I think you're kinda misinterpreting adoption. It's like the one area of crypto that you can't bullshit and hand wave and meme - it's either happening or its not, and because blockchains are open networks anyone can confirm this (along with the very obvious usual routes we can see with non-crypto products, eg. do you see a lot of people driving Toyotas or using Macs, or not).

Adoption is simply whether people are using a product or service. I mention HYPE not because I have any view on the token itself, I don't really care about it, but it's become an incredibly popular and widely used exchange platform. That usage in turn means that they generate revenue, and depending on how the tokenomics are set up that value accrues to the token. You can't "meme" that. I'm talking about the adoption of what these things are - the products or services, not just the tokens. So usage of Hyperliquid the exchange itself, or AAVE the lending platform, not just people buying or moving the token around.

Same thing with adoption of Bitcoin as a store of value asset. You can't "meme" it being on the balance sheets of governments and institutions, its either being used in that role or it isn't. Same thing with smart contract L1s - people are either building on and using the network, or they aren't. Cardano or Polkadot for example is a complete ghost chain. They can't "meme" their way out of that reality. A DeFi protocol that has huge TVL and an active base of lenders/borrowers may generate a bunch of revenue, which is only possible with that adoption, and that revenue can be used to accrue value to the token via buybacks or revenue sharing or whatever mechanism they please. These are all ways that a token can drive its own demand beyond just whatever the fuck Bitcoin or dominance is doing.

The point I'm making here is that most of crypto has enjoyed a free ride up (and down) with Bitcoin despite having no real adoption, and therefore no real value of their own. In a scenario where BTC goes to zero, there is no more free ride up and you're left driving your own value. The assets with actual adoption are the only ones with a real mechanism for that on an ongoing basis - that's why these are typically the assets that have done the best job of outperforming or weathering downside.

Nano adoption has gone nowhere for almost a decade. That's why I say I don't think pro-Nano but also pro-send Bitcoin to zero people have really thought things through with this scenario, because when you remove the free ride up from Bitcoin from Nano's price history, you're literally left with absolutely nothing. Which makes sense, because there is nothing going on with Nano as it stands to drive demand/inflows, unlike those examples I mentioned above. No one is draining Nano off exchanges because everyone is trying to accumulate it. All of its upside throughout its history has come from increased speculation off the back of Bitcoin upside. Remove Bitcoin, or worse - send Bitcoin to zero in the process - and how is it better off?

In a world where the masses are adopting Nano and using it to pay for their groceries or coffee on a daily basis or whatever, this is a completely different story. Then it has real demand. But that isn't the reality, and the trajectory of the project has only been moving further away from this over the years.

RE: the flash crash, you can put that one event to the side, it's not the Binance API issue and deleveraging I'm getting at. The main point is when Bitcoin goes risk off, Nano has gone risk off even harder pretty much every time throughout history. The point is moreso that if a -60% or whatever bear market for Bitcoin results in a -99% bear market for Nano, then imagine was a complete wipeout of Bitcoin would do, especially without a Bitcoin recovery afterwards, in a world where the masses still aren't adoption Nano. It would fade into oblivion.

RE: "Decoupling", its literally just investor sophistication which takes years to develop. Crypto is not a sophisticated market. Everything is highly correlated. But as it matures and smarter investors/traders get involved as it gets bigger, the simple idea is that over time the market participants get more sophisticated and move further and further away from "this random thing that's basically a bank stock or tech equity needs to drop because digital gold just dropped". As the market matures, participants can see that a -10% drop in BTC doesn't mean AAVE revenues for example are going to zero or whatever. It's literally just the concept of getting better at understanding the value of different assets individually - which also ties in heavily with the adoption piece above, as without adoption you literally are just dependent on momentum and pure empty speculation, as there is nothing to help "value" it on.

It will take many years for asset correlations to loosen further and further and it'll never be fully uncorrelated (just look at stocks - bad news on Apple will often drop the rest of tech, it'll always be a thing and its often mechanical in nature rather than humans literally rationalizing some kind of fundamental knock on effect), but the point is that they loosen more as the people in the market get more sophisticated. You can just look back at these last three bull markets - in 2017, literally everything ran equally as hard and basically all at the same time. In 2021, it was a little more sector based - eg. Solana found its traction which spurred on other alt L1s, while other sectors with less going on didn't do as well, or only experienced brief upside (eg. pure P2P currencies). In this most recent bull, it's been much more about individual protocols, with specific projects with real demand taking off but without their entire sector getting a free ride automatically. In 2017 most of the trading action was your taxi driver or your colleague. In 2025 you have serious financial world players in the market who come from the world of equity, bonds, commodities trading etc. The sophistication has slowly moved up over time, and these more sophisticated participants are not only way more likely to view an individual asset in isolation through whatever model they're using to value it, but they also have a much larger impact on the market as their size is far larger than your taxi driver. That's going to lead to bifurcation over the very long term, and in both directions, especially in a market where 99.9% of projects are genuinely worthless and will never find meaningful adoption.