If You Wait, You’ll Be Late

If you wait until the bull run has arrived, you’ll already be late.

That’s how the next major run is going to play out for digital assets, Bitcoin, and crypto at large.

And when it comes to the coming rally, there are two things to note.

The first thing is that it will be different from other crypto rallies. Mostly because today’s ecosystem is different.

And the second thing is that the smart money isn’t waiting around.

And both of these truths point to how crucial it is to be building positions over the next few weeks and months before it all gets underway…

The Momentum

Today’s digital asset ecosystem is not the same as it was a few years ago, or even a few months ago.

We’re no longer discussing an ecosystem that simply trades various cryptocurrencies across protocols, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) going up for auction in the market, or moving stablecoins throughout the ecosystem to earn yield.

The ecosystem is not crypto-centric anymore. It’s far more diverse.

And as a result, the addressable market for public blockchains has expanded by orders of magnitude.

That’s because over the last few months, trade volume and open interest on oil markets, tokenized stocks, and even private credit have exploded.

Just look at the chart below showing the total amount of tokenized stock currently onchain. It’s going parabolic.

Source: rwa.xyz

Earlier this month, the volume of tokenized stocks onchain surpassed $2 billion. It was $1 billion not even three months ago.

This trend of tokenized stocks trading onchain was virtually nothing 12 months ago… And it just doubled in 80 days.

What’s more is that Robinhood just unveiled stock tokens on its layer-two network a week ago, as discussed in The “Party in the Back” of DeFi… That’s more stocks, millions of users, and a lot more value coming onchain.

Which is to say, the momentum is only rising.

Then there’s the perpetual decentralized exchange HyperLiquid. It recently rolled out the ability for anybody with enough HYPE tokens to create their own markets in what’s known as HIP-3.

HIP-3 brought oil, gold, ETFs, and other markets to the exchange, giving traders instruments that track the price of various offchain assets. We can see below that the volume since late February has only risen.

Source: Dune (@yandhii)

These examples are quite literally the tip of the iceberg.

Assets like private equity, private credit, active strategy funds, real estate, and more are all making their way onchain… And the amount is also rising.

In fact, we just saw JP Morgan Chase’s onchain money market fund AUM rise 250% over the last month. It’s a product that sits on Ethereum, a public and permissionless network.

This is why things are different now.

In prior bear markets like 2022, late-2018, 2025… Everything was crypto-centric. Volume, assets, use cases… All of it was self-dependent.

Now we’re talking about assets that are not crypto-centric finding a home on these chains. And the usage is already showing signs of breaking out. Here was last month’s tokenized stock volume on blockchains, reaching $3.4 billion.

I expect July to notch another record high.

Source: X @KobeissiLetter

Which is to say, this level of usage and demand for the networks to transact these assets is something we’ve never experienced to date.

Which is why the second item is so important to realize…

They Won’t Wait for You

VanEck’s Head of Digital Assets, Matthew Sigel, helps investors gain crypto exposure.

His firm is global with offices in Europe, Australia, Latin America, and New York. They offer nearly 300 products like ETFs, mutual funds, and institutional funds.

And what he said earlier this week, as it pertains to digital assets, is noteworthy.

What I’ve been telling clients is that you want to have your full position by October. Putting in some type of like time-based buying where you add a few basis points every month or so until we get into Q4…

Sigel is hinting at what is known as the four-year cycle – a belief that bull and bear markets revolve around Bitcoin’s halving cycle. The halving is where the amount of Bitcoin issuance gets cut in half every four years.

It’s an abrupt change to the scarcity of the asset, and the next halving is set to take place around April 2028.

If we do some back-of-the-envelope math off that date, the theory suggests markets bottom around 500-550 days before the halving.

That puts September as the period when Bitcoin begins its next run… And the rest of the market with it.

That’s what Matthew is alluding to in his commentary. It’s an easy sell to investors since it’s happened several times during the history of Bitcoin and the crypto market at large.

But here are a few things to consider…

Already Accumulating

The CLARITY Act text will be dropping any day now, but most likely early next week.

Meaning we are getting very close to seeing if the Senate will vote in favor of it.

If the reception is favorable, we can expect passage before August 7.

If lawmakers want to spend more time working on it, then September is the next possible date.

The market will anticipate that timeframe. Which means in either scenario, it’s easy to see how the bill signing into law can act as a catalyst.

Smart money won’t wait until the pen hits the paper.

That’s because momentum is already building in the ecosystem. Assets are not fully dependent upon Bitcoin acting as the bellwether asset that attracts investors, users, and activity anymore.

We just wrote about Robinhood Chain a few days ago…

In its first week, the decentralized exchange Uniswap did $250 million in volume. The very next day, the exchange realized over $500 million in volume in only 24 hours.

And it’s not the price appreciation of Bitcoin, Ether, or some other bellwether asset attracting all this activity.

That’s what’s different here.

It’s why firms such as BlackRock and Apollo Global Management are taking positions in smaller-cap tokens today. They are not waiting around for the Bitcoin cycle analysis to play out.

The products and services are rolling out by the day now. Momentum is building. Activity is rising.

This is a trend that won’t wait for crypto-centric views to play out. Public blockchains are becoming the home of finance by the day.

Don’t wait around. Start acting now.

Your Pulse on Crypto,

Ben Lilly
Editor, Chain of Thought