Institutional investors will never buy crypto in meaningful size until we stop calling it all "crypto".
If everyone just writes/talks about macro, and calls everything "alts", then investors are right to ignore this space. Why spend time on an investable universe that is marketed as a single asset?
If we called every ETF that wasn't $SPY an "altstock", then no one would buy ETFs or stocks either. If we called US Treasuries "bonds" and every other debt instrument an "altbond", then no one would buy fixed income either.
But we don't -- because that would be stupid. And the leaders in debt and equity markets know this.
The platforms responsible for selling stocks (exchanges, brokerages, research firms) recognize that ETFs are just a wrapper, and lots of completely different assets can be put inside the wrapper. As such, these brokerages, exchanges and research firms don't spit out macro commentary generically about ETFs, because that would be stupid. Instead, they teach about sectors and assets INSIDE of the wrapper, not the wrapper itself.
Similarly, brokerages, investment banks and research firms separate gov't bonds from corporate bonds, and IG bonds from HY bonds, and convertible bonds from straight bonds. None of these firms spit out macro commentary about all of fixed income as one vehicle. Because that too would be stupid. Who the issuer of the debt is matters, and the unique features of that debt matter (coupons, maturities, covenants, call features, convertibility features, etc).
The token investing world is no different.
- There are different issuers of tokens (individuals, companies, decentralized protocols, etc)
- There are different features (inflation vs amortization, staked vs unstaked, asset-backed vs equity-like, etc)
- There are different sectors (L1s, DeFi, DePIN, stablecoins, memecoins, etc)
There is nothing similar about most crypto assets besides the wrapper. We should never discuss BTC, USDT, XRP, ETH, TAO, HYPE, BNB, DOGE, HNT and other assets that have LITERALLY NOTHING TO DO WITH EACH OTHER besides the wrapper ("crypto") in the same conversation.
So until the leaders of the crypto industry (Exchanges, brokerages, data providers and large asset managers) start intelligently differentiating the different types of issuers of tokens, and the different features of the token, from the wrapper itself, this industry will remain dead to real investors.
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