Bitcoin, Ethereum and the multi-year reset that no one saw coming

Weak projects fail under competition and institutional pressure, while a few native crypto players have emerged as future industry standards.

Ryan Watkins, former Senior Research Analyst at Messari, believes the cryptocurrency market is undergoing the biggest transition since he entered the industry eight years ago. In his latest post on

This has left quality assets at more reasonable levels as sentiment remains depressed after a prolonged bear market in altcoins.

Bear markets, burnout and opportunity

He noted that regulatory uncertainty in the United States has historically hindered institutional and corporate participation. The dual ownership structures for equity tokens, weak disclosure practices, cyclical revenues, and the absence of shared valuation frameworks have further contributed to severe token underperformance beyond 2021.

According to Watkins, these structural flaws exacerbated the impact of excessive expectations, leading to significant price declines, psychological burnout among market participants, and the departure of speculative capital that viewed crypto as a “low-effort” path to wealth.

He argued that this outbreak has been a necessary and healthy development as the pre-2022 era allowed weak projects to generate excessive returns, which he described as unsustainable. Watkins said many of these issues are now being addressed as regulatory pressures ease, alignment between token holders and insiders improves, and disclosure standards mature alongside third-party data providers.

The analyst also pointed to a growing number of crypto use cases that continue to exhibit compound growth independent of price cycles, including peer-to-peer financial platforms, digital dollars, permissionless exchanges, derivatives markets, global collateral systems, on-chain fundraising, issuance of tokenized assets and decentralized physical infrastructure networks.

He added that consensus is emerging around the idea that most crypto assets must eventually generate cash flows, with Bitcoin and Ethereum standing out as rare exceptions in the store of value space, and that self-sovereign ownership of on-chain cash flows represents an important innovation.

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Top Blockchains Are Turning Into Fastest Growing Companies

Watkins said leading blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana and Hyperliquid are cementing their positions as foundational standards for startups and enterprises, as they house some of the fastest-growing companies worldwide due to their permissionless design, capital efficiency and global distribution. He noted that Wall Street and Silicon Valley companies are increasingly launching production-quality blockchain products, especially in the areas of tokenization and stablecoins. These efforts are accelerating as regulatory clarity allows companies to shift their focus to revenue growth and cost reduction.

Still, Watkins said few analysts are modeling exponential growth, and many are predicting annual growth rates below 20%, leaving what he described as a mispriced multi-year opportunity for top projects. He added that crypto is becoming increasingly inevitable as trust in institutions declines, government debt rises and currencies weaken.

However, stronger competition and higher expectations are likely to push weaker projects to the side, leaving only a few indigenous winners.

“The crypto economy is not a single market maturing at the same time, but a collection of products and companies moving along different adoption curves. And perhaps most importantly, speculation doesn’t disappear when a technology enters its growth phase; it simply fades and flows with shifts in sentiment and the pace of innovation. Anyone who tells you the speculative days are over is probably just jaded or doesn’t understand history.”