Jason Guthrie, head of product at asset manager WisdomTree, says he’s optimistic despite a noticeable lack of hype that typically comes along with a crypto bull run.
There hasn’t been a “really frothy use case that has typically driven these market cycles previously,” such as initial coin offerings (ICOs), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or DeFi lending, Guthrie told Cointelegraph at Consensus.
“This time, we’ve continued to see the asset class gathering value, we’ve continued to see the companies that are built on this technology, growing revenue, growing client bases, continuing to innovate without really hanging their hat on one of these frankly less than useful use cases,” he said.
WisdomTree founder Jonathan Steinberg (left), Jason Guthrie, head of product (middle) and head of digital assets Will Peck (right). Source: Jason Guthrie
The ICO boom kicked off in 2017 with an estimated $4.9 billion raised. By 2018, this figure had jumped to $33.4 billion. By 2019, it had dropped to just over $370 million and has never returned to its previous highs.
NFTs also had their day, and saw a massive surge of popularity in 2020 and continued to grow until hitting a peak in 2022, with trading volumes reaching $57.2 billion and the market’s sales count hitting 121.7 million. The market has since cooled as well.
“I think the fact that we’re still healthy without one of those to drive it is a really, really good sign,” Guthrie said.
Market more mature this cycle, despite memecoin hype
The overall crypto market capitalization hit a new all-time high of $3.71 trillion on Dec. 9 last year, with many cryptocurrencies also registering significant price gains, according to CoinMarketCap.
During this cycle, there has also been a growing trend of companies, such as video game retailer GameStop Corporation, and countries, Ukraine possibly being one of the latest, adopting crypto for treasuries and reserves.
“I think this is starting to feel like a more mature market that is really settling on its use case, its value prop,” Guthrie said.
“I know there has been a bit of memecoin stuff, particularly around Solana, but it doesn’t seem anywhere near as prevalent as the previous kind of hype has been,” he added.
Related: Bitcoin experiencing ‘shakeout,’ not end of 4-year cycle: Analysts
There was a surge in memecoin activity after the launch of US President Donald Trump’s memecoin on Jan. 18, when Pump.fun usage recorded an all-time high of $3.3 billion in weekly trading volume.
However, enthusiasm for memecoins dropped after a series of bad launches and rug pulls, killed off investor interest, such as the Libra (LIBRA) rug.
Ultimately, Guthrie thinks there is still a “lot of innovation to do,” and it’s still “very early days,” but the market has matured and has greater sustainability compared to previous cycles.
Additional reporting by Sam Bourgi.
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