In the 2013 and 2017 cycles, major projects hyped themselves as "better than bitcoin" in some way, with a side dish of "blockchain but not bitcoin" from some of the more bone headed institutionals.
In the 2021 cycle, pretending your project was "better than bitcoin" just made you look stupid and/or arrogant. The market moved on to yield, collectables, and memes.
But I've noticed things have come full circle in the 2025 cycle. Where projects used to compete *against* bitcoin, they now compete *for* bitcoin. The focus is on integrating bitcoin with bridges, sidechains, etc, and "defi" seems to be showing the early signs of capitulating to "bitcoinfi".
None of them are doing it properly yet, but my instinct tells me the 2029 cycle will bring some bitcoin level maturity to the crypto space, which will become primarily focused on bitcoin denominated revenue.
