Is Crypto ‘Boring’ Now? Bitwise CEO Says The Market Is Changing

As the early ‘Uptober’ buzz fizzles and Bitcoin struggles to hold $110,000, the overall crypto market sentiment has seemingly taken a beating. According to online reports, market participants are disappointed with the recent performance, but some experts argue that this means the industry is “winning.”

On Thursday, investor and analyst Will Clemente shared on X that “the vibes in the crypto groupchats are just sad.” He explained that investors seem “jaded, depressed, and defeated,” adding that they are “completely giving up” and switching to other asset classes after BTC’s performance this year.

Bitwise’s CEO, Hunter Horsley, weighed in on the matter, affirming that “Crypto natives are now in a multi-month bear market sentiment,” while the “off-Twitter” sentiment is the “best it’s ever been.”

Horsley detailed that the offline positive outlook is fueled by the notable decrease in regulatory risk, which has led to the recent spike in institutional adoption and mainstream recognition.

Notably, the second wave of crypto-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) started trading this week, with Bitwise’s Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) stealing the spotlight. Moreover, the Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) trend, led by Strategy, continues to pour millions of dollars into cryptocurrencies.

“The market is changing,” the CEO asserted in his Friday X post, pointing out JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s recent approach shift. Dimon has been a long-time crypto skeptic, calling the flagship crypto a “Ponzi scheme” and dismissing it as “useless as a pet rock.” Nonetheless, he recently admitted that he was wrong and that crypto, stablecoins, and blockchain are “real.”

In a response to Clemente’s post, Nic Carter stated that the sentiment shift highlights a deeper truth about the market: the space has matured significantly. He explained that crypto is “boring” now because most of the questions and uncertainties that drove much of the historical volatility have been answered.

So many of the open questions have been answered, will stablecoins be allowed? yes. will we be banned? no. will we all go to jail for writing software? no. will we be incorporated into tradfi? yes. can tokens have cashflows and not be securities? Apparently. (…) There are still some unanswered questions, particularly around cash-flowing pseudoequity tokens, but we will probably get answers to those in the coming years.

He also argued that the crypto industry has been largely derisked as a technological substrate, bringing large corporations to adopt these tools, which shows that “crypto natives no longer control the narrative, there’s more serious businesses (which don’t require tokens), there’s less chaos, the whole space has matured significantly.”

To Carter, this means that the industry has “won.” However, he noted that clarity and maturity come with less excitement, as “winning means the inherent volatility in the space is highly reduced! This applies to both startups and the underlying assets themselves.”

“So if you’re sad that volatility has been dampened smile through the tears. it means we won,” he concluded.