TL;DR
- Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan believes crypto’s biggest bull market may be ahead, with improving sentiment, ETF inflows, and Bitcoin’s recovery encouraging investors.
- His Hyperliquid Lane favors revenue-producing protocols whose tokenomics connect usage to value, highlighted by $1 billion in lifetime revenue and 99% HYPE buybacks.
- The Robinhood Lane targets companies building blockchain services at scale, including Robinhood’s Layer 2, which reached $300 million in deposits and 3.6 million daily transactions.
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan believes crypto’s largest bull market may still lie ahead, even though the sector has not conclusively completed its recovery. Improving sentiment, positive exchange-traded fund flows, and Bitcoin’s recent performance have already prompted investors to ask what could lead the next cycle. The strange part is that Hougan’s strongest opportunities are not simply Bitcoin or familiar altcoins, but two investment lanes built around the growing merger of blockchain infrastructure and traditional finance. He calls them the Hyperliquid Lane and the Robinhood Lane, each capturing a different side of that convergence.
Revenue-Generating Protocols Meet Blockchain-Native Companies
The Hyperliquid Lane centers on crypto financial applications producing meaningful revenue while connecting token value directly to platform activity. Hougan expects stablecoins, tokenization, 24/7 trading, instant settlement, and institutional decentralized finance to drive integration between onchain and conventional markets at meaningful scale. Hyperliquid stands out because its growth is paired with unusually aggressive token economics, rather than user activity alone. The derivatives platform surpassed $1 billion in lifetime revenue during June and is reportedly on track to generate about $800 million this year, demonstrating commercial scale that earlier crypto applications often struggled to reach.
Hyperliquid directs 99% of protocol revenue toward purchasing HYPE tokens on the open market, reducing supply while activity generates income. Hougan argues that this structure distinguishes the project from earlier platforms that attracted users without creating comparable value for token holders. The investment thesis depends on revenue becoming token demand instead of remaining an abstract ecosystem metric, a connection that sounds obvious but has frequently been absent across crypto. He expects more projects to adopt similar models, suggesting the next cycle could reward protocols whose economics visibly convert usage into benefits for their native assets.
The Robinhood Lane focuses on established companies building financial services on blockchain infrastructure instead of limiting themselves to pilot programs. Hougan highlighted Robinhood’s Layer 2 launch on July 1, which accumulated more than $300 million in deposits and processed 3.6 million daily transactions within two weeks. The apparent advantage belongs to companies learning through real-scale deployment before the market fully changes, not firms waiting for certainty through proofs of concept. Hougan’s outlook remains conditional because recovery is incomplete, yet he sees crypto protocols and blockchain-native companies as investments positioned to dominate the next bull market.