Bitwise CEO Says Crypto Market Resembles Post-Dot-Com Shift, With Bigger Winners Ahead

Bitwise Chief Executive Officer Hunter Horsley said the cryptocurrency market is entering a stage similar to the one that followed the internet bubble of the 1990s.

Odaily reported on June 21 that Horsley wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that many companies in the early internet era were valued at $500 million to $1 billion largely on expectations for future growth.

After the dot-com bubble burst, attention shifted to companies that could prove real value and viable business models. The internet companies that ultimately survived grew on the back of verifiable results, and both the duration and scale of that growth far exceeded what the market had expected during the bubble, he wrote.

Horsley said the crypto market is going through a similar transition. Many projects initially won high valuations based on potential, but attention may increasingly concentrate on a smaller group that can prove real-world utility and sustainable business models.

"The number of projects that stand out in the future may decline," he wrote. "But the scale and growth runway of the leading projects with genuine value and capabilities could be far greater than most market participants expect."

The crypto industry has recently been seen as shifting away from a purely speculative theme toward practical use cases such as stablecoins, tokenized assets and on-chain financial infrastructure. Over the longer term, that could result in a structure similar to the post-dot-com era, with a small number of core projects capturing most of the market's value.