Wall Street onchain shift may drive next crypto bull market

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan wrote in a memo that Wall Street firms shifting financial services onto blockchains through tokenization, stablecoins, continuous trading and instant settlement could drive the next crypto bull market. He framed the argument as two distinct pathways he labels the “Hyperliquid Lane” and the “Robinhood Lane.”

The Hyperliquid Lane describes crypto-native protocols that generate operating revenue and return that income to token holders or into token buybacks. Hougan pointed to Hyperliquid as an example, noting it crossed $1 billion in cumulative revenue in June and is on pace for about $800 million this year while directing the majority of revenue to buy its native token. He also listed Uniswap, Aave and Morpho as protocols moving toward revenue-driven token structures.

The Robinhood Lane covers established financial firms and infrastructure providers moving real financial services onto blockchain rails rather than running limited pilots. Hougan highlighted recent deployments by major trading and custody firms and cited Robinhood Chain, which went live on July 1 and recorded roughly $3 billion in volume. Under this lane, tokenized assets and stablecoins would be used for settlement and machine-to-machine payments.

Hougan wrote that a market cycle built on actual financial flows and fee revenue could expand market size more steadily than past rallies driven by speculative retail demand. He added, “The next crypto bull market won’t look like the last ones,” and wrote, “It’s no longer ‘the institutions are coming.’ It’s ‘the institutions are here-and they’re going to drive the next bull cycle.'”

Recent market and regulatory signals noted in the memo include seven consecutive days of net inflows to U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs and increased activity in tokenization-related products. On the regulatory front, Senate Republicans published a draft of the CLARITY Act and a group of Senate Democrats said the draft lacks sufficient investor protections. Securities and Exchange Commission Commissioner Hester Peirce warned that some decentralized finance vaults and onchain lending products could meet the legal definition of securities.

The memo links technical changes to potential market outcomes. Tokenization converts traditional assets into blockchain tokens, stablecoins can serve as onchain settlement rails, and continuous trading allows markets to operate outside traditional business hours. Hougan described revenue mechanisms that can create direct token demand, including transaction fees, protocol-level revenue shares and token buyback programs that convert operating income into purchases of native tokens.

Hougan contrasted his thesis with previous cycles, which he noted were driven largely by speculative retail demand and broader macro liquidity. His framework centers on embedding ordinary financial services-settlement, cross-border payments and institutional trading-onto blockchain infrastructure so that those flows generate predictable onchain revenue.