find ourselves laughably foolish for ever wavering or doubting.

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