When issuing coins becomes a production line

In 2025, the productivity revolution in the crypto market is not AI, but issue coin.

Dune data shows that in March 2021, there were about 350,000 tokens in the entire network; a year later it rose to 4 million; by the spring of 2025, this number had exceeded 40 million.

In four years, it has expanded a hundredfold, with almost tens of thousands of new coins being created, launched, and going to zero every day.

Although the myth that issuing coins can make money has been shattered, it cannot withstand the determination of successive project parties to issue coins. This coin issuance assembly line factory has also supported a large number of service providers such as agencies, exchanges, market makers, KOLs, and media. Perhaps it is becoming increasingly difficult for project parties to make money, but every gear in the factory has found its own profit model.

So, how exactly does this “issue coin factory” operate? And who is truly profiting from it?

Half Year Issue Coin

“The biggest change in this cycle compared to the previous one is that the coin issuance cycle has been drastically compressed; it may only take half a year from project establishment to TGE,” said the crypto KOL, Encryption Wuyou, who has 200,000 followers and has long been focused on project issuance, during an interview.

In the previous cycle, the standard path for the project party was: first spend a year refining the product, then spend half a year building the community and promoting the market, until a certain scale of users and revenue data is formed, only then do they qualify to initiate the TGE.

However, by 2025, this logic will be completely reversed. Even star projects listed on top exchanges or teams at the infrastructure level can have their timeline from concept initiation to launch compressed to within a year or even half a year.

Why?

The answer lies in an industry open secret: the importance of products and technology has significantly decreased, data can be fabricated, and narratives can be packaged.

“It doesn't matter if there are no users; just create a few million active addresses on the testnet, or go to a niche market, inflate the download numbers and user count on the APP Store, and then find an Agency to package it all up. There's no need to stubbornly focus on the product and technology,” said 加密 without reservation.

As for Memecoin, it takes “speed” to the extreme.

In the morning, issue a coin, and by the afternoon, its market value may exceed tens of millions of dollars. Nobody cares about their use; they only look at whether it can ignite emotions within a minute.

The cost structure of the project has also been completely changed.

In the previous cycle, a project spent most of its costs on research and development as well as operations from inception to issuing its coin.

In this round, the project's costs have suddenly changed drastically.

The core consists of listing fees and costs related to market makers, including the interests of various intermediaries; secondly, there are marketing expenses for KOLs, agencies, media, etc. From project initiation to coin issuance, the actual money spent on products and technology may be less than 20% of the total cost.

Issuing coins has transformed from an entrepreneurial activity that requires long-term accumulation into a replicable industrial assembly line process.

What has happened in the crypto market in just a few years, from shouting “Mass Adoption” to attention being king?

Collective Disenchantment

If I had to sum up the last coin market cycle in one word, it would be “disenchantment.”

During the last bull market, everyone believed that L2, ZK, and privacy computing would reshape the world, and that “GameFi and SocialFi” could bring blockchain into the mainstream.

But two years have passed, and those once-hopeful technological narratives and product narratives have fallen one after another. L2 is unused, chain games are still burning money, and social networks are still acquiring new users. Their common characteristic is that there are no real people involved.

What replaced it, however, is the most ironic protagonist, Memecoin. It has no product and no technology, yet it has become the most effective narrative.

Retail investors have been demystified, and the project parties have also understood the rules of the game.

In the last round, the worst were not those project teams that “did nothing,” but rather those who were serious about their work.

For example, a certain blockchain game project raised tens of millions of dollars, and the team invested all the money into game development, hiring top game designers, purchasing AAA art resources, and building a server cluster. Two years later, the game was finally launched, but the market no longer cared; the coin price plummeted by 90%, and the team had no money left in their accounts, announcing their dissolution.

In stark contrast, there is another project that also raised tens of millions of dollars, employs only a few people, and had an outsourced team develop the Demo, with the remaining funds all used to buy Bitcoin. Two years later, the Demo is still the Demo, but the asset balance has tripled.

The project party is not only alive but also has money to continue “telling stories.”

The tech faction dies in the long development cycle, the product faction dies at the moment the funding chain breaks, while the speculators see through the truth and find “certainty” in a simpler way: creating chips, capturing attention, and exiting liquidity.

After being harvested by projects that “get things done” time and again, retail investors have long lost their patience and no longer care about so-called fundamentals.

The project team knows that users do not care, the exchange also knows all of this, and the利益格局 is quietly being reshaped.

Winner Takes All

Regardless of how the cycles change, exchanges and market makers are always at the top of the food chain.

Exchanges do not care about the rise and fall of coin prices; they care more about trading volume. The profit model in the coin circle has never been the coin price, but rather the capture of volatility.

If we were to select the most iconic product innovation of this round, Binance Alpha is undoubtedly the watershed.

In the opinion of practitioner Mike, it is a “genius design”, even comparable to Binance's second business model revolution.

“It kills three birds with one stone, completely innovating the model of spot listing,” Mike commented. First, Binance achieved a curve-over OKX Wallet through Alpha, integrating on-chain asset issuance into its own ecosystem; second, it activated the entire BSC chain, even making leading public chains like Solana feel threatened; finally, Alpha delivered a dimensionality reduction strike against second and third-tier exchanges, causing their coin listing business to plummet.

The most ingenious thing is that all Alpha projects are essentially nourishment for BNB, and the popularity of each Alpha project translates into demand for BNB. In 2025, the continuous breakthrough of BNB prices to new highs is not a coincidence.

But Mike also pointed out the side effects. Binance Alpha has completely streamlined and industrialized the listing process, and a large number of participants don't care at all about what the project is about; they are just simply grinding for points + claiming airdrops + selling.

Mike understands Binance's motivations. Binance once tried to launch gaming and social products that claimed to have millions of users, but the results were not only poor token performance but also ridicule and criticism. “Simply use Binance Alpha+Perp to create a standardized model for issuing coins, allowing BNB holders, BSC, and exchange users to benefit.”

The only cost is that this market has gradually given up the pursuit of “value” and has fully turned to the competition for “traffic and liquidity.”

Fundamentals are not important; the price itself has become the new fundamental. Consequently, market makers alongside candlestick charts are becoming increasingly important.

In the past, what people referred to as market makers were more of the “passive market makers,” providing buy and sell quotes on the exchange's order book, maintaining market liquidity, and earning the bid-ask spread.

But in 2025, more and more proactive market makers will begin to become the behind-the-scenes players.

They do not wait for the market trends, but rather create them. The spot market is a tool, while the contract market is their main battlefield.

Market makers accumulate at low levels while opening long positions in the futures market, then continuously push up prices in the spot market to attract retail investors to chase the rise. Long positions in the futures market take profits, followed by a sudden crash, trapping retail investors in the spot market and causing liquidation in the futures market. Market makers then harvest with short positions, waiting for the price to drop to the bottom, before accumulating again and starting the next cycle.

This volatility-driven model has given rise to many meme coins in the bear market, from MYX to the recently popular COAI and AIA. Each “myth” is a precise double kill for both bulls and bears.

But driving up the price requires funds, so off-market financing has become a new big business in this cycle.

This type of financing is different from traditional leveraged trading; it is specifically aimed at market makers and project parties for “pump financing”. The capital provider offers cash, the market maker provides trading ability, and the project party provides token chips, with everyone sharing the profits.

KOL Enters the Game

Market manipulation is often the best marketing, but it also requires someone to take over.

Especially when the issue coin cycle becomes shorter, project parties need to gain popularity and build consensus in a short period of time. In this logic, KOLs and agencies that can gather and manage KOLs become more important, as they are the “traffic valves” on this issue coin production line.

Project parties usually cooperate with KOLs through agencies. Encryption Wuyi claims that the coin issuance production line in the coin circle is filled with various agencies that can help project parties create hype, develop the market, acquire users, conduct publicity, and build consensus.

In his view, “In the current market environment, earning intermediary fees is much easier than doing projects. Doing projects doesn't necessarily guarantee profit, but the money spent to issue coin is essential. Currently, in the market, there are agencies coming from exchanges, VC, as well as those transitioning from KOLs and media…”

The reason why the project party is willing to pay intermediary fees instead of directly finding KOLs is for efficiency and to avoid risks.

In Agency, there are also three types of traffic grading for KOL.

First is brand traffic. It refers to the fact that top KOLs have different price tags compared to ordinary KOLs, because top KOLs have already formed their own personal brands, and naturally, the price will be higher.

The second is exposure traffic. It refers to the number of people covered by the content, which is mainly determined by the number of fans of the KOL and the reading volume generated by the posts.

Third is the buying flow. It refers to the quantity of content that has completed transactions or conversions. Usually, project parties will calculate the weights of these three types of flow levels according to their needs, and spending more money does not necessarily yield better results.

In addition, to form a strong bond with KOLs, the project party has also established a KOL round in the early stages, offering KOLs a certain amount of chips at a lower price to help them better complete the “shouting single”.

This coin issuance production line has become the “new infrastructure” of the crypto industry.

From the exchange's coin listing review, to the market maker's control strategies, from the funding support of OTC financing, to the attention capture by agencies, KOLs, and media, every link has been standardized and systematized.

Ironically, the profit-making efficiency of this system is much higher than the traditional path of making products - accumulating users - creating value.

Will the crypto market continue like this?

Perhaps not. Each cycle corresponds to its own main storyline, and the next cycle may be very different.

But the form may change, the essence will not.

Because since the inception of this market, the competition has been for two things: liquidity and attention.

For everyone involved, the more pressing question is:

Do you want to be a liquidity maker or a liquidity provider?