On July 20, Andy Liu, head and chief analyst of HTX Research, was a guest at the fifth session of the Huobi Master Lecture. With the theme of "2026 Q3 Quarterly Preview: The New Order of the Crypto Market under Global Liquidity Repricing", he conducted analysis around global liquidity repricing, changes in the crypto market structure, core asset trends and future investment opportunities.

As a guest speaker in this issue, Andy Liu has been deeply involved in the encryption industry for a long time and has a comprehensive background in investment management, institutional services, on-chain data analysis and industry research. He is currently responsible for the construction of the overall research system of HTX Research, covering multiple dimensions such as macro market linkage, industry trends and CEX asset strategy research.

Q2 market adjustment: repricing under changes in global capital costs

When reviewing the market performance in the second quarter of 2026, Andy said that the price of Bitcoin dropped from a high of about US$82,000 in mid-May to a staged low of around US$59,000 in June, with the maximum retracement approaching 24%. But this is not the "end of the crypto industry cycle", but a concentrated repricing under the contraction of global US dollar liquidity.

For the encryption market in Q3, Andy made three core judgments:

1. Liquidity matters more than geopolitics: Short-term events may influence market sentiment, but it is energy prices, inflation, Federal Reserve policy, and the direction of the U.S. dollar that really determine trends.

2. Cash flow is more important than narrative: The market no longer pays for grand narratives and stacked TVL. The protocol must have real revenue, destruction and value capture mechanisms.

3. Infrastructure is more important than price: Price pullbacks have not stopped infrastructure expansion. RWA, stablecoins, on-chain securities, AI Agent payment and institutional compliance channels are still advancing. Crypto’s long-term direction is shifting from a native asset trading market to a part of the global financial infrastructure.

Comprehensive analysis of popular assets, where do institutional funds flow?

In view of the performance of core crypto assets that the market is concerned about, Andy Liu analyzed key tracks such as BTC, ETH, DeFi, and RWA one by one based on the liquidity environment, institutional capital allocation, and asset value capture capabilities.

BTC (overweighted) has become a proxy variable for global liquidity: BTC is no longer just a native crypto asset, but also a core expression tool for global liquidity. The core variables in Q3 are whether spot ETF capital flows are back on track, as well as the policy direction of the Federal Reserve and the pace of the Treasury Department’s bond issuance. BTC is still the first entry point for institutional allocation and is extremely defensive and flexible.

ETH (neutral/tactical long) faces value capture challenges: Although Layer 2 improves network efficiency, it weakens mainnet fee income. The current pain point of ETH is that ecological growth fails to effectively feed back the value of the token. The valuation restoration of ETH in Q3 needs to focus on three major catalysts: the recovery of L1 handling fees and destruction volume, the net inflow of ETF funds, and the positive stimulation of regulatory implementation. DeFi (Selective Overweight Leader) has entered the era of cash flow: The era of only looking at TVL (Total Locked Volume) valuation has passed. “High-quality DeFi” with a real income return mechanism, strong risk isolation capabilities, and deep integration with compliant funds will usher in revaluation.

RWA (continuous overweighting), the structural main line across the cycle: In a high interest rate environment, RWA assets such as U.S. debt tokenization provide a natural income outlet for on-chain funds. Its growth does not rely on bull market sentiment, but is based on real institutional compliance allocation needs. It is one of the most certain tracks at the moment.

Long-tail Altcoin (underweight): Against the background of insufficient expansion of stablecoins, high pressure to unlock, and limited liquidity, long-tail altcoins lack the foundation for a full-scale explosion.

Andy concluded that the Crypto market in Q3 will not be driven by a single narrative, but will be determined by two main lines - whether global liquidity improves marginally, and whether regulatory certainty is enough to reopen institutional risk budgets.

Regulations shift from risk discounting to market catalysts

As for regulatory trends, Andy believes that in the past few years, regulation has been regarded more as a risk factor by the market and has affected asset valuations through risk discounts. But as the industry matures, regulatory certainty is becoming a new market catalyst.

He emphasized that what the market is concerned about is not that the looser the regulation, the better, but whether the rules are clear. "The clearer the rules, the easier it will be for institutions to judge which assets and businesses can enter the balance sheet."

In the Q3 market outlook, Andy believes that regulatory advancement is more important for assets such as Ethereum, DeFi, stable coins and RWA. Compared with Bitcoin, which already has access to ETFs and mature institutions, these areas may have greater flexibility for regulatory improvements in the future.

At the end of the live broadcast, Andy ended the lecture with one sentence: "The market in Q3 will not reward all risks, it will only reward risks with liquidity support, real cash flow, and clear regulatory paths."

Talk directly to hot topics: ETFs, the four-year cycle theory and the "dilemma of altcoins"

During the interactive session of the live broadcast, Andy gave in-depth answers to several market phenomena that audiences were most concerned about:

• About "Success is also an ETF, failure is also an ETF":
  In response to the recent sharp fluctuations in Bitcoin due to the outflow of funds from ETFs, Andy believes that ETFs are not the only determinant of the market, but rather "market amplifiers." The addition of ETFs amplifies Bitcoin's sensitivity to macro liquidity, allowing traditional institutions to quickly adjust positions. The real market engine is still the improvement of global liquidity. At the same time, the inflow of ETF funds does not mean blind long-selling, which includes a large number of basis trading and hedging operations.

• On whether the "four-year cycle theory" is invalid:
  Andy believes that the four-year "halving cycle" has not expired, but it has changed from an "iron law" to a "reference for supply rhythm." Today, Bitcoin has a huge stock and has been deeply integrated into the global asset allocation system. Only when the "supply contraction of the halving cycle" resonates with the "liquidity cycle of the dollar expansion" will a super bull market break out.

• Revealing the truth about “altcoin liquidity depletion”:
  Why has the market value of stablecoins hit a new high recently, but the vast majority of altcoins continue to decline? Andy sharply pointed out four reasons: First, institutional funds enter BTC through ETFs and no longer rotate downward to altcoins as in the past; secondly, the use scenarios of stablecoins have been greatly expanded (such as cross-border payments, RWA), and the issuance of stablecoins does not mean "queuing up to buy altcoins"; thirdly, the supply of altcoins is high, facing huge unlocking pressure and the withdrawal of early investors; finally, the market has become immune to "narrative coins" that have no real value capture.

Huobi Master Lecture is a long-term educational column created by Huobi Growth Academy. It aims to invite the world's top scholars, industry leaders and senior practitioners to conduct in-depth exchanges around cutting-edge fields such as the encryption industry, artificial intelligence, and Web3, helping users understand the underlying logic behind market trends and establish an independent thinking framework.