Everyone keeps asking when the bull market in crypto will arrive. But after the $RAVE case, yesterday's Kelp DAO hack and the chain of events that spilled over into $AAVE , with trust this damaged, what kind of bull market is supposed to begin?

On top of the loss of confidence that started with $LUNC and USTC in 2022, these kinds of negative events keep reviving the ghosts of the past and reawakening the crisis of trust in investors' minds.

Major investors look at many data points before committing to an instrument. The three main ones are:

1 – Justice: I'm putting my money here; but if I run into trouble when I want to withdraw it, where do I turn? Do institutions like the SEC or a country's legal system actually take me seriously, and even if they do, can they actually recover my money? (Just recall the years-long process FTX creditors have been going through.)

2 – Trust: Can my money evaporate for unforeseeable reasons, or turn into a dead investment?

3 – Expectation: What kind of positive narrative and price outlook does this project carry for the future? What problem does it solve, what does it add to the market?

Which of these three do you think truly exists in the crypto market? Let me answer: in the vast majority of it, none. And where they do exist, they are deeply inadequate.

With predictable markets like stocks, bonds, commodities and FX pairs readily available, would you really put your money into markets that carry the risk of wiping out your capital overnight?

These last two events, unfortunately, will weigh heavily on the future of crypto. The market still hasn't gotten back on its feet since the LUNC collapse. A market missing all three pillars cannot absorb successive shocks to trust. Therefore, the so-called bull market we keep talking about — if it is coming at all — has been pushed further down the road.