I have been writing “That’s Our Two Satoshis” almost every week for nearly eight years, and have published close to 400 articles, which is simultaneously something I am proud of and a slightly disturbing reminder of how many Sunday nights I have spent staring at a blank Google Doc.
The format has changed a little over the years. The industry has changed a LOT over the same time frame. The early versions focused heavily on Bitcoin, exchange flows, mining activity, and whether this strange new asset class would even survive. Later, the conversation expanded to include DeFi, stablecoins, NFTs, gaming, token economics, governance, regulation, bankruptcies, public equities, and, increasingly, the convergence of crypto and traditional finance.
I have been wrong plenty of times.
Some investments did not work. Some technologies never developed as expected. Some timelines were hilariously optimistic. And some ideas that appeared compelling in the moment now look ridiculous in hindsight (which, to be fair, describes a large portion of crypto’s history).
But after going back through the archives, I was struck by something else: many of the themes I wrote about repeatedly, often when they were unpopular or premature, are beginning to play out today.
This is not meant to be a victory lap. Markets are humbling, and anyone who writes publicly every week for eight years leaves behind far too much evidence to pretend otherwise. Rather, it is a reminder that structural investment themes generally take much longer to develop than expected. The market tends to overestimate what will change in one year and underestimate what will change over five or ten.
Here are a few ideas that simply took longer than expected.
Crypto Was Always Bigger Than Bitcoin
One of my earliest frustrations with the way traditional investors viewed digital assets was that almost every conversation started and ended with Bitcoin.
In July 2019, I wrote that dismissing the entire asset class based on Bitcoin was like concluding that healthcare stocks did not exist because the financial media only discussed FANG stocks. More importantly, I argued that the emerging token universe included assets with fundamentally different economic characteristics:
“We are in the midst of an evolution where tokens now take on a variety of unique investment characteristics. Some are essentially equity-linked notes of cash-flow producing companies, others are more akin to “airline miles”. A few tokens thrive on community engagement and growth mechanisms, while others represent asset transfers in forms that were previously unheard of (i.e. transferring computer file storage).”
At the time, almost everything was still grouped into one useless and mislabeled category: “cryptocurrency.” Bitcoin, exchange tokens, utility tokens, tokenized securities, and early governance assets were treated as if they were interchangeable simply because they used similar technology.
They were not interchangeable then, and they certainly are not today.
Today, Bitcoin has become a macro asset, a treasury asset, an ETF product, and a form of non-sovereign money. Stablecoins have become a global payments and settlement network. Smart-contract platforms sell blockspace. DeFi protocols facilitate trading, lending, and asset issuance. Other tokens resemble loyalty programs, commodities, governance instruments, or equity-like claims on a business. The industry did not develop into one giant homogeneous crypto market. It developed into several distinct sectors that happen to use blockchain infrastructure. We released one of the first ever digital asset taxonomies over five years ago. Today, the U.S. government agencies (SEC and CFTC) along with leading asset managers (a16z) are narrowing these definitions.
That distinction seems obvious today. It was far less obvious in 2019.
Fundamentals Eventually Win
Perhaps the most consistent theme across eight years of writing has been that digital assets would eventually need to be analyzed like investments.
In the early years, even sophisticated investors often argued that crypto assets could not be valued because they had no cash flows or “intrinsic value.” Meanwhile, crypto-native investors frequently went too far in the opposite direction, pretending that users, total value locked (TVL), Discord activity, or a large “community” automatically created token value.
Neither argument made much sense.
In that same July 2019 article, I highlighted exchange tokens whose holders received trading benefits and whose issuers used profits for token buybacks. These were not currencies. They were mechanisms that allowed customers and investors to participate in the growth of an underlying business.
By February 2021, the differentiation was becoming much clearer. While most observers still referred to everything outside Bitcoin as an “altcoin,” we wrote:
“The growth in DeFi, from a fundamental usage standpoint, has been nothing short of outstanding. And the price of underlying tokens, many of which directly benefit from this growth of users and revenues, has naturally followed. But many casual market observers, and even some industry professionals like to collectively refer to all assets that aren’t Bitcoin as “altcoins”, an archaic term that is at best confusing, and at worst misses the entire evolution of this asset class. This characterization incorrectly assumes that all digital assets are homogenous, and that owning Bitcoin or non-Bitcoin tokens requires a mutually exclusive choice much like betting on Tiger Woods versus the field at Augusta. But as the asset class continues to differentiate, and bifurcate, even the loudest Bitcoin maximalists are being forced to pay attention.”
A few months later, the thesis became even more explicit:
“Real companies, with real cash flows, a token that accrues economic value, and a way to measure its success. These companies also align their customers, employees and other stakeholders with their success.”
That was always the opportunity. Blockchain created a new capital formation and ownership model. A company or protocol could use a token to attract customers, bootstrap a network, reward contributors, distribute ownership, and return economic value to stakeholders.
The problem was never that this model could not work. The problem was that most projects did not use it properly.
Instead, the industry spent years issuing governance tokens with no meaningful rights, excessive inflation, unnecessary venture unlocks, and little connection between the success of the product and the value of the token. Adoption increased, but token holders often received none of the economic benefits.
We are finally seeing the market reject that model.
Investors now ask the questions they should have been asking all along: Does the business generate revenue? Who receives that revenue? Does the token have a claim on cash flows? Are there buybacks? How much dilution exists? Are employees, customers, equity holders, and token holders properly aligned?
Hyperliquid is the clearest current example. The protocol generates real revenue, and the overwhelming majority of that revenue is used to purchase HYPE in the open market. Investors can analyze volumes, revenues, margins, competition, and the resulting demand for the token.
That does not mean HYPE will always go up. Buybacks do not magically prevent price declines. As I wrote in 2025:
“Token buybacks are not supposed to ‘prevent price declines,’ but rather…to return value to tokenholders. Just because the buybacks, to date, have not led to token outperformance does NOT mean that it is the wrong strategy. Token buybacks are by far the best use of capital for protocols, full stop. We believe recent discussions against buybacks miss entirely the biggest difference between tokens and equities.”
Crypto did not need to invent an entirely new definition of investing. It needed to rediscover the importance of revenue, ownership, dilution, and capital allocation. Fundamentals did not disappear. They simply took longer than expected to matter.
The Investable Token Universe Is Much Smaller Than the Token Universe
Crypto is extremely good at creating assets. It has been far less successful at creating good investments.
There are now millions of tokens, but most have no durable economic rights, no defensible competitive advantage, no rational governance structure, and no clear reason to exist. Many tokens were created primarily because founders and venture investors wanted liquidity, not because the underlying product needed a token.
This issue has become even more pronounced as launching a token has become easier. The barriers to entry are basically non-existent. The uncomfortable conclusion is that blockchain technology can succeed enormously while most existing tokens fail. In fact, that is increasingly what is happening.
Stablecoin volumes can grow without value accruing to the token of the blockchain being used. BlackRock can tokenize a fund using DeFi infrastructure without meaningfully benefiting the governance token associated with that DeFi infrastructure. A bank can launch its own blockchain, its own stablecoin, and its own tokenized products while keeping nearly all the economics inside the bank.
Adoption does not automatically create value accrual.
That is why the investable universe has remained so small. In April 2026, I wrote:
“There are at most 20 companies in quadrant 1 (top left), where the project or company is achieving some success, and the token was designed properly to capture value from that success. The best way to move forward is to focus on the 10-20 tokens that are investable, ignore the rest, and require tokens to be built properly before giving them liquidity and visibility. Until exchanges, market makers, and other powerful gatekeepers agree on some level of token standards, expect more of the same apathetic (or down-only) price action.”
That number may change, but the broader point will not.
Investors should stop treating every liquid token as an investable asset. Liquidity does not make something well-designed. An exchange listing does not create fundamental value. And a successful application does not necessarily produce a successful token.
The next generation of winners will likely look less like speculative instruments and more like properly structured businesses: recurring revenue, transparent economics, rational dilution, strong governance, and a mechanism that allows owners to participate in the upside.
There may eventually be hundreds of those assets. In fact, I still think most investable tokens in the future will be issued by existing, non-blockchain companies (like Netflix, Disney, Amazon), universities, small local businesses and municipalities. But today, there are still very few.
Wall Street Was Never Going to Be Replaced
For years, crypto was framed as an ideological war between decentralized networks and traditional finance. Crypto was supposedly going to eliminate banks, brokers, asset managers, exchanges, and payment companies. Wall Street was the enemy, decentralization was the goal, and every intermediary was destined to disappear.
I never found that framing particularly convincing.
Capitalism is very good at absorbing useful technology. If blockchain improves settlement, distribution, collateral mobility, transparency, or product creation, financial institutions will adopt it—not because they suddenly believe in crypto’s ideology, but because they want the revenue.
In February 2021, as investment banks began scrambling to cover Bitcoin and crypto-related equities, I wrote:
“Investment banks and broker/dealers are scrambling right now to "cover bitcoin'' as fast as they can. There is money to be made trading bitcoin and bitcoin tracking stocks, as well as M&A fees, and the Street wants their piece of the pie. Unfortunately, Wall Street is not set up to trade bitcoin directly, so they have to find other ways to insert themselves into the money grab. At first, this will mean writing research on publicly traded companies and trusts that directly or indirectly track bitcoin (BITW, GBTC, GLXY CN, VYGR, HUT, SI, EQOS, MSTR, and of course the upcoming Coinbase direct listing). While this is a start, it’s a very limited pool of securities to focus on, and doesn’t come close to fully encapsulating all of the growth of this industry.”
The initial wave was fairly primitive. Wall Street wrote Bitcoin research, traded a few proxy stocks, helped companies go public, and eventually launched Bitcoin ETFs. But the ETFs were always just the opening act.
In January 2024, shortly after their launch, I wrote:
“Wall Street, to date, has been largely unable to profit off of blockchain’s growth and success. They write research, they trade a few crypto stocks here and there, and earn a few advisory fees on bankruptcies and IPOs, but for the most part have not been able to participate in the profits. The ETF is at least a step in the right direction in terms of focus and attention. And once they get a taste for the excitement and revenue potential, the real growth can begin.”
That real growth is now underway.
BlackRock is issuing tokenized funds. Robinhood is building blockchain infrastructure and offering tokenized securities. Banks and fintech companies are developing stablecoins. Traditional exchanges are exploring around-the-clock markets. Asset managers are launching products tied to an expanding range of digital assets. Public companies are combining operating businesses, data centers, and digital asset infrastructure.
In March 2025, we basically predicted exactly what Robinhood just announced. This is incredibly close to Robinhood’s announcements this month:
“A lot of society now recognizes that banks are quite limited in what they can offer, and many want a smoother, full-encompassing financial service while retaining almost all of the self-sovereignty of their capital. Many in the industry want a DeFi bank where people can quickly go back and forth between traditional rails and crypto rails, move their assets in and out, pay bills, pay a mortgage, build credit, take out a loan, pay for college, etc. Banks are just big intermediaries that get paid a ton of money to hold your cash while sharing little of the yield with you, but the workflows and integrations (and FDIC insurance) have trapped most consumers. DeFi can unlock all of the capital that is trapped in traditional banks.”
Wall Street is not being replaced by crypto. Wall Street is becoming crypto—or, more accurately, blockchain is becoming another layer of the financial system.
Most of the World’s Assets Will Move On-Chain
The more important investment thesis was never that every consumer would buy a native crypto token. It was that blockchain technology would become infrastructure for moving assets.
In April 2020, we highlighted a $300 million real-estate portfolio preparing to tokenize part of its holdings. The goal was straightforward: reduce paperwork, expand access, and create secondary liquidity for an asset that historically had very little. The specific projects from that era were often too early. The infrastructure was incomplete, regulations were unclear, distribution was limited, and most investors had no idea how to access the products.
But the underlying idea was correct.
Stocks, bonds, funds, real estate, private-company shares, commodities, and other financial assets will increasingly be issued, represented, traded, and settled using blockchain technology.
As I wrote in February 2025:
“Blockchain technology has proven to work incredibly well for asset movement and transfer, but the majority of the world’s most popular assets (stocks, bonds, real-estate) are not available yet on blockchain rails (due largely to regulatory and workflow issues). As these barriers between crypto-native assets and TradFi assets break down, which is clearly and unequivocally happening for the first time ever, more tokenized assets will be issued and traded and sent on-chain. The beneficiaries will be certain Layer-1 blockchains that support this growth and these transactions, the DeFi applications built upon these chains, the stablecoins and stablecoin providers, and applications in a few sub-sectors like gaming and AI that will help you navigate on-chain. We haven’t even begun to see what blockchains are capable of yet because the majority of the world’s assets are not available on blockchain rails. So while crypto traders get caught up in the short-term and often chase flashy returns with no substance (i.e. memecoins), the longer-term investment thesis is centered around boring, global permissionless finance that makes investing and banking more efficient and transparent.”
That is what makes the opportunity so large. The existing crypto market remains tiny relative to global stocks, bonds, real estate, and private assets. There are roughly $30 billion of RWAs (real world assets) on-chain today. The total amount of stocks, bonds and real-estate assets is over $700 trillion. The next wave of blockchain adoption does not require investors to abandon those assets. It simply requires those assets to migrate onto better rails.
The beneficiaries will not necessarily be every existing token. Some institutions will build private networks and retain the economics themselves. But the broad trend is now undeniable: tokenization is moving from PowerPoint presentations and small experiments toward actual products and distribution.
The asset class is converging with the financial system, not operating alongside it.
Stablecoins Were the Killer Application Hiding in Plain Sight
Crypto spent years searching for a killer application while stablecoins quietly became one.
The early narrative focused on replacing fiat currencies. But most consumers did not want a new unit of account. They wanted a better way to use the unit of account they already understood. Stablecoins solved that problem. They allow dollars to move globally, continuously, and programmably. They can settle transactions outside banking hours, serve as collateral in on-chain markets, provide dollar access in countries with unstable currencies, and connect traditional financial assets to blockchain infrastructure.
Today, payment companies, banks, brokerages, fintech firms, exchanges, and asset managers all want a stablecoin strategy. The debate is no longer whether stablecoins have product-market fit. The debate is about distribution and economics.
Stablecoins may be crypto’s greatest success, but they also illustrate the value-accrual problem perfectly. Enormous usage does not guarantee that the issuer, blockchain, application, or token holder captures the economics. Circle and Coinbase can help expand USDC while paying away much of the reserve income to distribution partners. A blockchain can process billions of dollars of stablecoin volume without generating enough revenue to justify its token’s valuation.
The technology is working. The investment analysis is still about determining who gets paid.
In October 2022, long before most were focused on pre-IPO Circle (CRCL), we wrote:
“And what used to be just a race for market share is now becoming a race for profits. With 4% interest rates in short-duration U.S. government bonds, a $10 billion stablecoin is producing annual investment gains of $400 million—none of which passes through to the owners of the tokens. Collecting interest off the float is big business for stablecoin issuers. Tether has assets of almost $70 billion. That’s a spicy meatball.”
Regulation Was Never the Enemy—Uncertainty Was
Crypto’s relationship with regulation has always been presented too simplistically. The industry often argued that regulation would kill innovation. Critics argued that regulation would expose crypto as having no legitimate use. Both sides largely missed the point.
Institutional investors can operate under strict rules. What they struggle with is not knowing which rules apply.
For years, projects faced an impossible choice: issue a token with meaningful economic rights and risk being sued by the SEC, or issue a largely useless governance token and hope that vague promises of future utility would create value. The result was predictable. Thousands of poorly structured tokens were launched because teams were explicitly advised not to connect token value to the success of their businesses.
In discussing the Rook DAO collapse in April 2023, we wrote:
“Though “legal risk” is often used as a shield to avoid providing value to token holders, the ongoing lack of legal clarity in the U.S. has left the majority of governance tokens in limbo.”
Regulatory uncertainty did not protect investors. It actively encouraged worse token design. That is finally beginning to change. Stablecoin legislation, market-structure proposals, clearer agency guidance, tokenization frameworks, and a more constructive regulatory posture are giving issuers a path toward creating assets with actual rights.
The importance is not simply that regulation will allow prices to go higher. It is that clear rules will allow better products to exist.
Crypto never needed a complete absence of regulation. It needed rules that acknowledged that digital commodities, tokenized securities, stablecoins, governance instruments, and decentralized networks are not all the same thing.
Clear regulation should reduce bad speculation by making good investment structures possible.
The Future of Crypto Looks More Like Finance Than “Crypto”
Eight years ago, the digital asset industry was largely a collection of disconnected experiments. Today, the shape of the future is much clearer.
And the line separating “crypto” from “finance” is becoming increasingly meaningless.
None of this developed as quickly or cleanly as expected. Many of the original companies failed. Many of the early tokens are still heading towards zero. Many of the most vocal proponents were wrong about how adoption would occur.
But the larger structural themes survived.
Blockchain technology works extremely well for creating, transferring, trading, and settling assets. Investors will pay for assets that provide real economic rights. Institutions will adopt technology that creates new revenue or lowers costs. And markets will eventually distinguish between a useful product and an investable asset.
The industry has not reached its final form. In many ways, it is only now becoming what we thought it could be eight years ago.
So What Are We Underestimating Today?
Looking backward creates a false sense of inevitability. It is easy now to say stablecoins were an obvious product, that Wall Street was always going to adopt blockchain, or that investors would eventually demand cash flows and better token structures.
None of those outcomes felt inevitable at the time.
The ideas were visible, but the timelines were uncertain. And between the original thesis and the eventual outcome were multiple bubbles, crashes, frauds, bankruptcies, regulatory attacks, failed products, and long periods when almost nobody cared.
That is probably the most useful lesson from eight years of writing “That’s Our Two Satoshis”. The best structural investment ideas often look wrong before they look early. And after they finally work, everyone remembers them as obvious.
So rather than spend too much time congratulating ourselves for the trends that eventually materialized, the more interesting question is:
What are we writing about today that will not become consensus until 2030—or 2034?
Some of those ideas will age poorly.
Others will simply take longer than expected.
