“Believe in Something” Doesn’t Work Anymore This latest NFT resurgence, and the nostalgic chants from OGs urging newcomers to “just wait, you don’t understand how wild it can get”...got me thinking. Not just about the current state of NFTs, but about the broader mechanics of belief in crypto markets. Specifically, it brought me back to a phrase that once defined entire cycles: Believe in something. It was more than a tagline. It was a rallying cry that captured the spirit of early crypto: a time when directional conviction was rare, tribalism was rewarded, and making a choice, any choice, was better than sitting on the sidelines. But here’s the problem: I don’t think that phrase works anymore. Worse, I think it quietly misleads in the current environment. Semantically, “believe in something” is open-ended. It doesn’t demand precision, only commitment. It suggests that belief, in and of itself, has value, regardless of what it’s directed toward. But in practice, the phrase has always carried an unspoken implication: it doesn’t mean believe in anything, it means believe in this. That ambiguity was useful in earlier cycles. Back then, crypto’s optionality was low. There were only a handful of viable bets. So when someone said believe in something, it was a dog whistle for what everyone already knew: we’re all rotating into the same trade. Liquidity had nowhere else to go. Belief had focus. And that focus created manias. But today’s market is different. Optionality is no longer constrained, it’s exploding. NFTs, ALTs, memecoins, DeFi, DePIN, AI, Etc. Every corner of the ecosystem has its own niche, its own believers, and its own liquidity pool. In that kind of environment, believe in something becomes counterproductive. It fragments attention & splinters capital. Everyone believes....but everyone believes in something else. That’s why we haven’t yet seen a singular, dominant mania this cycle. It’s not because people aren’t bullish. It’s because their belief is distributed. In a market defined by hyper-choice, belief without direction leads to diffusion, not concentration. And without concentration, there is no feedback loop of hype, FOMO, and reflexivity....just pockets of localized enthusiasm. If we want to see a full-blown vertical, a true liquidity supernova, the meta needs to shift from believe in something to believe in THIS. Not metaphorically. Literally. THIS must be clearly identifiable. A new sector, a new primitive, a new story. Because only then can attention and capital synchronize. Only then does reflexivity kick in. Only then do we get the kind of coordinated madness that marks every great top. There is nothing more beautiful than a new meta at the height of its mania. For a brief moment, everyone sees the same “this.” And for once, they all believe in it together. Let’s hope we get that before the cycle ends.