When a giant whale easily sells tens of thousands of dollars, it can halve the price of a Token. This market is no longer about value investment, but rather a brutal game of liquidity.
Technically, a Coin has its own independent network with its own blockchain, while a Token is merely a smart contract that parasitizes on someone else's chain. This is not just a technical definition; it determines their fates in vastly different ways. Coins like BTC and ETH are the owners of the infrastructure, while Tokens are merely 'tenants' on these infrastructures. Their survival depends not only on their own projects but also on the stability and security of the chain they are parasitizing.
This parasitic relationship makes the vast majority of Tokens inherently 'structurally fragile'. They should serve as the core incentive mechanism and proof of rights for the blockchain community, carrying the real project vision, but in the reality of speculative frenzy, most have degenerated into '土狗币' without long-term planning and value foundations. Especially in today's world where Decentralized USD (USD) is thriving, high-yield scams under the narrative of stablecoins are common, and the liquidity illusions created by project parties and whales continuously amplify this structural risk.
01 The root of fragility: parasitism and tenant dilemma
The fundamental difference between Token and Coin lies in the existence of a 'property certificate'.
Coins (like BTC, ETH, SOL) are the 'landlords' with independent blockchains. They build and maintain their own underlying networks, security systems, and governance rules. They are a country, with sovereignty. Tokens, on the other hand, are 'tenants' without land; they can easily create their own Tokens on public chains like Ethereum using standards like ERC-20, just like opening an online store. Anyone can issue their own Token in a few minutes at a very low cost.
This model determines the fragility of Tokens. Its security and stability depend entirely on the public chain it parasitizes. Once the public chain encounters congestion, forks, or attacks, all Tokens parasitizing it may be affected. A 'tenant' without sovereignty, reliant on others, has an inherent ceiling on stability and value. This parasitic nature is the first layer of structural foundation for Token fragility.
02 Low entry barriers and value traps
Easily generated, meaning it is easily flooded.
Imagine, if a company’s stock could be issued at a cost of just a few dollars and without any substantial business audits, what would the market look like? The Token market is just like that. This zero-threshold issuance business has directly led to extreme market saturation and a mix of quality. A large number of projects have no real business support; their white papers may be filled with unattainable promises, with the sole purpose of making short-term profits through market speculation, forming a typical '一波流' phenomenon.
More importantly, many of the claimed functions of Tokens can actually be realized by their underlying public chains (such as Ethereum). In this case, the value support of the Token itself becomes extremely questionable. This behavior of issuing Tokens for the sake of issuing Tokens has created a large number of “air coins” that lack practical value, making the foundation of the entire Token market exceptionally weak. When the tide goes out, it is these projects without “swimming trunks” that will be washed away first.
03 Liquidity illusions and manipulation traps
Low market cap and shallow liquidity are the playgrounds most favored by whales.
A Coin worth tens of billions of dollars (like mainstream public chain coins) requires astronomical amounts of capital to significantly shake its price. But a Token with a market cap of only a few million and thin liquidity is a completely different story. As revealed in the search for information, just one 'whale' (large holder) selling a few tens of thousands of dollars is enough to cause the price to plummet by 50% or more.
This shallow pool effect makes market manipulation and 'pulling the carpet' exceptionally easy. Project parties or early investors can easily inflate prices to attract retail investors, and then concentrate on selling and exiting. More complicatedly, as evidenced by the series of explosive incidents in October and November 2025, traders can even exploit vulnerabilities in the infrastructure of DeFi protocols like Oracles, using relatively small amounts of capital to trigger chain liquidations in the market, causing destruction far beyond their capital scale. In this game, ordinary investors with delayed information and small amounts of capital are almost destined to be the ones being harvested.
04 Value core and the time bomb of selling pressure
If the aforementioned points are external manifestations, then the internal hollowness and continuous selling pressure are the internal causes of Token value destruction.
A healthy crypto network typically designs its native tokens (Coin) as the 'fuel' of the network, for example, ETH is used to pay Gas fees. This continuous and essential demand constitutes the intrinsic support for value. However, many Tokens are quite the opposite; their functions are often limited to specific DApps (decentralized applications) or within a platform. Once that application is no longer popular, with user loss, the Token immediately loses almost all of its use cases, and the risk of value dropping to zero is extremely high.
At the same time, huge unlocking selling pressure hangs over like the sword of Damocles. Coins are usually gradually released to the market through mining or staking, a relatively slow and smooth process. However, a significant portion of the Token supply is often concentrated in the hands of project teams, private investors, and investment funds. When these tokens pass their lock-up period and begin to unlock into the market, the continuous selling pressure ruthlessly suppresses prices, causing secondary market holders to bear huge losses. This structural selling pressure makes it difficult for many Tokens to sustain long-term price increases from the moment they are born.
In this context, #USDD's emphasis on transparency, sufficient collateral, and sustainable mechanisms is particularly valuable. True stability and value should be built on solid structural foundations, rather than illusory speculation and unsustainable Ponzi cycles.
In the past five years, the DeFi market has repeatedly gone through cycles of creating more glamorous time bombs, with high-yield promises, circular dependencies, and structural fragility recurring. The Token market is a microcosm of this cycle. In a frenzied market, the prices of most Tokens are essentially bubbles, a temporary separation between market consensus driven by greed and technical value.
The tide will eventually go out. In this cruel game of liquidity, a 'parasitic tenant' without independent sovereignty, lacking continuous demand, constantly facing manipulation by large whales and internal selling pressure, is inherently fragile. The next time you see a tempting Token, ask yourself: Is it a valuable commercial legacy left by blockchain technology, or a mirage that will eventually dissipate?
