A 25-year market veteran’s big crypto reset: Bitcoin, DeFi, and the race between ETH and Solana

Crypto may be grinding sideways, but under the surface a new cycle is taking shape. A 25-year market veteran and chief investment officer at a leading crypto asset manager believes we’re in the middle of a major “reset” that will define how the next bull market plays out into 2026–2027.

Instead of wild speculation and meme mania, he sees the next phase being driven by real revenue, real-world adoption, and serious institutional capital. Here’s how he’s reading the market, what he expects for Bitcoin, and where he thinks the biggest opportunities lie.

Why he thinks crypto is bottoming now

He believes Bitcoin and the broader crypto market are in the process of forming a bottom. The key signs he watches are not price targets, but behavior and positioning.

1. Leverage is being flushed out

At major bottoms, speculative leverage tends to get squeezed out of the system. Recently, he’s seen:

• Large outflows from Bitcoin ETFs in Q2, signaling capitulation from fast-money traders.
• MicroStrategy trading below its net asset value (NAV), a sign that leveraged Bitcoin exposure was being aggressively sold.
• Open interest in futures collapsing and funding rates drifting toward zero, both pointing to a reset in speculative positioning.

When leverage is drained and traders are exhausted, markets are often close to a durable bottom.

2. Markets stop reacting to bad news

His favorite bottom signal is when markets shrug off negative headlines. Recently, he’s watched:

• Odds of the Clarity Act (a key U.S. crypto regulatory bill) fall sharply on prediction markets, while crypto prices stayed flat or rose.
• MicroStrategy selling Bitcoin, yet Bitcoin rallied instead of dumping.
• Individual names in the ecosystem breaking down without dragging the whole market lower.

When bad news stops pushing prices down, it usually means sellers are exhausted and the market is ready to move higher.

The “Great Reset” heading into 2026

He describes the coming phase as a “Great Reset” for crypto. Not a collapse, but a shift in what the market values.

Instead of narratives built purely on hype, he expects:

• A more real-world oriented vision: crypto rails powering payments, trading, and financial infrastructure.
• A revenue-driven market: protocols that actually earn fees and share value with token holders taking center stage.
• Tangible use cases: tokenized assets, stablecoins, and on-chain finance becoming mainstream.

In his view, we’re just starting to feel this reset now, and it will become much clearer through the second half of the year and into 2026.

Macro risks: what really matters for crypto

On the macro side, he’s surprisingly relaxed—as long as nothing breaks in a big way.

• Modest rate hikes or cuts from the Fed (±25 bps) don’t worry him; they’re not large enough to reset global risk appetite.
• Oil staying in a broad $50–$100 range is also fine; it doesn’t directly derail crypto’s core drivers.
• The key wild card is AI: if the AI trade either fully collapses or re-ignites into another blow-off bubble, it could temporarily pull attention and liquidity away from crypto.

His base case: if macro stays “just okay,” crypto-specific trends—like institutional adoption, tokenization, and stablecoins—will be strong enough to drive a solid bull market.

What brings buyers back? Bitcoin and beyond

Seller exhaustion is one side of the bottom. The other is new demand. He sees two main engines for the next leg higher.

1. Wealth managers finally allocating to Bitcoin

He expects large wealth management platforms—think Wells Fargo, UBS, Merrill Lynch and similar firms—to accelerate their crypto rollout in the second half of the year.

As they switch on access to spot Bitcoin ETFs and model portfolios, he anticipates meaningful inflows from:

• Financial advisors
• Family offices
• High-net-worth clients on big platforms

Most of that first wave of capital, in his view, will go into Bitcoin and a few large caps.

2. The on-chain real-world asset boom

The second engine is anything that sits at the intersection of real-world assets (RWAs) and on-chain finance. He highlights:

• Perpetuals and derivatives platforms like Hyperliquid
• DeFi blue chips such as Uniswap, Morpho, Aave, and similar protocols

His firm’s own DeFi index is already up around 25% over the last three months, even while majors like Bitcoin have been relatively flat—an unusual sign of early leadership from DeFi.

He believes this is being driven by a surge of interest in tokenized assets and on-chain markets, which is only just beginning.

ETH vs Solana: who wins tokenization?

In a world where everything from stocks to bonds to real estate gets tokenized, which chain benefits more—Ethereum or Solana?

He’s bullish on both, but gives a slight edge to Solana in the near term for tokenized stocks:

• Tokenized equities are currently seeing explosive growth on Solana, giving it a strong early lead in this niche.
• Solana’s market cap is much smaller than Ethereum’s, so it needs less incremental activity to move the needle.

At the same time, he remains very positive on Ethereum:

• Ethereum is still the default choice for institutions moving assets on-chain.
• The Ethereum community has impressed him with how it has reorganized itself—via sub-foundations and new initiatives—to tackle scaling, governance, and value capture.
• Ethereum L2s allow major platforms (like Robinhood’s new chain) to own more of their own economics while still building on a trusted base layer.

His bottom line: both ETH and Solana are core beneficiaries of tokenization and stablecoin growth, but Solana may have more upside from a smaller base, while Ethereum remains the institutional “you don’t get fired for building here” standard.

Regulation and the Clarity Act: coin flip, big short-term impact

On the U.S. regulatory front, he sees the Clarity Act—a major proposed crypto bill—as a genuine coin flip.

• Prediction markets have priced its odds around 30%; he thinks the real probability is a bit higher, but still under 50%.
• The bill has shown surprising resilience, refusing to die despite many chances, which he views as a bullish sign.

If it fails, he expects:

• A 1–2 month period of volatility and weakness across crypto.
• Smaller-cap altcoins to be hit harder than Bitcoin.

If it passes, he calls it a “shotgun start” to a new bull market, likely sparking a sharp repricing higher as regulatory uncertainty clears.

Over a two-year horizon, though, he thinks crypto is already close to “escape velocity.” With major banks, brokers, and fintechs building products around Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, stablecoins, and tokenization, he believes it will be very hard for any future administration to put the genie back in the bottle.

His Bitcoin price target for the next cycle

Looking out to the top of the next cycle, he sees Bitcoin in a range of roughly $250,000 to $400,000.

His reasoning:

• Bitcoin is on what he still believes is a long-term path to $1 million, but each cycle delivers a smaller percentage gain on a much larger base.
• A move to around $250,000 would be a double from six-figure levels, but would also add trillions of dollars in market cap—no small feat.
• Behavioral psychology matters: $100,000 was clearly a sell wall for many long-term holders, and he sees $250,000 as the next big psychological level where profit-taking could intensify.

He expects large inflows from advisors, family offices, and wealth platforms to be the main driver of this move. In his view, most of the serious money that will eventually own Bitcoin still hasn’t entered the market yet.

As for Ethereum and Solana, he’s confident that if Bitcoin reaches $250,000, ETH will at least break its all-time high and likely go “substantially higher.” He’s less willing to pin a precise number on either ETH or SOL, arguing that both communities are still refining how value accrues to their tokens—but he expects both to benefit strongly.

Safest ways to store crypto: go to the extremes

With recent news of hardware wallet vulnerabilities, many investors are rethinking custody. His view is simple: avoid the messy middle.

He recommends a “barbell” approach:

• On one end: true self-custody with reputable hardware wallets, where you control your own keys.
• On the other end: institutional-grade custody via regulated products like ETFs, which work with qualified custodians and have insurance and long track records.

Historically, he notes, the biggest blow-ups in crypto have happened in the middle—unregulated custodians, opaque platforms, and hybrid solutions that are neither fully self-custodied nor institutionally safeguarded. For most people, he thinks a mix of ETF exposure plus some carefully managed self-custody is the most robust setup.

What he’s buying (and what he avoids)

Through his firm, most assets are in straightforward, institution-friendly products:

• Market-cap-weighted index funds
• Single-asset ETFs for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and similar majors

Notably, some large coins are excluded from their institutional indexes—such as Tron, Dogecoin, BNB, and LEO—because they don’t fit the firm’s institutional mandate, not necessarily because they’re “bad,” but because of concerns around decentralization, regulatory risk, or suitability for conservative clients.

On the more aggressive side, his team is building on-chain strategies and vaults that focus on:

• Revenue-generating protocols
• Improved tokenomics
• Real-world asset integrations

Personally, he holds most of his crypto in broad, index-like strategies and rarely trades. He prefers to buy quality assets and hold them through cycles rather than trying to time every move.

Why he calls DeFi the “easiest trade” in crypto right now

Asked where he sees the most obvious opportunity, he points to DeFi—especially established, global brands that are still surprisingly small in market cap terms.

He argues that a great trade usually needs two things:

1. A powerful theme that can drive multiple expansion.
2. Valuations that are still reasonable relative to the opportunity.

DeFi, in his view, checks both boxes:

• Theme: Tokenization, stablecoins, and on-chain markets are front-page stories now. As more real-world assets and institutional flows move on-chain, DeFi is the natural plumbing for trading, lending, and liquidity.
• Valuation: Many DeFi blue chips are global brands but still only worth a few billion dollars on a circulating basis. He points to Uniswap as an example—a name recognized across crypto with a market cap in the low single-digit billions.

He notes that some protocols like Hyperliquid trade at revenue multiples (15–50x depending on how you count) that are not wildly higher than fast-growing fintech companies, despite targeting much larger global markets.

As tokenomics improve—fee switches, revenue sharing, and better alignment between protocol usage and token value—he believes DeFi is set up for a strong re-rating. For investors interested in high-conviction narratives, this aligns well with the broader shift toward revenue-driven, real-world-integrated crypto projects.

If you’re exploring high-upside sectors, DeFi also features prominently in many “next cycle” lists, alongside other themes like AI and tokenization. You can see how it fits into a broader portfolio in guides such as top 10 crypto coins to get rich without getting lucky.

His best financial lesson from 25 years in markets

After more than two decades across multiple cycles, his core lesson is simple: leverage and debt are what kill you.

• Long-term investing in good assets tends to work out if you give it enough time.
• The biggest blow-ups usually come from excessive leverage, poorly managed debt, or trying to time the market too aggressively.

Most of his own investments are long-term positions he rarely sells. For younger investors, he even sees early experiences with leverage going wrong (in small size) as valuable lessons—so long as they lead to more disciplined risk management later.

Why he thinks this is a “magical” time to invest in crypto

He compares today’s environment to the depths of previous bear markets like 2018–2019 and 2022—periods that, in hindsight, offered some of the best entry points for long-term investors.

The difference now, he says, is that:

• The next bull market is visible on the horizon: institutional adoption, tokenization, and stablecoins are already happening at scale.
• Major financial institutions—banks, brokers, fintechs—are building products around Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and DeFi.
• Crypto is far more embedded in the global financial system than in prior cycles, making a full reset to “zero” extremely unlikely.

With Bitcoin still far below his long-term target and sectors like DeFi and on-chain RWAs trading at what he sees as attractive valuations, he believes this is one of the best setups he’s seen in his eight-plus years at a dedicated crypto asset manager.

For investors looking to position ahead of the next wave, that means focusing less on short-term noise and more on durable themes: Bitcoin as digital hard money, Ethereum and Solana as tokenization platforms, DeFi as the new financial plumbing, and real-world assets moving on-chain. Combined, those forces could define the “Great Reset” of crypto into 2026 and beyond.

If you’re interested in how these narratives intersect with other big macro stories, it’s also worth looking at how crypto reacts to major events and hype cycles, like in 3 crypto coins to watch as excitement builds around the SpaceX IPO.