Between 9 February and 18 February, we collected responses from 61 institutional crypto investors, including senior executives at leading crypto hedge funds, venture capital managers, multi-strategy firms, and professional allocators. Responses were gathered and refined over a nine-day period. We interviewed participants in partnership with Crypto Funds Watch.

The results mark a decisive shift from our November 2025 Crypto Sentiment Institutional Investors Survey (62 respondents). In November, institutions were cautious but still broadly positioned for a final expansion phase. By mid-February, that positioning has changed. The market is no longer debating when the top will occur — it is increasingly operating under the assumption that it already has.

From “one more leg” to “cycle concluded”

The most important change versus November is the migration of expectations around peak timing.

In November 2025:

• Only 17.7% believed Bitcoin had already peaked
• 51.6% expected the cycle high in H1 2026

That distribution implied unfinished business — a final rally still to come.

In Q1 2026:

• 55.7% now believe Bitcoin has already peaked
• The dominant high-price bucket centers below $130k

Ethereum follows the same path. In November:

• 29% believed ETH had already peaked
• 33.9% expected a cycle high below $5k

In Q1 2026, “already peaked” becomes the majority view. Upside scenarios above prior highs shrink in probability. Expectations have compressed.

Solana shows an even sharper swing. In November:

• 25.8% believed SOL had already peaked
• 40.3% expected a high below $300

In February, the dominant view is again that the peak has already occurred. Fewer respondents now assume a sustained breakout above prior projected targets.

Across all three majors, the message is uniform: institutions believe the expansion phase of the 2024–2025 cycle has ended.

The overall market: November’s optimism has been repriced

In November 2025:

• 19.4% believed the overall crypto market had already peaked
• 45.2% expected a peak in H1 2026

In Q1 2026, “already peaked” becomes the prevailing framework for the broader market as well. The assumption that a synchronized final rally lies ahead has largely disappeared.

Importantly, this shift did not coincide with a collapse in long-term conviction. What changed is timing, not belief in the asset class.

What institutions did after October 10, 2025

We added a new question in this survey: what actions respondents took since October 10, 2025.

The breakdown:

• 34.4% were net buyers
• 47.6% reduced exposure to some extent
• 18.0% did not buy nor sell.
• A meaningful minority reduced exposure by more than half (16.4%).

That pattern reflects late-cycle behavior. Some capital takes profits and reduces gross exposure. Other capital rotates and accumulates selectively. The market becomes less one-directional.

What stands out is what comes next.

When asked about plans for the remainder of 2026:

• 55.8% plan to increase exposure
• 34.4% plan to hold steady
• Only 9.8% plan further reductions

Despite believing the cycle has peaked, nearly 90% are not exiting. They are preparing to deploy capital differently.

Downside expectations: correction, not collapse

We also asked where respondents see 2026 lows.

For Bitcoin:

• The largest concentration sits in $50k–$60k
• The second largest in $40k–$50k
• Deep sub-$40k scenarios remain minority views

For Ethereum:

• Most responses cluster in the $1.1k–$1.7k range

For Solana:

• The modal range is $60–$80
• Followed by $40–$60

The pattern is consistent across assets: institutions expect drawdowns, but not disorderly collapses. The anticipated retracement resembles prior cyclical corrections, but with a smaller drawdown profile rather than a prolonged, multi-year bear market.

This is a notable distinction. Institutions are bracing for volatility, not systemic failure.

Next cycle projections: conviction deferred, not abandoned

If this cycle has ended, what does the next look like?

For Bitcoin:

• The largest cluster projects $150k–$250k
• A meaningful tail expects >$350k
• Peak timing concentrates in 2027–2029

For Ethereum:

• The dominant range is $5k–$10k
• A substantial minority expects >$12.5k
• Timing again clusters in 2027–2029

For Solana:

• Distribution is wider
• The modal answer remains below $300
• But a large share projects $400–$750+ in a future cycle

The difference versus November is not in the magnitude of long-term expectations. It is in the calendar. The next expansion phase is now widely assumed to be later in the decade.

Sector positioning: capital is moving toward durability

In November 2025, expected outperformers were spread across DeFi, L1s, stablecoins, and RWAs, each attracting meaningful support.

In Q1 2026, the distribution tightens:

• DeFi remains the most cited potential outperformer
• RWAs and stablecoins strengthen
• L1 enthusiasm moderates
• AI narratives fade from leadership expectations

On the underperformance side:

• In November, Gaming (46.8%) led expected laggards, with memecoins (19.4%) second
• In Q1 2026, memecoins move into the top laggard position, with gaming still expected to underperform.

The shift suggests that in a year expected to be volatile and range-bound, institutions favor sectors tied to usage, fee generation, and regulatory clarity over reflexive narratives.

What changed between November 2025 and February 2026?

Three developments stand out.

1. The peak moved from future tense to past tense.
In November, most respondents expected highs ahead. In February, most believe those highs are behind us.

2. Risk behavior adjusted, but commitment did not.
Nearly half reduced exposure after October. Yet the overwhelming majority plans to maintain or increase exposure through 2026.

3. The time horizon shifted outward.
The next cycle is still expected to produce higher highs. Expectations are simply pushed into 2027–2029.

Deeper takeaways

The institutional market is no longer operating on the assumption that broad beta will do the work. That phase appears to be over. What replaces it is more deliberate capital allocation.

Investors appear prepared for a year defined by:

• Higher dispersion between sectors
• More tactical positioning
• Wider trading ranges
• Greater sensitivity to macro liquidity

But this is not a retreat. The fact that 55.8% intend to increase exposure in 2026, even after a majority declared the cycle peak complete, speaks to structural conviction. Institutions are not questioning the asset class. They are questioning the phase of the cycle.

The expected 2026 retracement ranges reinforce that view. The consensus does not anticipate a 2022-style structural unwind. It anticipates digestion — a period in which leverage clears, weaker narratives fade, and capital reallocates toward segments with stronger foundations.

The contrast with November is striking. Then, the dominant question was how high and how soon. Now, the dominant question is where to deploy and at what size.

If November represented late-cycle optimism with caution, February represents post-peak discipline with retained conviction.

The message is clear: the easy upside has likely been realized. The next phase will reward patience, selectivity, and balance sheet strength. And beyond that — according to a majority of institutional respondents — the next structural expansion is still ahead.

About MV Global

Established in 2019, MV Global has emerged as a force in the Web3 landscape focused on early-stage investments and venture building. Our mission is clear: to partner with mavericks, visionaries, and free thinkers to leverage blockchain-enabled technologies to build for the future.

Website | X | LinkedIn | Medium

About Crypto Funds Watch

Crypto Funds Watch (CFW) is a leading newsletter delivering timely insights and analysis on the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry. It serves crypto venture and hedge funds, high-net-worth individuals, fund of funds, pension funds, and endowments with coverage of capital raising, fund launches, acquisitions, personnel moves, and investment activity. With over 4,000 highly engaged subscribers — 79% of whom are decision-makers — CFW is recognized as a trusted source for institutional-grade crypto intelligence.

Website | LinkedIn

Key Points

• Timing Web3 was always overstated. What looked like predictable crypto cycles were largely a product of global liquidity and a small historical sample, not a repeatable market rule.
• Early Web3 returns were structural, not skill-based. Fast token liquidity briefly delivered venture-style returns on short timelines, an environment that has largely disappeared.
• Structure now matters more than narrative. Duration, liquidity, portfolio construction, risk management and manager discipline increasingly determine outcomes as the market matures.

The Reality of Timing Web3

As Web3 matures, a common belief in timing the market has become less convincing. Some investors anchored their approach to a simple narrative:

“Wait for the bear market, buy the bottom, and ride the next cycle higher.”

In crypto, that logic was often linked to the four-year Bitcoin halving. The halving appeared to offer a predictable rhythm for entry and exit, reinforcing the idea that market cycles could be anticipated with reasonable confidence.

Today, that framework looks increasingly incomplete to me.

Bitcoin has experienced only a limited number of full cycles, many of them before sustained institutional participation. As the asset class has grown, broader financial conditions appear to play a larger role in price behaviour than internal crypto events alone.

As crypto has become more integrated into global markets, its price behaviour has increasingly resembled other risk assets. Market drawdowns and recoveries have tended to coincide more closely with shifts in rates and broader risk sentiment than with crypto-specific events alone.

That dynamic weakens the predictive power of simple halving-based models. Rather than acting as an independent driver, the halving now operates inside a broader macro environment, one shaped by interest rates and balance sheets, as well as the behaviour of institutional capital.

Institutional participation has reinforced this shift. Bitcoin now trades through futures and options markets, alongside ETFs that connect it directly to traditional portfolio flows. As a result, price action has become more sensitive to macro conditions and less driven by purely crypto-native forces.

The result is not that cycles have disappeared, but that their drivers have evolved. What once appeared deterministic now behaves probabilistically.

This change is also visible in long-term performance data. Over extended horizons, Bitcoin has materially outperformed traditional benchmarks such as the S&P 500 across multiple market regimes.¹ That track record has reinforced BTC’s role as a liquid source of beta within digital assets.

The comparison matters not because every strategy must outperform Bitcoin, but because BTC offers scale and liquidity by default. When long-duration strategies rely on similar return drivers without meaningful differentiation, the trade-offs around fees and lockups become harder to justify.

The question for allocators is no longer whether the cycle can be called correctly. It is whether portfolios are structured for the regime that now exists.

What Drove Early Web3 Returns

To understand where we are today, it helps to be clear about what drove early success.

In the earliest phases of Web3, the market was dominated by crypto-native capital rather than institutional allocators. Returns often came from being early to adoption and liquidity waves, not from deliberate attempts to time entry and exit points.

Only later, as traditional investors entered the space, did familiar private market frameworks such as deploying in downturns and exiting in bull markets become a more common lens.

In practice, Web3 resisted many imported investment frameworks. Not because the ideas were wrong, but because the market behaved very differently from traditional venture.

Three structural features mattered most:

1. Liquidity arrived unusually early. Token markets introduced public pricing long before most businesses had matured operationally.
2. Returns were driven by reflexivity rather than fundamentals. Early gains were often a function of rapid repricing and narrative momentum rather than sustained execution.
3. Exit mechanics mattered more than valuation. Vesting schedules, lockups, and market depth ultimately determined realised outcomes, not headline paper gains.

Together, these forces compressed timelines in a way traditional venture capital funds had never experienced. Capital moved faster, feedback arrived earlier, and liquidity appeared before fundamentals had time to form.

This dynamic is visible in industry-wide performance data. PwC’s Global Crypto Hedge Fund Report shows that returns rose sharply during the highly liquid market conditions of 2021, before reversing as financial conditions tightened in 2022.² The shift illustrates how closely outcomes were tied to liquidity regimes rather than to stable, repeatable drivers of alpha.

The magnitude of that reversal highlights an important point. A meaningful share of early returns reflected structural features of the liquidity environment and token market design, rather than durable investment edge.

As liquidity thinned, vesting schedules, lockups, and exit mechanics became binding constraints. Paper gains often appeared strong, but realised outcomes depended heavily on when tokens listed, how deep markets were, and how many holders attempted to exit simultaneously.

This did not eliminate skill, but it raised the bar. Repeatable edge increasingly depended on structure, discipline, and exit management rather than exposure alone.

What Wins Now

As Web3 matures, allocator behaviour is beginning to resemble patterns seen in other private markets.

Research from Oxford Saïd Business School’s Private Equity Institute shows that market timing has historically contributed little to long-term private market performance. Instead, outcomes are far more sensitive to pacing discipline and manager selection across cycles.³

In our view, that insight translates cleanly into digital assets. As distributions slow and visibility decreases, LPs become more sensitive to duration risk and liquidity management. The focus shifts away from tactical exposure and toward strategies designed to remain viable across changing regimes.

Structural design now plays a more central role. Multi-strategy approaches have gained attention because they allow capital to stay engaged without relying on a single moment in time being right. By combining venture exposure with liquid strategies or secondaries, these structures introduce flexibility in markets that reprice continuously.

Secondary activity also becomes more relevant as unrealised positions accumulate. In traditional private markets, secondaries have historically provided liquidity during periods of stress and pricing dislocation. While crypto secondaries remain relatively early, institutional participation is increasing as fund terms normalize and the backlog of unrealised positions grows.

At the same time, capital efficiency has re-emerged as a priority. Demand for co-investment rights reflects a desire for clearer visibility into risk and faster feedback, while still benefiting from a GP’s sourcing and judgment.

Taken together, these shifts point to a broader structural transition. Web3 is moving from opportunistic exposure toward a more durable allocation within institutional portfolios. It now sits between public and private markets in its liquidity profile and time horizon, which raises the bar for how capital is structured and managed.

Access is no longer scarce. Judgment is.

Financial economics research consistently shows that venture returns follow highly skewed distributions, where a small number of outcomes drive a disproportionate share of total value creation.⁴

Web3 has not altered this dynamic. If anything, faster feedback loops and continuous pricing mean dispersion shows up earlier rather than later.

In that environment, broad exposure is not enough. What matters is judgment. The ability to concentrate where conviction is highest and manage liquidity deliberately becomes the real edge.

Strategic Flexibility Going Forward

The central lesson from this cycle is not that Web3 failed to deliver. It is that the way capital is deployed into it must evolve.

As macro conditions, institutional flows, and market structure reshape the landscape, success depends less on calling inflection points and more on building exposure that can adapt.

For LPs, that means prioritising resilience across cycles. For GPs, it means designing strategies grounded in liquidity and risk management rather than hope.

Over time, it is this ability to adapt, rather than predict, that is likely to define successful Web3 exposure.

Authors: Lee Pickavance, Ivan Ripamonti.

Sources

1. S&P 500 vs Bitcoin long-term performance
   https://curvo.eu/backtest/en/compare-indexes/bitcoin-vs-sp-500?currency=eur
2. PwC — Global Crypto Hedge Fund Report (2022 / 2023) https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/new-ventures/cryptocurrency-assets/5th-annual-global-crypto-hedge-fund-report-july-2023.pdf
3. Buy low, sell high? Do private equity fund managers have market timing abilities? Oxford Saïd Business School, Private Equity Institute (Tim Jenkinson et al.) https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:801b0fad-5085-4836-98b1-ab300d984156/files/rv692t678h
4. Crypto VS Wall Street: Decoding the effect of Bitcoin halving (Theodoros Daglis, Konstantinos N. Konstantakis, Georgios Lazarou, Panayotis G. Michaelides, Dimitrios L. Stamos) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1544612325018239?

2026 is unlikely to resemble the fast-moving, speculative cycles of the past. Instead, the year is shaping up to be one defined by steadier expansion, supported by improving global liquidity, clearer regulation, more mature market infrastructure, and a renewed but more selective return of retail participation. The industry enters the year on stronger footing than at any point in the last cycles.

Below are the predictions we believe will matter most in the year ahead.

I. Ten Core Predictions for 2026

These core predictions outline the developments most likely to shape market structure, capital flows, and adoption dynamics throughout 2026.

1. DEXs gain durable market share over CEXs — and don’t give it back.

On-chain venues become the default for new token listings and early price discovery.
Deeper liquidity, better MEV/routing infra, low friction listings, and institutional comfort with on-chain settlement push projects to adopt DEX-first launches. Centralized exchanges shift toward later-stage liquidity, not early bootstrapping.

2. Perpetual markets expand to “perpify” everything.

Synthetic perpetual markets appear for macro indices, private assets, commodities, and real-world metrics. Infrastructure now supports low-latency oracles, synthetic primitives, and generalized data feeds. Crypto’s addressable market expands beyond digital assets.

3. Crypto issuers adopt buybacks and cash-flow-anchored tokenomics as the standard.

2026 becomes the year sustainable revenue tokens dominate performance.
Investors increasingly price tokens like businesses — favoring fee-sharing, buybacks, stable emission schedules, and transparent treasury management. Uniswap’s shift, announced toward the end of 2025, becomes the industry template.

4. Tokenized finance and stablecoins emerge as the fastest-growing segment of digital assets.

Financial institutions are increasingly moving cash, short-duration instruments, and securities onto blockchain-based settlement rails as part of a broader shift in financial infrastructure. These assets are then used across decentralized markets as core collateral, supporting liquidity and settlement.

At the same time, fintech companies and emerging-market economies are adopting stablecoins for payments and B2B settlement, driven by lower costs, faster settlement, and reduced dependence on traditional banking networks.

5. Ethereum leads settlement, while Solana drives consumer activity.

Ethereum strengthens its position as the settlement layer for institutional finance, while Solana becomes the dominant chain for consumer applications and high-velocity market activity.

Ethereum’s security and decentralisation underpin growing institutional use, while Solana’s performance and developer culture support rapid iteration in consumer-facing products. As adoption concentrates around leading blockchain networks, many legacy Layer 1s remain in structural decline.

6. On-chain liquidity deepens across the EVM stack.

On-chain liquidity continues to deepen across Ethereum and its Layer 2 (L2) ecosystem.

Improved routing, better MEV management, and EVM-native interoperability reduce fragmentation, making multi-chain execution increasingly seamless, allowing capital to flow more efficiently across the stack.

7. SUI Reprices as a top-performing L1 of the year.

SUI delivers one of 2026’s strongest L1 rallies.
Fundamentals — users, stablecoins, DeFi depth, dev activity — accelerated through 2025 while price lagged. It resembles Solana’s 2023 setup: rising usage, depressed valuation, with a narrative and price reset pending.

8. Privacy coins roll over as regulatory pressure intensifies and privacy moves into core blockchain infrastructure.

As regulatory scrutiny around anonymity intensifies, institutionally oriented capital continues to avoid privacy coins, limiting liquidity and exchange support. At the same time, privacy is increasingly addressed through interoperable solutions — such as zero-knowledge proofs, encrypted execution, and other privacy-preserving technologies — implemented directly on major networks including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other leading Layer 1s.

These approaches allow selective disclosure, auditability, and compliance — aligning privacy with regulatory expectations rather than positioning it in opposition. As institutions scale participation in stablecoins, tokenized assets, and revenue-generating protocols on established networks, privacy functionality is embedded where capital already operates, leaving standalone privacy coins structurally disadvantaged and lagging broader market performance.

9. Retail comes back — but selectively.

Retail participation rises sharply, focused on tokens with revenue, usage, and transparent economics. A more disciplined retail cohort will return from Q1 2026, favoring DeFi, stablecoin ecosystems, high-activity L1s, and mid-caps with real cash flows instead of narrative-only bets.

10. Macro tailwinds drive a multi-quarter selective altcoin expansion.

Improving global liquidity, interest-rate reduction expectations, and an early turn in the business cycle are creating a supportive backdrop for risk assets. Economic data like the ISM stabilizing near 50 suggests growth is no longer deteriorating, reducing downside macro risk. A key driver of future liquidity growth is the Fed ending quantitative tightening and moving back toward balance-sheet expansion in 2026.

As financial conditions ease and central bank liquidity returns, capital typically flows into higher-beta assets. Altcoins are especially sensitive to these liquidity cycles and tend to outperform once liquidity inflects higher. This environment supports a multi-quarter, selective altcoin expansion rather than a short-lived or indiscriminate rally.

II. Ten Moonshot Predictions for 2026

These moonshot predictions represent outcomes that are either low-probability but high-impact, or contingent on meaningful political, regulatory, or institutional coordination to materialize.

1. A G7 nation actively buys Bitcoin as part of its strategic reserves, triggering a global sovereign adoption race.

For the first time, a major G7 economy confirms active Bitcoin purchases within its long-term reserve framework, building on early sovereign buying momentum seen in 2025 from countries such as the UAE, the Czech Republic, and Luxembourg.

The move is followed by additional sovereign buyers across emerging markets and financial hubs. While initial allocations remain small relative to gold or FX reserves, the signal is historic. Once Bitcoin becomes an instrument of sovereign reserve accumulation rather than passive experimentation, competitive dynamics emerge — driving Bitcoin beyond $200,000.

2. Bitcoin breaks above $200,000 as global liquidity and institutional demand accelerate.

Bitcoin surges past the $200,000 mark as global liquidity improves, ETF inflows broaden internationally, and institutional allocators increase exposure across pension funds, insurance portfolios, and corporate balance sheets. The move is less about euphoria and more about steady structural flows, turning Bitcoin into a mainstream macro asset.

3. IBIT becomes the largest non–U.S. stock or bond ETF in history.

By the end of 2026, IBIT will become the largest non–U.S. stock or bond ETF in history, driven by sustained and accelerating inflows. It will also surpass GLD’s assets under management — currently the world’s largest gold ETF — overtaking gold as the dominant alternative ETF exposure. These flows will be powered by increased sovereign participation and deeper institutional adoption as Bitcoin becomes a strategic reserve asset.

4. Dogecoin reaches a new All-Time High on retail momentum and ETF-driven liquidity.

Dogecoin becomes an unexpected outperformer as renewed retail participation converges with broader ETF inflows into the crypto market. As U.S. ETFs channel capital primarily into the largest and most established digital assets, attention and flows concentrate on large-cap coins with deep liquidity. Improving liquidity conditions amplify this effect, allowing incremental inflows to have a larger impact on price.

A more permissive U.S. stance toward major digital assets further reinforces investor confidence in large-cap exposure. In this environment, DOGE benefits from its scale, liquidity, and visibility. The result is an extension beyond its prior cycle peak as capital rotation favors established names.

5. A Fortune 100 consumer company launches its own public L2 network.

A household-name brand debuts a public L2 to power loyalty points, digital commerce, identity, and settlement. Tens of millions of existing customers are onboarded automatically through the company’s app ecosystem, creating one of the largest real-world user bases for an on-chain network.

6. An emerging-market government relies on stablecoins to navigate currency stress.

During a period of FX volatility or sovereign debt pressure, a government tacitly tolerates — and indirectly relies on — stablecoins as parallel savings and payment rails.

Adoption accelerates among small businesses and consumers, creating a de facto digital dollar system that stabilizes short-term purchasing power.

7. Prediction markets go mainstream as Polymarket and Kalshi IPO or launch a token

By the end of 2026, one of the leading prediction market platforms — Polymarket and Kalshi — will complete an IPO or launch a token. The listing marks a turning point for outcome-based markets, cementing them as a recognized financial primitive rather than a niche crypto product.

Whether via a regulated U.S. venue like Kalshi or a scaled, crypto-native platform like Polymarket, the IPO validates prediction markets as durable tools for pricing elections, macro data, and policy risk, and accelerates institutional and corporate adoption of market-implied probabilities as a standard input for decision-making.

8. Multinational corporations begin hedging and managing cash flows with tokenized FX swaps.

Large global companies adopt tokenized FX and on-chain swap markets for intraday liquidity and short-term hedging. Faster settlement and 24/7 execution prove meaningfully more efficient than legacy banking rails, marking one of the first major corporate uses of decentralized financial infrastructure.

9. Universal liquidity routing makes blockchains invisible to End Users.

Advances in routing, embedded wallets, and abstracted gas payments allow apps to operate seamlessly across multiple chains. Users no longer choose networks or manage bridging — execution is handled behind the scenes, and the concept of “which chain are you on?” effectively disappears for most consumer interactions.

10. Apple Pay integrates stablecoin rails beneath the surface

Apple quietly upgrades the Apple Pay payments stack to settle transactions over stablecoin rails, enabling instant micro-transactions, near-zero-cost cross-border payments, and seamless remittances. To users, nothing changes — there is no “crypto” branding, no wallets, and no keys. They simply experience faster, cheaper, and more reliable payments.

This marks one of the first mass-scale consumer deployments of on-chain infrastructure, where blockchain adoption occurs entirely behind the scenes through a trusted consumer interface, accelerating mainstream usage without requiring behavioral change.

III. Closing Thoughts: Why 2026 Is Poised for a Different Kind of Expansion

Looking back at 2025, what stands out is not a dramatic price cycle but a year of structural change. Markets spent much of the year adjusting to tighter financial conditions, cautious growth data, and uneven liquidity. Price action reflected this adjustment: 2025 marked the lowest annual percentage price movement for both Bitcoin and Ethereum since their adoption by institutional investors, signaling a new regime characterized by price compression rather than speculation.

Yet during this same period of subdued returns, the foundations of the industry continued to strengthen. Infrastructure matured, regulatory clarity improved across key jurisdictions, and capital increasingly shifted from momentum-driven flows toward long-term positioning. These developments, rather than price performance, now define the setup heading into 2026.

The most important shift was the extent to which crypto began to move in step with the broader financial system. Throughout 2025, price action tracked changes in financial conditions, interest rate expectations, and signals from the business cycle. Heading into 2026, improving global liquidity and a more predictable macro backdrop are likely to play directly into higher participation across the market — especially in sectors tied to usage, real-world activity, and revenue.

Over the past three to four years, leading global financial institutions have been quietly preparing the groundwork — building custody, compliance, and operational capabilities to treat crypto not as an experiment, but as financial infrastructure. Regulatory clarity in 2025 acted as the catalyst that unlocked this preparation, setting the stage for accelerated adoption into 2026. The clearest evidence appeared in the steady growth of tokenized treasuries, regulated custody solutions, and real-world stablecoin usage. Crucially, this progress did not rely on speculative enthusiasm; it emerged through methodical integration into existing financial systems. This dynamic explains why tokenized assets, stablecoins, and protocols with sustainable economics feature so prominently in 2026 predictions: these are the areas where institutions have already committed meaningful capital and operational resources.

Market structure also advanced in a way that sets the stage for the coming year. DEX liquidity deepened, perpetual DEXs gained influence, routing tools improved, and on-chain execution became more efficient. Teams found it faster to launch tokens on-chain, and traders increasingly trusted decentralized markets for reliable execution. This evolution supports the expectation that 2026 will see another step-change in on-chain liquidity, DEX-first listing behavior, and the rise of new synthetic and cross-chain markets.

Regulation also played a meaningful role in improving the market backdrop. After several years marked by enforcement-driven oversight and policy ambiguity, 2025 saw a clear shift toward constructive regulation. In Europe, the implementation of MiCA established a harmonized framework for crypto assets, providing legal certainty around stablecoins, tokenized products, and service providers. In the United States, the passage of the GENIUS Act formalized the regulatory treatment of stablecoins, signaling a move from ad hoc enforcement toward statutory oversight. Regulators increasingly focused on how to supervise the industry rather than questioning its legitimacy. Even in the absence of sweeping new legislation, this transition toward clearer and more predictable rules materially reduced regulatory risk and encouraged greater institutional participation. Looking ahead to 2026, the expected approval of the CLARITY Act in early 2026 should further define market structure and jurisdictional responsibilities, reinforcing a more transparent and investable environment — particularly in the US, where regulatory uncertainty had previously constrained institutional adoption.

Participation dynamics also evolved in a stabilizing direction. Market activity increasingly centered on assets tied to observable usage, fee generation, and sustainable token economics, rather than purely reflexive speculation. If this emphasis on fundamentals persists into 2026 — supported by a more favorable macro backdrop — it is likely to reinforce, rather than destabilize, the broader trend toward healthier and more sustainable growth.

Taken together, these changes provide a coherent rationale for the predictions outlined above. None of the expectations for 2026 rely on breakthroughs that have yet to materialize. They extend dynamics that were already visible at the end of 2025: stronger liquidity conditions, clearer regulation, deeper institutional engagement, maturing token models, and market infrastructure that now works at scale.

Crypto enters 2026 in a stronger and more durable position than at any point in recent years. The market is no longer dependent on narrative-driven rallies. Crypto is increasingly trading as a macro asset, with capital flows responding to liquidity conditions, rates, and fiscal dynamics. Bitcoin, in particular, has become embedded in the debasement trade, finding a role in institutional portfolios alongside gold and other stores of value. Activity across the broader market is being shaped by sustained usage, regulatory clarity, and clearer operating frameworks. If macro conditions continue to favor risk assets, 2026 may evolve into a year of measured, broad-based growth — driven by the extension of trends established in 2025 rather than a resurgence of speculative excess.

About MV Global

Established in 2019, MV Global has emerged as a force in the Web3 landscape focused on early-stage investments and venture building. Our mission is clear: to partner with mavericks, visionaries, and free thinkers to leverage blockchain-enabled technologies to build for the future.

Website | X | LinkedIn | Medium

• Web3’s maturity is structural, not speculative. Capital, regulation, and adoption have aligned to move the industry from hype towards institutional stability.
• Consolidation is the clearest signal of progress. M&A, IPOs, and Layer 1 dominance show an ecosystem concentrating around credibility and scale.
• The next phase belongs to the builders of applications, not infrastructure.
• Investing now demands new discipline. Liquidity, compliance, and credible execution are what separate endurance from noise.

“A mature market doesn’t remove innovation — it sharpens it. The strongest ideas now come from teams that understand their customers, move quickly, and can plug into the growing institutional adoption. That’s the kind of momentum we’re seeing, and it’s why the next decade in Web3 will look very different from the last.”
Lee Pickavance (MV Global, CEO & Managing Partner)

The Market Has Crossed a Threshold

As Web3 investors, we’re no strangers to price noise and volatility. Although the current market swings may feel alarming to some, there’s a deeper shift underway. One that’s easy to overlook but important for understanding the industry’s long-term trajectory.

After years of rapid technological development, Web3 has reached a turning point. The question is no longer whether the industry can mature, it‘s how that maturity will redefine its trajectory.

What excites me now is exploring what this tech stack can truly unlock. How it will reshape capital allocation, and how institutional and decentralized rails will coexist. It‘s time to see builders deliver real products on top of more than a decade of foundational work.

Not long ago, the industry felt like a loose network of experiments fueled by narrative and liquidity. Today, it is a comparatively small but increasingly institutional ecosystem. The global crypto market sits around 3 trillion dollars (roughly one trillion smaller than a single company like Apple), yet it is now deeply linked with mainstream finance.

More than half of the Fortune 500 are running blockchain pilots¹, and crypto-linked ETFs have outpaced many traditional ETFs in their first year.

What has changed is the structure. Europe now operates under clear, unified rules through MiCA. In the United States, the political environment has turned pragmatic, with new proposals such as the GENIUS Act and the Clarity Act signalling a shift toward more predictable regulation. Together, these developments give the industry the regulatory footing it has been waiting for.

We can also look at institutional inflows which have exceeded 36 billion dollars² as investors shift from speculative exposure to structural positions.

Across the market, one pattern is unmistakable. The winners emerge where speed meets scale, and where experimentation meets execution.

How We Got Here

The signs of a maturing ecosystem are more visible than ever. The noise is thinning, and patterns that once looked cyclical now appear structural.

Consolidation is accelerating

Crypto M&A reached 248 deals in 2024 and climbed again in 2025, driven by landmark transactions such as Coinbase acquiring Deribit for 2.9 billion dollars³ and Ripple acquiring Hidden Road for 1.25 billion dollars⁴. In early 2025, M&A represented more than a third of all deals in the sector.

This is not the behaviour of a fragmented market. It is what an industry looks like when stronger players begin absorbing the rest.

Public markets have opened to Web3

Bullish and Circle both raised ~1 billion dollars in their NYSE debuts⁵. Figure listed publicly, raising 788 million dollars⁶. Gemini and BitGo have filed to follow.

These listings are not token led hype cycles. They are regulated equity offerings from crypto native businesses that now operate like public market companies.

Value has concentrated around the strongest foundations

Ethereum anchors roughly half of all DeFi liquidity⁷. The top Layer 1 networks capture the majority of market capitalisation. This mirrors every maturing technology cycle. The long tail remains, but the centre of gravity settles.

Meanwhile, new inflows continue to reinforce that base. Stablecoin inflows reached 46 billion dollars in a single quarter⁸. Total DeFi TVL reached 237 billion dollars, an all time high⁹.

Institutional capital is now systemic

Spot Bitcoin ETFs surpassed 36 billion dollars of inflows in their first year², with BlackRock’s fund approaching 100 billion dollars in assets under management¹⁰.

At this point, traditional markets and Web3 do not sit in separate orbits. They are beginning to move in sync.

Taken together, these signals reflect a simple truth. Web3 is transitioning from concept driven to capability driven. It’s obvious that structure is replacing speculation.

The Structural Shift From Infrastructure to Applications

One thing has become clear to us over the past year. The real progress in Web3 is no longer happening at the infrastructure layer. The breakthroughs are now being built on top of it.

For more than a decade, the industry poured its talent into building networks, rollups, security standards, and other Web3 building blocks. This was necessary work, but work that lived far from the user experience.

Today, that phase is behind us. Costs have fallen, tooling has matured, and developers finally have the freedom to build products instead of protocols.

We are seeing a decisive shift in what gets built and who is building it.

Enterprises have moved from theory to integration, from stablecoin settlement to tokenised credit and institutional grade on chain RWAs. Global banks are also running live pilots, with 27 of the world’s 29 systemically important banks experimenting with blockchain based settlement or custody¹¹.

Developer activity is rising again. More than 20,000 active open source contributors¹² are helping fuel meaningful migration into AI combined with crypto, consumer applications, and new financial primitives.

These are the signals of a market building on bedrock rather than searching for it.

Web3’s App Store Moment

To explain this shift, I often think back to Apple in the late 2000s. The iPhone had already redefined what hardware could be, but the real explosion didn’t happen until developers were finally given a platform they could build on. The same dynamic is now unfolding in Web3.

Apple understood a simple principle that still applies today: when the underlying platform becomes stable, the real wave of innovation comes from what developers build on top of it.

As Susan Prescott, Apple’s VP of Worldwide Developer Relations, put it:

“We love collaborating with our developer community and providing them with new innovative technologies that enable them to build the next great generation of apps.”

(Apple Newsroom, June 2022)

That is the phase Web3 is entering now. The rails are in place, and the infrastructure is stable. What we see now is the talent arriving at the application layer, and once that happens, the unlock and value creation compounds quickly.

Investing in a Mature Market

As the industry matures, the biggest shift for investors is not simply discipline. It is understanding where strategic competition is moving. We need to understand that the base layer race has largely been settled. Value is concentrating higher up the stack. Differentiation now comes from distribution, design, and execution rather than token mechanics.

From our vantage at MV Global, three forces stand out.

First off, specialisation is replacing broad stroke bets. Founders are going deep into verticals such as stablecoins, RWAs, infrastructure as a service, advanced DeFi tooling, and new consumer applications. The strongest teams increasingly resemble sector specialists.

Secondly, the competitive battleground has moved up the stack. Privacy tools, data availability, AI integration, enterprise infrastructure, and developer experience are becoming the new pressure points.

Finally, scale and speed are converging through consolidation. Incumbents with distribution are pairing with fast moving teams that can innovate quickly. M&A is now an accelerant rather than a defensive move.

More than 80 percent of 2025 Web3 venture funding went to tokenless projects¹³ and early stage funding rose 31 percent year on year¹⁴.

The edge no longer lies in predicting the next Layer 1. It lies in understanding where value is settling in the stack and backing the teams capable of turning infrastructure into new business models and real value creation.

Where Capital Flows Next

Across conversations with allocators, one theme is unmistakable. Capital is becoming more intentional. Exposure to crypto as an idea is fading. Investors now seek companies with customers, distribution, regulatory clarity, or a defensible role in the emerging stack.

Teams are also choosing to raise differently. Many of the strongest companies now build without a token, prioritising revenue and product quality. This has reopened the door to institutional capital that could not participate in prior cycles.

Consolidation reinforces this shift. As markets narrow around stronger operators, new entry points emerge, whether through acquiring, being acquired, or becoming an enabling layer between the two.

Thoughtful capital now flows toward the layers closest to real usage and integration. The industry is not less dynamic. It is finally more open and usable to a wider audience than ever.

Looking Ahead as an Investor

I‘m confident that we‘re about to experience one of Web3‘s most important directional shifts. The industry is clearly organising around credibility, scalability, and real adoption. Builders are prioritising outcomes over ideology and enterprises are engaging with clearer intent. After a long period of opaque rulings, regulators are finally providing clearer guidelines for the industry.

A mature market does not eliminate innovation, it reallocates it.

Strong ideas will not disappear. They will be absorbed, rebuilt, and scaled within platforms that have balance sheets, distribution, or regulatory alignment. Mature markets recycle innovation efficiently.

The most interesting opportunities, in our view, sit at the intersection of three forces:

1. The strength of established platforms
2. The speed of specialised teams
3. The accelerating need for real world use cases.

The companies that define the next cycle will be the ones that can bridge these currents. They will be judged by adoption and execution, not by token narratives.

The past decade was about proving what Web3 could imagine, and I’m incredibly excited about the decade ahead proving what it can implement.

It‘s going to be an exciting time at MV Global as we navigate this switch, and we‘d be happy to explore it with anyone interested in taking that journey with us.

Authors: Lee Pickavance, Ivan Ripamonti.

Sources

1. Coinbase — 2025 Q2 State of Crypto Report

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/06/10/blockchain-initiatives-have-been-adopted-by-60-of-fortune-500-companies-coinbase-survey

2. Reuters — “US Bitcoin ETFs Top $36 Billion in Inflows in 2024”

https://www.reuters.com/markets/crypto/us-bitcoin-etfs-top-36-billion-inflows-2024

3. CoinDesk — “In $2.9B Deal, Coinbase Agrees to Buy Deribit to Expand in U.S. Crypto Options Market”

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/05/08/coinbase-buys-deribit-for-usd2-9b

4. Reuters — “Crypto firm Ripple to buy prime broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion”

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/crypto-firm-ripple-buy-prime-broker-hidden-road-125-billion-2025-04-08/

5. Bloomberg — “Crypto Firm Bullish Soars 84% in Debut After $1.1 Billion IPO”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-13/crypto-firm-bullish-surges-143-in-debut-after-1-1-billion-ipo

Bloomberg — “Stablecoin Firm Circle’s IPO Raises $1.1 Billion in Upsized Deal”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-04/circle-ipo-is-said-to-price-above-range-to-raise-1-1-billion

6. Reuters — “Blockchain lender Figure raises $787.5 million in US IPO”

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/blockchain-lender-figure-raises-7875-million-us-ipo-2025-09-11/

7. DeFiLlama — Chains Overview (Ethereum TVL Share)

https://defillama.com/chains

8. Cointelegraph — “DeFi TVL hits record $237B as daily active wallets fall 22% in Q3: DappRadar”

https://cointelegraph.com/news/defi-tvl-record-237b-dapp-wallets-drop-22-q3-2025

9. DappRadar — “State of the Dapp Industry Q3 2025”

https://dappradar.com/blog/state-of-the-dapp-industry-q3-2025

10. Bitcoin Magazine — “Bitcoin Price Reclaims $122,000 As BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Surpasses 800,000 BTC AUM” https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/bitcoin-price-reclaims-122000-as-blackrock-bitcoin-etf-surpasses-800000-btc-aum#:~:text=Bitcoin%20Price%20Reclaims%20%24122%2C000%20As,100%20billion%2C%20representing%20about

11. Architect Partners — “2024 Year-End Crypto M&A and Financing Report” (27 out of 29 Banks Implementing Onchain Initiatives)

https://architectpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2024-Year-End-Crypto-MA-and-Financing-Report.pdf#:~:text=are%20working%20on%20onchain%20projects,immense%20impact%20on%20the%20crypto

12. Blockworks / Electric Capital Developer Report — “20k+ Open-Source Contributors”

https://blockworks.co/news/electric-capital-report-solana-developers

13. CEX.io — “82% of 2025 Crypto Deals Are Tokenless”

https://blog.cex.io/ecosystem/crypto-deals-landscape-2025-34941#:~:text=,%20year%20lows

14. Architect Partners — “2024 Year-End Crypto M&A and Financing Report” (31% YoY Rise in Early-Stage Funding)

https://architectpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2024-Year-End-Crypto-MA-and-Financing-Report.pdf#:~:text=high

I. From Mid-Year Optimism to Late-Cycle Caution

We ran a new edition of the Crypto Sentiment Institutional Investors Survey from 4 to 11 November 2025, interviewing 62 leading crypto investors and repeating the same questions used in our July 2025 and October 2024 editions. This allows us to track how expectations have evolved as the cycle has matured.

Compared with mid-year, sentiment has cooled noticeably. The respondent mix shifted more institutional: hedge funds nearly doubled their representation, and managers with $100M+ in AUM now make up close to 30% of participants. This shift alone contributed to a more measured tone, as the responses reflect investors who are more valuation-driven, more attentive to macro conditions, and more selective with risk.

Across the survey, three broad adjustments stand out:

1. Upside expectations have softened across BTC, ETH, and SOL
2. More investors now believe parts of the market may have already peaked
3. Conviction has rotated toward real-world and infrastructure-led themes

Overall, 45% expect the market-wide top to come in H1 2026, while nearly 20% think the peak has already occurred — a meaningful shift from the optimism observed earlier in the year for a longer cycle.

II. Bitcoin: Moderating but Still Anchored in 2026

Bitcoin remains the asset with the strongest baseline confidence, but expectations are no longer clustered around high-end targets. The most common outlook has lowered in the $130k–$150k range. A growing minority now expects a more conservative peak.

Timing expectations tell a similar story: most respondents still look to H1 2026, but the rise in those who believe BTC has already topped suggests the market is entering a more cautious and less momentum-driven phase. The tone is not pessimistic — simply more realistic about what the next leg of the cycle might look like.

III. Ethereum: Confidence Pulls Back

Ethereum sentiment weakened more visibly than Bitcoin’s. A much larger share of investors now expects ETH to remain below the $5,000 threshold, while only a small fraction still sees a path to five-figure prices.

Perhaps the most telling shift: nearly 30% of respondents believe ETH may already have peaked this cycle. While many still see room for a 2026 high, the confidence that ETH will play a leading performance role has softened considerably.

IV. Solana: The Sharpest Repricing

Solana experienced the steepest sentiment reversal in the survey. The share of investors expecting SOL to top out below $300 has almost doubled since July, and very few respondents now anticipate the extreme upside levels that were common earlier in the year.

Roughly a quarter believe SOL has already peaked, and even among optimists, expectations are more measured. Investors appear to be recalibrating Solana from a high-beta cycle leader to a still-important but less explosive asset as liquidity conditions tighten.

V. Sector Rotation: Fundamentals Back in Focus

One of the clearest shifts in this edition of the Crypto Sentiment Institutional Investors Survey is the move away from momentum-driven themes and toward sectors supported by real usage and revenue potential.

The strongest optimism now concentrates around:

• Layer 1s
• DeFi
• Stablecoins
• RWAs

Each attracts interest from mid-teen percentages of respondents, reflecting a broad preference for sectors with clearer adoption curves and regulatory clarity.

On the downside, gaming remains the most widely expected underperformer, with bearish sentiment intensifying further. Memecoins also score poorly, suggesting investors are pulling back from volatility-driven trades in favor of stability and fundamentals.

VI. What Will Drive 2026

Looking to the next phase of the cycle, respondents overwhelmingly expect performance to be driven by tangible adoption rather than speculative narratives. Tokenised RWAs and stablecoin expansion lead by a wide margin, followed by institutional flows into BTC and ETH.

Smaller pockets of optimism remain around AI-linked crypto work, but overall, allocators are positioning for a year defined by real utility: regulated capital entering the space, stronger infrastructure, and products with real user demand.

VII. Conclusion: A More Selective Market Environment

The November survey portrays a market moving into its mature phase. Expectations for major assets are more subdued, investors are more cautious about timing, and leadership is shifting toward segments where fundamentals matter more than momentum.

A meaningful part of the market now sees the peaks for several major assets as either behind us or relatively close, and allocators are increasingly concentrating on themes with durable economic activity — stablecoins, RWAs, DeFi, and core infrastructure.

Rather than chasing late-cycle upside, investors appear focused on resilience, selectivity, and steady adoption.

Would you like to see the full survey results?
Here is the link: https://hubs.ly/Q03TKfy_0

About MV Global

Established in 2019, MV Global has emerged as a force in the Web3 landscape focused on early-stage investments and venture building. Our mission is clear: to partner with mavericks, visionaries, and free thinkers to leverage blockchain-enabled technologies to build for the future.

Website | X | LinkedIn | Medium

I. 2024 Expectations vs. 1H 2025 Reality

In October 2024, we surveyed 76 of the most active liquid and venture allocators in the crypto space. The goal was to capture a snapshot of market sentiment heading into what many believed would be a pivotal year for the asset class. The findings offered a clear view of where expectations were concentrated — on timing, price targets, and sector-level conviction.

Nearly half of all participants anticipated the crypto market would peak in the second half of 2025. This view was so widely shared that it was likely already priced into markets at the time. For Bitcoin, most allocators expected a cycle high between $100,000 and $150,000 — a conservative range compared to the forecasts published by institutional research houses like VanEck and Standard Chartered or figures like MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor. A Twitter poll we ran around the same time reflected similar expectations.

Over 30% of survey participants believed SOL could exceed $600 this cycle — roughly a 4x from then-current levels. Sentiment around Ethereum was more mixed: one-third of respondents expected ETH to top out between $3,000 and $5,000, while another third were more bullish, predicting a peak between $5,000 and $7,000.

Source: MV Capital Industry Survey conducted in October 2024

At the sector level, investors were most bearish on gaming. Meanwhile, Crypto x AI was the most favored emerging narrative. Despite the ongoing media and retail enthusiasm around memecoins, very few professionals held exposure in their portfolios.

Since that October survey, the market has unfolded in ways both expected and unexpected. We saw a sharp year-end rally in 2024, with BTC reaching a new all-time high in November and December. Although Q1 of 2025 was marked by a difficult pullback, Bitcoin rallied again in May to reach another ATH of ~$112,000. However, SOL and ETH, which had peaked around $260 and $4,000, respectively, in late 2024 and early 2025, struggled to regain momentum after the Q1 drop.

As of July 7, 2025, BTC is trading at ~$109,000, ETH at $2,500, and SOL at $150. For Bitcoin, current levels sit comfortably within the $100,000 to $150,000 range forecasted by most allocators in the original survey. ETH and SOL, meanwhile, are trading well below their prior highs of $4,000 and $260, and also below the most widely expected peak levels. That said, the majority of participants had anticipated the true market top to arrive in the second half of 2025. Viewed through that lens, current price action may represent a mid-cycle pause rather than the end of the uptrend, especially in a market known for abrupt shifts in sentiment, liquidity, and narrative momentum.

Looking across sectors, several predictions held true. The gaming segment remained under pressure, validating the initially cautious outlook. Memecoins experienced the kind of volatility many expected. Meanwhile, Crypto x AI projects have yet to deliver on the bullish expectations, with most trading below their Q4 2024 highs.

Taken together, these developments highlight just how quickly sentiment can shift in crypto — and how crucial it is to track those shifts in real time. While some forecasts aged well, others were quickly overtaken by new market narratives, macro factors, or liquidity shocks.

II. July 2025 Sentiment Check: Insights from Our Latest Allocator Survey

To reassess market sentiment following a volatile first half of 2025, we conducted a new survey in July targeting leading digital asset allocators and industry specialists. The response base included 50+ participants, with 42% representing crypto-focused venture capital firms and 21% hedge funds.

The clearest shift is visible in Bitcoin expectations. While last year’s forecast clustered around a conservative $100,000 to $150,000 range, this time the majority of respondents (42%) expect BTC to reach between $150,000 and $200,000. A sizable share still projects a top in the $125,000 to $150,000 range (28%), but interestingly, 11% now expect a cycle high above $250,000, a level that had virtually no support in our previous survey.

Source: MV Capital Industry Survey conducted in July 2025

The anticipated timing of the peak has also drifted forward: 42% percent now expect BTC to top out in the first half of 2026, while 38% still see the peak landing in the second half of 2025. 13% believe the cycle could extend even further into the second half of 2026. Taken together, these results suggest not just rising price expectations, but a broadening belief that the current cycle has more room to run and will likely take longer to play out than originally assumed.

Ethereum sentiment remains more fragmented. As in the previous survey, responses are widely distributed, and no single price band dominates expectations. The most common view is that ETH will peak between $3,000 and $4,000 this cycle (28%), followed by nearly similar shares expecting tops between $5,000 and $7,500 (19%), and $4,000 and $5,000 (17%). Meanwhile, around 9% of respondents expect ETH to remain below $3,000, reflecting a degree of pessimism not previously captured. Others see significantly more upside, with 26% forecasting ETH to rise above $7,500, including 13% who anticipate a price beyond $10,000. Nearly half of the respondents see ETH peaking in the first half of 2026, while only a quarter still anticipate a top in the second half of this year. An additional 17% believe the top may not come until even later, in the second half of 2026.

While Solana sentiment remains positive, upside expectations have moderated. In the latest results, around one-third of respondents now forecast a peak between $300 and $400, while another quarter expect $400 to $500. Only ~21% still see the possibility of SOL exceeding $500, of which 15% expect SOL to reach a price higher than $750. As with Bitcoin and Ethereum, most participants expect Solana’s top to occur in 2026, with the first half slightly more favored (34%) than the second half of 2025 (32%).

Another notable shift appears in the sectors investors expect to lead performance. In the October 2024 survey, Crypto x AI dominated with 43% of respondents identifying it as the most promising thematic opportunity, followed by smaller allocations to DePin (14%), DeFi (11%), and Layer 1s (10%). In contrast, the latest results reveal a more balanced distribution of views, with both DeFi and AI now tied at 25%, a shift that likely reflects the pullback in AI-linked tokens following their late-2024 hype cycle. Interest in stablecoins and RWAs has increased meaningfully, with 17% and 15% of respondents highlighting them as potential outperformers. Layer 1s remain on the radar for 13%, showing persistent, if cautious, conviction.

Expectations for underperformance have remained relatively consistent, with Gaming still seen as the weakest segment. In October 2024, 28% of respondents named Gaming as the likely laggard, followed by 25% for Layer 2s and 10% for Consumer. In the latest survey, 38% selected Gaming, while Layer 2s and Memecoins each received 13%. Notably, DePin, previously the second most selected top performer, was named as the expected worst performer by 9% of respondents, highlighting a sharp reversal in sentiment.

III. Conclusion

Our July 2025 survey highlights how investor sentiment has evolved meaningfully over the past nine months, both in terms of price expectations and perceived market timing. While the October 2024 results were defined by conservatism and a clear concentration of views around a second-half 2025 peak, today’s responses reflect both rising confidence and a longer horizon. Investor sentiment has shifted toward a longer and more durable cycle, with most now projecting a peak in 2026, reflecting greater confidence in the cycle’s strength and duration.

Bitcoin remains the anchor of the market, but forecasts have shifted notably. The dominant target range has moved up from $100,000–$150,000 to $150,000–$200,000, with 11% now calling for a cycle high above $250,000, a level that had near-zero support in our previous survey. Ethereum continues to divide opinion, with price expectations ranging from below $3,000 to over $10,000. Solana sentiment remains constructive, but the most aggressive forecasts have moderated, and the expected peak has shifted into early 2026 for the majority.

One of the clearest shifts occurred in how investors view sectoral opportunities. AI, which dominated sentiment in 2024, has ceded ground to DeFi, stablecoins, and RWAs, all of which now feature prominently in allocator positioning. Gaming remains the most commonly cited laggard, with bearish views even stronger than last year. Perhaps most striking is the reversal in perception of DePin: once a top pick, it is now considered a likely underperformer by a meaningful share of participants.

This evolving sentiment is not occurring in a vacuum. Respondents highlighted three key forces shaping their revised outlooks. First, the changing US political landscape has created a more supportive environment for digital assets. Second, macroeconomic shifts have extended the perceived length of the market cycle, encouraging allocators to reassess timing and risk. And third, there is a growing recognition that real-world adoption, especially in areas like stablecoins, RWAs, is advancing faster than anticipated. As a result, investors are looking beyond just new technology and focusing more on how government decisions, global trade, and the movement of money are shaping the future of the market.

At MV Global, we see these developments as confirming a view we’ve held for some time: that long-term value will be driven by real-world use and steady adoption, not just excitement or trends. As interest settles around areas like decentralized finance, core infrastructure, and stable digital currencies — and as investment horizons lengthen — we’re adjusting our portfolio to reflect this shift. We believe the most lasting value will come from applications that generate meaningful revenue, and from the platforms where those applications are built. That means leaning into high-conviction opportunities with tangible user traction, regulatory tailwinds, and strong token-model fundamentals, while maintaining flexibility in more speculative segments where timing remains less certain.

Curious to see all the insights? Dive into the full survey results here: https://hubs.ly/Q03wBKXV .

About MV Global

Established in 2019, MV Global has emerged as a force in the Web3 landscape focused on early-stage investments and venture building. Our mission is clear: to partner with mavericks, visionaries, and free thinkers to leverage blockchain-enabled technologies to build for the future.

Website | X | LinkedIn | Medium

I. MV Global’s Framework for Tokenized Real World Assets (RWAs)

At MV Global, we see the tokenization of RWAs as a foundational shift in financial infrastructure. RWAs represent both tangible and intangible assets converted into digital tokens operating on blockchain networks, bridging traditional finance and emerging digital markets.

The core promise of RWA tokenization lies in enhancing liquidity, enabling faster capital movement, and improving price discovery for historically illiquid assets, and expanding access to new asset classes through fractional ownership. However, as attention around the space grows, separating substance from noise becomes essential.

Our approach focuses on fundamentals. To identify high-conviction opportunities in the RWA sector, we apply a simple but disciplined framework:

• Which subsector will experience strong growth?
• Which actor in the process will generate revenue and does the business model scale?
• Are there VC-investable opportunities?

This framework guides our evaluation of RWA projects across asset classes, anchoring our investment decisions in businesses with defendable moats, strong revenue potential, and highly scalable, value-accretive models, rather than short-term narratives.

II. RWA Growth Trends: Historical Expansion and Forecast Outlook

The tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) has accelerated meaningfully over the past three years. As of June 2025, total RWA on-chain volume (excl. Stablecoins) amounts to over $23B, representing a 109% year-over-year increase and a 566% rise over three years. Private credit accounts for the largest share at $13.4B, while tokenized treasuries experienced the fastest growth, expanding over 300% year-on-year.

Stablecoins, meanwhile, remain the dominant on-chain asset class, with a total market cap of $237B as of March 2025, reflecting 48% annual growth and a 50% increase over three-years. The expected passage of the Genius Act in the U.S. is likely to further legitimize and accelerate stablecoin adoption by providing a clear regulatory framework for issuance and oversight.

Looking forward, MV Global projects RWA volume (excl., stablecoins) to reach approximately $40B by the end of 2025, growing to ~$10T by 2030. This outlook is more conservative than broader industry forecasts, which range from $50B to $500B by 2025 and $2T to $30T by 2030, but reflects our view of a steady and sustainable adoption trajectory.

III. Which Subsector Will Experience Strong Growth?

To identify the most promising subsectors within RWA tokenization, we evaluated ten asset classes across criteria including access, liquidity, costs, yield and implementation challenges.

The outcome is clear: Stablecoins, Commodities, and Treasuries stand out. These sectors combine strong fundamentals with measurable traction, offering both structural advantages and real-world demand. For example, treasuries benefit from a clear use case around yield and safety, while commodities and stablecoins already show proven utility in DeFi and payment infrastructure. This reflects the digitization of already highly liquid and widely used assets, making them the most straightforward to tokenize. In these cases, tokenization does not fundamentally transform the asset but rather removes operational friction, streamlines access, and enhances usability across financial infrastructure.

In contrast, sectors like Private Credit, Real Estate, Collectibles, Funds, and Private Equity appear attractive in theory, especially regarding improvements in access and liquidity, but real-world demand has yet to catch up. Regulatory complexity, limited data availability (due to the absence of ongoing reporting requirements), and the cold start problem — where assets are difficult to price and trade initially due to a lack of participants and transparency — continue to constrain adoption. While tokenization has the potential to improve liquidity and price discovery over time, these dynamics make it difficult to attract early activity and sustained investor interest.

Stocks and Bonds, meanwhile, offer limited upside for tokenization at the asset layer. These markets already provide liquidity, fractionalization, and broad retail access through traditional platforms, with ETFs and structured products effectively addressing many of the same use cases. At present, tokenization introduces an additional layer of cost and complexity, driven by regulatory uncertainty and operational overhead, without delivering meaningful incremental benefits. While backend and infrastructure-oriented solutions remain more relevant today, the long-term picture may evolve. As portfolio management increasingly shifts on-chain and tokenization becomes commoditized, these asset classes could become more viable candidates. For now, however, we see tokenization of public equities and bonds as premature.

Our focus is therefore on verticals where blockchain delivers both technical and market advantages, and where we see evidence of near to mid term adoption.

IV. Which actor in the process will generate revenue, and does the business model scale?

The RWA value chain is evolving rapidly, and so are the revenue opportunities across its layers. At a high level, three core actors capture value directly from the tokenization process: the issuer, the tokenization platform, and the blockchain base-layer.

Three models are emerging:

• Option 1: Issuer uses an external tokenization platform — the most common approach today. Platforms like Securitize or whitelabeled infrastructure providers handle issuance, compliance, and settlement, earning revenues through setup fees, issuance costs, custody, and ongoing servicing. The underlying blockchain base layer generates revenue through transaction fees.
• Option 2: Issuer interacts directly with the existing blockchain base layer — bypassing middleware and using smart contracts to tokenize assets. This model is leaner but assumes significant technical capacity. The underlying blockchain base layer generates revenue through transaction fees.
• Option 3: Issuer builds its own private blockchain solution — while technically feasible, few issuers are currently positioned to develop and maintain proprietary tokenization and blockchain infrastructure at scale.

Beyond the core mechanics, a broader ecosystem of revenue-generating actors surrounds the tokenization process:

• Exchanges and secondary markets, ranging from specialized platforms like tZERO and INX to broader venues such as Coinbase and Binance, generate revenue through listing fees, trading spreads, and transaction volume.
• Market makers and liquidity providers capture arbitrage and volume-based incentives, helping bootstrap the tradability of otherwise illiquid assets.
• Data and analytics platforms monetize through pricing feeds, benchmarks, risk data, and compliance services.
• Custodians, wallets, and compliance providers deliver operational infrastructure and earn recurring servicing fees.

That said, we believe the current dominance of tokenization platforms may be temporary. Many of these platforms are serving as intermediaries in pilot phases, helping large institutions experiment without building internal capabilities. If tokenization scales meaningfully, we expect major financial institutions to internalize key infrastructure, either by building it themselves or through acquisitions, to protect margins, control data, and capture more of the value chain. In parallel, dominant B2B infrastructure providers are likely to emerge to serve the long tail of smaller financial institutions that lack the resources or strategic need to develop proprietary solutions.

As a result, we expect durable value to accrue to actors with structural advantages — either base-layer protocols with high volume and interoperability, or vertical-specific infrastructure tightly integrated into institutional workflows.

V. Identifying the Most Promising VC Opportunities in the RWA Stack

#1 Stablecoin Issuers — The Most Open and Competitive Issuer Vertical in RWA

Following our analysis of subsector growth potential, we identified Stablecoins, Commodities, and Treasuries as the most promising verticals within the RWA space. However, while commodities and treasuries are likely to be dominated by large incumbent issuers, such as asset managers, banks, and regulated fintechs, stablecoins stand out as a structurally open and competitive market.

In most tokenized asset classes, issuers will be traditional financial institutions with existing infrastructure, distribution, and regulatory positioning. As a result, while tokenization modernizes how assets are issued and transferred, it does not fundamentally change who captures value. What it does offer, however, is the potential for more efficient operations, reduced reliance on intermediaries, and ultimately better service and access for end users. The current financial stack is not being replaced, but rather re-architected on more flexible and transparent rails.

Stablecoins are different. This remains one of the few areas where new entrants still have the potential to shape the category. While the space has seen significant innovation alongside high-profile failures, we believe that successfully backing a category leader across any of the emerging models would be highly meaningful. Beyond the established fiat-backed players like Circle and Tether, innovation continues at pace across three alternative segments:

• Crypto-backed: Trust-minimized, censorship-resistant, on-chain native models
• Algorithmic: Capital-efficient, autonomous systems aiming to maintain stable value
• RWA-backed: Yield-bearing tokens backed by tokenized real-world assets

Each model presents unique design trade-offs, and while not all may succeed at scale, market concentration remains low — creating fertile ground for experimentation and early-stage investment. As demand grows across payments, DeFi, and cross-border finance, we see stablecoin issuance as one of the few areas in the RWA stack where early-stage players can still emerge as category leaders.

#2 Tokenization Infrastructure — Select Short-Term Bets, Long-Term Ecosystem Play

As tokenization volumes grow, so does demand for enabling infrastructure. However, we believe the most promising VC opportunities lie not in base-layer chains but in higher-order infrastructure and services that power issuance, trading, and compliance.

We do not expect new L1s or L2s to successfully position themselves as RWA-specialized blockchains. Existing general-purpose chains, such as Ethereum and Solana, already serve the space well. For highly regulated token issuers, minor performance gains do not justify the cost and risk of migrating to unproven chains. While we don’t believe there will be a single winner, Ethereum’s current ~60% market share and its strong security model are highly valued by institutions. As a result, we see little reason to expect a drastic shift in chain preference in the near to mid-term.

In the near term, there may be an opportunity in tokenization platforms, especially challengers to established players like Securitize. These platforms provide issuers with tools for issuance, compliance, and investor management, either directly or via whitelabel solutions. However, we view these businesses as tactically interesting but strategically constrained. As B2B infrastructure plays, they face long sales cycles, slow scaling dynamics, and limited network effects. The space is increasingly crowded, and while later-stage investments may offer more predictable outcomes, the overall return profile is less attractive for early-stage VC.

Longer-term, our conviction is stronger around ecosystem infrastructure that scales with volume and complexity. We see real potential in secondary trading venues, liquidity provisioning, and data infrastructure. Exchanges and marketplaces can monetize listings and trading activity as tokenized assets become more liquid. Market makers and liquidity providers will be essential to bootstrap tradability, especially for previously illiquid instruments like credit or funds. Meanwhile, data and analytics providers will form the backbone of institutional adoption by building benchmarks, pricing tools, and risk frameworks.

While these categories may evolve into growth-stage opportunities — where value concentrates among category leaders — we believe there is room for multiple winners if RWA tokenization reaches meaningful scale. Furthermore, we see emerging potential at the intersection of institutional tokenization and DeFi-native infrastructure. As these worlds converge, new use cases may unlock deeper liquidity, composability, and innovation beyond today’s architecture.

In short, while platform-layer investments may offer tactical upside, our longer-term VC focus is on ecosystem enablers that scale with the market, not just with the issuer.

About MV Global

Established in 2019, MV Global has emerged as a force in the Web3 landscape focused on early-stage investments and venture building. Our mission is clear: to partner with mavericks, visionaries, and free thinkers to leverage blockchain-enabled technologies to build for the future.

Website | X | LinkedIn | Medium

I. Global Macro: From Policy Shock to Opportunity

Tariffs and the New Trade Regime

2025 has ushered in one of the most significant macroeconomic realignments in over a decade. The reintroduction of protectionist policies by the United States — notably the average 22.8% tariff rate implemented under the new administration — has jolted global markets into volatility. These tariffs mark the highest levels since the Smoot-Hawley era, prompting swift retaliation from key trading partners like China and the EU.

Chart 1: A Century of Tariffs: U.S. Import Rates from 1909 to 2025. Source: https://x.com/biancoresearch/status/1911891923725619651/photo/1

The consequences are already playing out in real time:

• Over $10 trillion in global equity value has been wiped out since the tariffs were announced. The S&P 500 experienced a historic 10%+ correction in just two trading sessions, one of the steepest drops on record.
• The USD/JPY has broken down below critical technical support at 141, forming a long-term rounded top — historically a leading indicator of global capital flight and rising demand for real assets like gold and Bitcoin.
• The U.S. Dollar Index is having its worst month since 2009, while 10-year Treasury yields have surged. The U.S. bond market is behaving more like an emerging market — with volatility and risk premiums rising — which may force the Fed to delay rate cuts, or even consider hiking, unless tariff-driven shocks are reversed or mitigated​.

Chart 2: Macro Pressures: USD Falls, 10Y Yield Rises. Source: https://x.com/bbx_official/status/1914526096478871668

Liquidity Rebuilds Beneath the Surface

While headlines have focused on risk, the quiet resurgence of liquidity offers a contrasting signal. Net Federal Reserve liquidity — a function of the TGA, Fed RRP balances, and reserve injections — has increased by over $240 billion since January 2025, driven by:

• QT tapering (from $25B/month to $5B/month)
• Declines in the Treasury General Account (TGA), injecting funds into bank reserves
• Low net Treasury issuance, further enhancing liquidity conditions.

Simultaneously, China’s credit impulse is turning, and global M2 growth is recovering from multi-year lows. Together, these dynamics suggest that risk assets — particularly those sensitive to liquidity conditions like crypto — may be on the cusp of a revaluation.

The Global Economy Index (GEI), a composite of trade-weighted FX, copper/gold, China 10Y yields, and crude oil, is now emerging from a cycle trough. Historically, GEI inflections lead price recoveries in Bitcoin and equities by 3–6 months.

Chart 3: Global Economy Index vs. Bitcoin and S&P 500. Source: https://x.com/TomasOnMarkets/status/1912520160662999367/photo/3

“We’re not witnessing a temporary dislocation, but a structural recalibration — reshaping global trade, monetary policy, and capital flows. Liquidity is quietly returning, led by China, Japan, and Europe, with U.S. balance sheet expansion likely to follow as debt refinancing accelerates. As capital begins to align with structural demand, market repricing can be swift. In this cycle, we see rotation into commodities and crypto as a key — and potentially primary — source of alpha.” Ivan Ripamonti

II. Crypto Market Outlook: From Narrative to Fundamentals

Bitcoin: Macro Hedge, Institutional Mainstay, and Network of Record

As the macro regime shifts, Bitcoin evolves from a speculative asset to a sovereign-grade macro hedge. It has decisively outperformed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq YTD, and now trades at all-time highs relative to the Magnificent 7 tech equities. This is not merely a technical rally — it’s underpinned by strong fundamentals:

• Institutional BTC holdings have surged to 688,000 BTC, with new corporate entrants joining every quarter. In Q1 2025 alone, 12 new publicly listed companies added Bitcoin to their corporate treasuries — a record quarterly expansion. Among them, GameStop’s entry stood out not just for its size but for its strategic shift: the company restructured part of its balance sheet into Bitcoin as a hedge against dollar volatility and to align with its evolving digital-first strategy.
• On-chain metrics (SOPR, exchange outflows, LTH supply) all signal long-term accumulation.
• April seasonality has historically been one of Bitcoin’s strongest trends, with April producing an average return of +34.4% since launch, making it one of the best-performing months in BTC’s price history.

Chart 4: Bitcoin Seasonality: Average Monthly Performance. Source: Glassnode.

• Volatility has fallen to all-time lows, as shown in ARK’s 2025 research, bringing Bitcoin’s risk profile closer to that of traditional assets such as gold and equities. While Bitcoin remains volatile compared to bonds and real estate, its Sharpe and Sortino ratios surpass all major asset classes.

Chart 5:ARK Invest — Big Ideas 2025: Bitcoin. Source: https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/1912242277767958911/photo/1

This trend is bolstered by political tailwinds in the U.S. Recent executive orders have:

• Established the foundation to create a Bitcoin strategic reserve and a digital asset stockpile
• Authorized Bitcoin custody at banks
• Promoted dollar-backed stablecoins
• Explicitly banned central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)

Together, these policy actions are legitimizing Bitcoin not only as a digital asset but also as a digital sovereign reserve. Bitcoin is now competing with gold, bonds, and fiat reserves in institutional portfolios.

DeFi and Stablecoin Infrastructure: Usage Over Hype

While speculative asset flows have moderated, real infrastructure usage across DeFi and stablecoins continues to strengthen meaningfully. The recent data highlights a notable transformation:

• DEX Volumes Sustain High Growth
  After peaking earlier this year, decentralized exchange (DEX) volumes have normalized but remain robust — still up significantly year-over-year. This reflects sustained user engagement beyond speculative spikes. The market has shifted from “hype trades” to organic adoption fueled by genuine liquidity needs across chains.
• Stablecoins Expand Despite Volatility
  The stablecoin market cap now exceeds $215 billion, with consistent positive net inflows even amid market fluctuations. This signals stablecoins’ growing role as transactional and liquidity instruments rather than mere trading vehicles. Their resilience, especially during periods of stress, underpins a foundational layer for DeFi and real-world asset (RWA) integration.
• DeFi Lending Remains Solid
  DeFi lending total value locked (TVL) peaked above $55 billion and, after a partial retracement, has stabilized near $40 billion. Leading protocols like AAVE maintain dominant market share (~44% of the top 10 lending platforms), emphasizing the network effects and user stickiness in mature DeFi applications. Innovations like isolated pools and new collateral types continue to enhance capital efficiency.

Chart 6: Stablecoin Supply Growth (2019–2025) [Blue: USDC/USDT, Green: DAI, Yellow: BUSD, Light Blue: UST]. Source:https://archimed.substack.com/p/the-insider-143?r=2qggg2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

The Shift: From Hype to Infrastructure

The evolution of DeFi and stablecoin ecosystems reflects a deeper investment thesis:

• Capital Efficiency and Real Yield
  Platforms are increasingly focused on generating sustainable, risk-adjusted returns rather than relying on inflated token incentives. Yield strategies are now anchored in real usage — such as borrowing demand, trading fees, and RWA cashflows — building a more defensible and attractive value proposition.
• Composability Across Chains
  Cross-chain infrastructure has matured significantly, allowing users and developers to compose complex financial products seamlessly across ecosystems. Liquidity and functionality are no longer siloed to single chains, driving broader adoption and deeper capital markets.
• Interoperability With Traditional Finance (Especially RWAs)
  DeFi is increasingly interoperating with traditional finance, particularly through tokenized RWAs like Treasury bills, real estate, and credit products. This expansion moves DeFi beyond speculative trading toward offering access to institutional-grade yield, credit, and payment solutions to a much broader audience.

Protocols generating real revenue (DEXs, perps, yield aggregators) have collectively produced over $7.7B since Jan 2024. This is not speculative — it is structural usage growth.

Chart 7. Fundamentals Over Fluctuations: $7.7B Crypto Revenue Led by Core Sectors. Source: https://archimed.substack.com/p/the-insider-143?r=2qggg2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

III. Portfolio Construction: Where We’re Investing in 2025

Across our private market and liquid investments, our capital deployment focuses on asymmetric exposure with real cashflow potential. We are currently concentrating on four core verticals:

1. High-Performance Execution Environments: Solana & Sui

• Solana processed over 75% of all blockchain transactions in Q1 2025, driven by its fast, low-cost architecture and optimized validator throughput.
• Firedancer, the new validator client from Jump Crypto now in testnet, is expected to deliver >1M TPS — significantly enhancing Solana’s scalability and resilience.
• While SIMD-0228 didn’t reach quorum, ongoing fee market upgrades (e.g., Jito MEV tips) are already reducing latency and aligning economic incentives across the validator set.
• Solana powers real-world applications across payments (USDC), DePIN (Helium), gaming, and tokenized AI services — positioning it as a foundational execution layer.
• Sui processed $38.3B in DEX volume and generated $10.4M in protocol revenue in Q1 2025, far surpassing peers like Aptos ($1.7M).
• With localized fee markets and programmable transaction blocks, Sui enables flexible, cost-efficient infrastructure for gaming, AI, and high-frequency DeFi use cases.
• Both chains are evolving into performance-first environments for real economic activity at institutional scale.

2. DeFi Lending & DEXes: Foundations of Onchain Finance

• Lending protocols remain the most stable revenue drivers in DeFi, outperforming other verticals in both TVL retention and fee consistency.
• Aave maintains a 44% share of the top 10 lending TVL, scaling across chains while optimizing risk and onboarding institutional capital.
• Protocols like Euler, Morpho, and Kamino are gaining momentum via modular lending designs, smart routing, and collateral efficiency.
• DEXes like Raydium continue to play a critical liquidity role, posting $508B in volume in January 2025 alone, led by deep pools and strong aggregator support.
• Raydium has reestablished itself as Solana’s core DEX infrastructure, capturing spillover from memecoin volume and onboarding new perps and yield products.
• Lending remains our highest-conviction vertical in DeFi due to its predictable revenues, scalable architecture, and growing links to RWAs (e.g., Clearpool, Centrifuge).

Chart 8: RWA Market Map. Source: Proprietary MV Global RWA Report

3. AI-Native Agents Transforming DeFi

• AI agents and oracle networks are becoming core infrastructure in DeFi, not just supporting tools.
• These agents automate strategy execution, risk management, rebalancing, and data-driven optimization.
• Capital efficiency is improving through AI-led execution layers, especially in lending, trading, and liquidity provisioning.
• Protocols such as Bittensor and TAO subnets are exploring the development of AI-native DeFi ecosystems.
• The result is an emergent “middleware” across Web3 that enables DeFi to operate more like high-frequency, adaptive financial systems.
• AI adoption is accelerating as on-chain agents begin to outperform manual strategies in volatile macro environments.

4. Bitcoin DeFi: Unlocking Native Yield at Scale

• Bitcoin-native smart contract ecosystems (e.g. Runes, BRC-20 2.0, sBTC) are activating a large pool of previously idle capital.
• Over 80 Bitcoin L2s are currently active, with Core, Babylon, BOB, and Bitlayer leading by TVL and developer traction.
• These L2s enable DeFi primitives like lending, staking, and bridging on Bitcoin, previously only available in the Ethereum ecosystem.
• Bitcoin is transitioning from a passive store of value to an active yield-bearing layer in the broader crypto economy.
• This shift aligns with institutional demand for hard-money assets offering programmable utility and yield.

Chart 9: Bitcoin L2 Ecosystem TVL. Source: https://x.com/BitcoinEcoTK/status/1910301295719907827/photo/1

“This is where compute, capital, and cryptographic trust converge — and where we expect the next wave of outsized returns to stem from application-layer projects delivering real-world utility, grounded in strong fundamentals, rather than speculative narratives.” — Johannes Fuchs

IV. Final View: The Window Is Open

We’re at the beginning of a capital rotation — moving beyond the memecoin euphoria of late 2024 toward real, application-layer innovation in DeFi, AI, and the Bitcoin ecosystem. This marks a shift toward more mature investor expectations and signals a more disciplined, fundamentals-driven capital cycle.

Simultaneously, regulatory clarity in the U.S. — from ETF approvals to banking custody — is solidifying Bitcoin’s position as a global sovereign-grade asset and programmable store of value.

“Capital is no longer chasing headlines — it’s reallocating in anticipation of a new global financial order. As we enter a major rotation across asset classes, Bitcoin and crypto are poised to attract significant flows and assume their role as structural components in modern, regulated portfolios.” Lee Pickavance

For allocators and partners evaluating this next phase, we believe this is a rare moment: where macro dislocation meets crypto utility, and where positioning today can define performance for years to come.

📩 Contact us at invest@mvglobal.io to learn how MV Capital is deploying capital through this regime shift via our VC Fund I, VC Fund II and our liquid hedge fund, the MV Global Opportunity Fund. We’re happy to share our investment frameworks and long-term conviction across this next macro cycle.

About MV Global

Established in 2019, MV Global has emerged as a force in the Web3 landscape focused on early-stage investments and venture building. Our mission is clear: to partner with mavericks, visionaries, and free thinkers to leverage blockchain-enabled technologies to build for the future.

Website | X | LinkedIn | Medium

Last week MV Global’s Group CEO and Managing Partner, Lee Pickavance, met with key actors driving the crypto markets in Washington D.C. Lee met with the Trump Administration at the White House, Senate, and policy-making organizations to provide input into key legislation that helps shape our quickly maturing industry at a key inflection point.

Executive Director Bo Hines is coordinating the efforts of the White House across multiple government agencies and becoming an increasingly important voice at crypto’s biggest events. Bo clearly articulates the President’s vision and actions to ensure the U.S.’s role in shaping the crypto regulatory landscape with ambitious timelines for legislation supporting stablecoins and market structure, both in public and in our conversation. It is evident this administration understands the strategic importance of new financial plumbing, the power that comes with holding today’s and tomorrow’s reserve assets, and leading innovation in capital markets. He also expressed confidence in meaningful directives regarding crypto coming by this Summer which should continue to positively shape the industry.

Meeting with Senator Lummis’ team it became immediately clear that the historical shifts in monetary systems — nothing less than a paradigm shift in what constitutes money — are top of mind as money enters the digital age. With a deeper understanding of Bitcoin’s significance, this should be a bipartisan no-brainer for lawmakers on the Hill. By adopting much of what is already established by the Howey test, the focus is on updating rather than redefining existing frameworks and offers a viable path forward for legislation that can unlock the full potential of this emerging technology.

An objective and cautiously optimistic view from GBBC’s Chief Executive highlights that momentum is positive but much still has to happen to pass legislation. Both sides of the political aisle are coming together to support key initiatives around stablecoins and market structure, but there are still challenges around perceived missteps around things like meme coins.

Support for crypto more broadly in Washington is reflected in the stakeholder engagement and openness of many Departments including the SEC — with a number of roundtable discussions planned — and openness to engage with and explore how crypto businesses can re-engage and conduct business in the US.

There is still much to do but clearly a momentum swing with energy and smarts to take this forward in the most important global market — where the US leads many will follow.

Crypto’s U.S. Comeback: Regulation, Innovation, and Institutional Momentum

It is worth restating the many actions that highlight the U.S. pivot toward a more crypto-friendly regulatory environment — the impact of these changes is profound and shouldn’t be drowned out by the noise common in the crypto world:

• The new administration is signaling the end of “regulation by enforcement” and laying the groundwork for a structured framework that fosters innovation.
• President Trump signed an executive order establishing the Digital Asset Working Group, chaired by David Sacks, to align federal agencies around a unified digital asset strategy.
• The SEC formed its own Crypto Task Force, led by Commissioner Hester Peirce, aimed at developing clear regulatory classifications, creating realistic registration paths, and shifting away from enforcement-led policy.
• Over 70 percent of U.S. states have now enacted crypto or blockchain legislation, signaling strong regulatory momentum beyond the federal level.

The impact of the regulatory pivot is already playing out across key areas of the ecosystem:

• Crypto Market Structure Bill: A broad package of crypto rules from the Trump administration is targeted for August 1. Lawmakers, including Senator Tim Scott and Rep. Bryan Steil, are confident Congress will deliver a market structure bill by then — backed by Executive pressure to align agencies. The bill aims to clearly divide regulatory oversight between the SEC and CFTC and establish formal registration pathways for crypto exchanges and intermediaries. If passed, it could unlock a wave of institutional capital by removing long-standing regulatory uncertainty.
• Expansion of crypto ETFs: Following the approval of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, the SEC’s evolving stance is paving the way for a broader range of products — including proposed ETFs for Solana, XRP, and staking-enabled funds across multiple blockchain networks. These vehicles offer institutional access to staking yields, enhance market liquidity, and channel capital into a wider set of blockchain ecosystems.
• Deepening Integration into Traditional Portfolios: BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust has been integrated into traditional model portfolios, while RIAs and institutional investors are steadily increasing allocations to spot BTC as regulatory clarity improves. Simultaneously, retail participation continues to grow — with nearly 30% of American adults now owning crypto and many planning to expand their exposure in 2025.
• Strategic Bitcoin reserves at federal and state levels: A March 2025 executive order established a U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a broader Digital Asset Stockpile, sourced from seized assets. Multiple states are advancing similar efforts, with Arizona, Texas, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma leading in Bitcoin-backed reserves and treasury diversification. While formal purchases remain under discussion, momentum is building behind the idea — framed increasingly as a strategic and national security imperative by advocates close to the process.
• Federal stablecoin legislation approaching finalization: With the STABLE and GENIUS Acts advancing through Congress, a unified federal framework for stablecoin issuance is expected by August 2025. The legislation outlines reserve requirements, enables both banks and non-financial companies to issue stablecoins, and paves the way for seamless integration into payment systems — addressing long-standing regulatory uncertainty and unlocking institutional participation.
• SEC enforcement pull-back: The SEC has dismissed multiple high-profile enforcement actions, including cases involving Robinhood and OpenSea, while signaling a move toward clearer guidance on token classifications and disclosures. This shift follows mounting judicial pushback — through rulings in cases like Ripple and Grayscale — that have constrained the SEC’s authority and reinforced limits on regulatory overreach.
• Integration of TradFi and DeFi: Regulatory clarity from the rollback of SAB 121, the introduction of SAB 122, and OCC guidance (IL 1183) is enabling U.S. banks to custody digital assets and offer blockchain-based services — laying the foundation for deeper integration between traditional and decentralized finance.
• Tax and accounting reforms: A new law signed in 2025 rolls back the IRS rule that extended broker reporting requirements to DeFi, easing the compliance burden. In parallel, updated FASB standards now allow companies to report crypto assets at fair value, enabling gain recognition and making on-balance-sheet crypto holdings more attractive.
• Surge in enterprise and financial sector adoption: Major U.S. banks and asset managers are expanding digital asset offerings — from crypto custody and trading to tokenized treasuries and funds. BlackRock’s BUIDL, JPMorgan’s tokenized bond initiatives, and partnerships by firms like Visa and PayPal signal deepening institutional engagement.
• Crypto projects eye U.S. return: Regulatory clarity is giving crypto-native firms a viable path to scale operations within the U.S. With enforcement easing, SEC leadership evolving, and new legal structures like DUNAs gaining traction, crypto firms are finally seeing a viable path to operate — and scale — within the U.S. again.

About MV Global

Established in 2019, MV Global has emerged as a force in the Web3 landscape focused on early-stage investments and venture building. Our mission is clear: to partner with mavericks, visionaries, and free thinkers to leverage blockchain-enabled technologies to build for the future.

Website | X | LinkedIn | Medium

ETH Denver 2025 was less about Ethereum and more about where the industry is heading next. Amid a noticeable lack of energy, the MV Global team immersed itself in over 25 side events to assess the evolving sentiment and sector trends. What we found was an industry recalibrating — moving away from speculative excess and returning to fundamentals, with renewed focus on real-world assets (RWAs), the Bitcoin ecosystem, AI integration, and DePIN growth. While venture capital deployment slows and timelines compress, the path forward is clear: build real products that deliver lasting value.

The MV Global team made our annual pilgrimage to Denver for the year’s largest Ethereum-focused event, prepared to take the pulse of the ecosystem and identify the trends shaping its future.

While the official ETH Denver conference delivered opportunities to meet emerging teams and projects, our focus remained on the side events — where the real, unfiltered conversations happen.

Across over 25 side events and countless discussions with founders, investors, and builders, we tracked a series of critical signals that reveal both where the industry stands today and where it must go next.

Not Ethereum Denver

Perhaps the most striking realization of the week was how little ETH Denver 2025 was actually about Ethereum.

On-stage content featured vocal Ethereum critics, like Max Resnik, and alternative ecosystems staking their claims. The exhibition space and sponsorships were dominated by competing L1s — Solana, Move, Monad, Sui, and NEAR — while side events leaned heavily toward their respective ecosystems.

This shift raises an important reflection: Ethereum’s decentralized nature has always been a source of strength, but its lack of clear leadership and coordination is increasingly leaving space for alternatives to capture attention and developer mindshare.

At MV Global, we believe that a strong, focused Ethereum community remains essential for the health of the broader crypto ecosystem. Strengthening leadership and coordination within Ethereum should be an industry-wide priority.

A Noticeable Lack of Enthusiasm

Conferences often serve as a sentiment gauge for the broader market, particularly retail. In bull cycles, free-to-attend events like ETH Denver overflow with retail participants and crypto tourists. This year, the contrast was stark.

Empty halls. Panelists outnumbering audiences.
The energy? Muted.

In conversations with fellow investors, this wasn’t seen as a reaction to short-term price movements. Instead, there was a more existential questioning of the industry’s direction.

Are stablecoins and memecoins really the apex of what we’re building? Where is the next wave of groundbreaking products that deliver real utility?

This level of self-reflection may signal the start of a healthier phase — one less driven by speculative hype and more by purpose.

Return to Fundamentals

One positive trend stood out: a collective shift back to fundamentals.

Teams are increasingly focused on tangible metrics — revenue, user growth, and sustainable business models — over inflated valuations and theoretical total addressable markets.

We observed a growing emphasis on Real-World Assets (RWAs), as teams seek to anchor blockchain solutions to real economic activity. Tokenized treasuries, supply chains, and on-chain finance products point toward a future where blockchain applications serve practical, high-value use cases rather than speculative narratives.

At MV Global, this is the foundation we believe the next cycle will be built on: teams solving real problems for real users.

Sector Trends: Bitcoin, AI, and DePIN

Several key sectors dominated the conversations and side events:

1. Bitcoin Ecosystem

The most established blockchain is experiencing a renaissance. New protocols are unlocking yield opportunities around Bitcoin, introducing innovative financial products that leverage its security and ubiquity to finally build a thriving on-chain economy.

2. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI’s crossover with blockchain was another major theme. Discussions spanned distributed computing models, AI agents operating at the application layer, and ways to decentralize AI infrastructure. While optimism is high, so are the challenges. Scaling reliable, decentralized AI systems remains a difficult technical problem.

3. DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks)

DePIN projects, in contrast, are already demonstrating real-world traction. By incentivizing the development of physical infrastructure — like wireless networks, energy grids, and IoT sensor deployments — these protocols are showing concrete growth in users and revenue.

Of these, DePIN remains the most grounded and immediately promising sector in our view.

Funds Are Deploying Sparingly

While VCs were present in Denver, active deployment was rare.

Most funds raised in the 2021–2022 cycle are either fully or nearly deployed. Returns on recent token launches have been underwhelming, delaying liquidity events and pushing back returns to LPs. This has created a bottleneck: LPs are hesitant to re-up without seeing distributions, and new fundraises are stalling.

Crypto venture capital, once celebrated for its accelerated liquidity compared to traditional VC, is now facing a reality check. Distributions are delayed. Patience is thin.

The result? Fewer deals, stricter diligence, and a prioritization of projects that can quickly demonstrate value.

Impatience Is Real

This funding landscape has compressed timelines across the board.

Investors want liquidity. Advisors push for launches. Founders feel the heat.

But meaningful adoption doesn’t adhere to these timelines. Rushed launches often result in underdeveloped products or unsustainable growth hacks that burn out quickly.

Right now, many projects are stuck. They have viable technology, but they’re waiting for the right moment to ship — a window that often feels like it’s constantly shifting.

The market must reconcile these mismatches between product readiness and capital cycles if we’re to build lasting, impactful solutions.

Conclusion

ETH Denver 2025 was a mirror reflecting a maturing industry.

Ethereum’s reduced dominance, waning retail enthusiasm, and tighter capital flows underscore that the speculative era is fading. What’s emerging in its place is an industry realigning around fundamentals: real products, real users, and real economic impact.

The Bitcoin ecosystem, AI integration, and DePIN growth demonstrate that innovation remains strong — but it’s shifting towards practical applications and sustainable business models.

About MV Global

Established in 2019, MV Global has emerged as a force in the Web3 landscape focused on early-stage investments and venture building. Our mission is clear: to partner with mavericks, visionaries, and free thinkers to leverage blockchain-enabled technologies to build for the future.

Website | X | LinkedIn | Medium