Crypto investors are looking past market-cap rankings and back to fundamentals
Crypto investors are shifting their focus from market-cap rankings to traditional financial fundamentals like revenue, adoption, and economic value. Industry experts note that institutional interest is driving this transition toward venture-capital-style analysis of decentralized applications.
Why it matters
This represents a maturing of the cryptocurrency market as it aligns more closely with traditional fintech and institutional investment frameworks.
During an interview with CoinDesk, Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley described the shift as the end of crypto’s “CoinMarketCap leaderboard” era. In earlier cycles, investors often valued new layer-1 networks as a fraction of the largest blockchain above them, he said. Smaller projects were then priced at a discount.
That approach is losing ground as investors focus on addressable markets, adoption and how much economic value a project can capture, Horsley said.
He cited Hyperliquid as an example. Investors can examine the derivatives platform’s trading activity and economics when assessing its HYPE token rather than treating it as a smaller version of another blockchain. The token is up around 20% in the past year.
“When we speak with wealth managers at a firm that has recently approved access to the space, they have no idea where something ranks on CoinMarketCap,” Horsley said. “It’s irrelevant.”
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