[DigitalToday reporter Yoonseo Lee] The cryptocurrency market has grown into an ecosystem with institutional investors, yield-generating protocols and real-world use cases, but investor attention is still focused on a “one-shot profit” narrative rather than fundamentals.

Cointelegraph, a blockchain media outlet, reported on July 29 that this pattern has repeated in every cycle, including DeFi, memecoins and decentralised computing.

Samar Sen (사마르 센), head of international markets at U.S. fintech firm Talos, pointed to crypto still being a young asset class. He said price discovery is influenced more by attention than analysis, unlike in mature markets. He said the structure persists in which investment money moves first toward narratives that become a talking point.

Meir Statman (메이어 스탯먼), a professor at Santa Clara University and a behavioural finance scholar, attributed the phenomenon to investor psychology. He said investment behaviour changes quickly but human nature and aspirations do not change much. He explained that investors tend to bet on outcomes that can change their lives rather than choosing the optimal assets.

Statman said investors’ assets are divided into two layers in their minds. One is “not being poor” money to maintain their standard of living, and the other is “becoming rich” money to change their situation, such as buying a home or achieving financial independence. In this structure, diversification may be statistically rational, but it can be less attractive to investors who expect big changes with small capital.

MarketWise said investors react not because they want risk itself, but because they fear missing out on “life-changing returns.” It also said there is a tendency to confuse “technological breakthroughs” with “investment opportunities.”

Actual money flows and prices show the disconnect. DeFi’s leading protocols Aave and Uniswap (UNI) attracted deposits worth billions of dollars, but did not draw attention. Aave is at about $98, about 85 percent below its 2021 peak. By contrast, Aave’s total value locked exceeded $14 billion, and it topped $37 billion at the peak of the bull market in October 2025.

Thomas Probst (토머스 프로브스트), a research analyst at Kaiko, said fundamentals matter more in the long term even if certain assets can rise more in the short term. He said resilience, liquidity and volatility remain key variables. He stressed that a solid market structure must underpin an asset’s ability to establish itself over time.

Price moves also showed the importance of the timing of purchases. MarketWise analysis said an investor who put $10,000 into bitcoin in January 2021 would have more than $24,000 as of April 2026, for a 141 percent gain. But someone who invested the same amount at the cycle peak in October 2025 would have a little more than $6,000 in April 2026, for a 38 percent loss. An investor who chased Aave during the same period would now be in an 85 percent loss range.

Institutional investors are moving on different criteria from retail investors. Sen said institutions find it difficult to chase excessive speculative profits due to management guidelines, and that they review risk-adjusted performance, liquidity, custody systems and operational resilience before upside potential. He added that themes such as DeFi, artificial intelligence and memecoins start from real technological progress or new use cases, but once speculative money attaches, prices move much faster than fundamentals.

In this 흐름, the gap between the cryptocurrency market’s maturation and investor behaviour is also becoming clearer. The market is increasing real-world use and institutional money, but retail investors’ money is still heading for tokens that can deliver large short-term gains. Still, it is being reaffirmed that liquidity, market structure and sustainable cash flow matter more than token narratives as standards that determine long-term performance.