Hyperliquid is on track to pull in close to $800 million in annual revenue this year, and almost every dollar of that goes toward buying back HYPE. That one fact sits at the center of how Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan is thinking about the next crypto bull market. He laid out two broad bets he considers best positioned for the cycle ahead.
The First Bet: Tokens That Actually Earn
Hougan's first pick is crypto applications with real, measurable revenue and tokenomics that tie the token's value directly to platform usage. Hyperliquid (HYPE) is his clearest example. The project runs a Layer 1 blockchain and a perpetual futures trading platform, and its buyback model has translated into a 146% price gain for HYPE this year even as the broader crypto market has been under pressure.
'I think the token could double in price and still be fairly valued,' Hougan said. He added that he expects a new wave of projects to copy HYPE's tokenomics over time, creating what he calls 'next-gen' token opportunities. Beyond Hyperliquid, he pointed to Uniswap (UNI), Aave (AAVE), and Morpho (MORPHO) as existing protocols already moving toward the same model of linking token value to actual usage rather than speculation alone.
The Second Bet: Established Companies Running Crypto at Scale
The second lane is traditional finance firms that have moved beyond small pilots and are operating crypto infrastructure at real scale. Robinhood is Hougan's lead example. The company launched its own blockchain on July 1, and the chain has already ranked among the top 5 days by DEX volume. 'Robinhood is learning 10,000x more from a live chain in 120 countries than any pilot could teach it,' Hougan noted.
He acknowledged that meme coins currently dominate activity on Robinhood's chain rather than tokenized stocks, the use case he expects to scale over time. Coinbase, Figure, and BlackRock also made his list of firms with meaningful real-world crypto exposure, with Visa, Stripe, and JPMorgan flagged as ones worth watching.
Underpinning both bets is what Hougan describes as the convergence of onchain and traditional finance. He sees stablecoins, tokenization, and around-the-clock trading as the structural forces driving the next cycle. Congress has been wrestling with exactly these questions: stablecoin and crypto regulation remain a live debate on Capitol Hill, which adds a policy variable to the timeline Hougan is working with.
For the broad base of any rally, Hougan said he remains bullish on Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Solana (SOL).
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Crypto assets carry significant risk; always do your own research before making any decisions.
