Today I found something pretty interesting—my assessment of $HYPE actually matches that of a certain industry heavyweight: it looks impressive on the surface, but its daily active user data is shockingly poor.

Every time I mention that $ASTER has a chance to surpass HYPE, there’s always someone who counters with “all the whales are flocking to HYPE.” That logic sounds reasonable at first, but if you think about it, it doesn’t really hold up.

Suddenly, I’m reminded of a classic case in the e-commerce sector.

JD.com’s genuine product guarantees and logistics experience are indeed strong—no one denies that. But if we’re talking about market share rankings? Pinduoduo has already surged ahead, and even Taobao has had to take a back seat.

Places where whales congregate may excel in certain aspects, but the true market dominator is always the player who captures the flow of traffic.

A product doesn’t need to be perfect—simple to operate, 1000x leverage, low barriers and high excitement; ASTER’s combo is practically tailor-made for the “all-in” crowd. Although I personally never touch leverage, the crypto market’s voting with their feet makes it obvious: leveraged traders vastly outnumber those of us just holding spot.

Let me give another more straightforward example.

The battle between WeChat and Alipay is quite similar to the dynamic between ASTER and HYPE.

Alipay was created ten years earlier than WeChat, but still lost in the end. Why? At the outset, WeChat directly integrated with the QQ account system. QQ held the traffic gateway, allowing WeChat to seamlessly share the entire user pool. Alipay? It had to build up user numbers slowly from scratch—not even starting from the same line.

In the DEX sector, my top pick is actually $UNI, but I’m also accumulating ASTER.

The obvious reason? I trust a certain leading exchange’s ecosystem capabilities and the long-term value of its governance token.

But the core reason? ASTER is directly embedded into the underlying architecture of a certain chain, with deep integration with the governance token. This setup is fundamentally no different from how WeChat and QQ shared account systems back in the day.

You can question whether ASTER’s DEX positioning is “pure” enough, but you can’t deny one fact: this chain has a user base of 300 million. Even if only 10% are redirected over, that’s still 30 million users.

30 million people—even if every single one is just a “10U warrior”—is more than enough to send ASTER to the moon.

Is ASTER’s price sluggish right now? Completely normal—the broader market is weak and it’s just adjusting alongside $BTC.

Here’s a counterintuitive take: if ASTER were able to rise against the trend while BTC is dropping, I’d actually consider reducing my position—because that would mean it’s decoupled from BTC, which is not a good sign for mainstream coins.

If BTC weakens and ASTER follows, that’s actually a healthy linkage.

When BTC gets going again, ASTER will naturally take off too. $100 per token? That’s just the beginning.