The way in which the encrypted market priced tokens is changing. Many industry agencies have indicated to CoinDesk that the value of the project is being judged by the CoinMarketCap ranking alone, and that institutional funds are more concerned about whether the agreement has revenues, whether it has real users and whether the project can translate the use into sustainable value.

Decline in market value ranking

The Chief Executive Officer of Bitwise, Hunter Horsley, stated that over the past few cycles, the market had often priced the new public chain on a “head project discount” and compared more volume than business quality. This practice is now diminishing.

He mentioned that investors, when looking at Hyperliquid's HYPE tokens, began to place more emphasis on the actual trading activity and income structure of the derivative platform than simply comparing it horizontally with larger block chain projects. Horsley also claims that some wealth management agencies that have just been granted access to the encrypted market do not care about the position of a token on the market value list.

Institutional funding is more income-oriented.

According to the Wintermute off-site trader Jasper De Maere, over the past 12 to 18 months, some of the funds have shifted from the bottom block chain infrastructure to the application layer projects and appchain, with a focus on DeFi, the permanent contract trading platform and the centralized physical infrastructure network.

In his view, the fundamentals determined which currencies would be able to enter the institutional screening and whether the project would survive when the market fell; however, price fluctuations in the day were more driven by leverage, money rates, warehouse changes and serial liquidation.

  • 2026 Institutional cash in the first half of the year
  • About 59% a year ago.
  • Areas of concern include mainstream, income-type and RWA

Differing tokens from encrypted stocks

Bitwise ' s market review shows that during the first half of 2026, encryption money fell by 36 per cent overall, while encryption-related listed company shares rose by 23 per cent over the same period. This reflects the fact that investors are pricing the two types of asset separately.

Listed companies usually have audited income and cash flows, with a clearer valuation basis; many tokens are still more driven by trading sentiment and financial flows. According to the article, this does not mean that encrypted shares will continue to run for coins, but it means that the two are no longer as synchronized as in the past.

There's more emphasis on verifiable indicators on the chain.

The Arbitrum Foundation Investment Strategy Manager, Brendan Ma, states that analysts are now more concerned about income formation, trade activity and value retention than they were a year ago, and more cautious about which indicators are really credible.

In his view, indicators of more reference value usually required real costs to be produced and could be validated on a chain basis, such as fees and revenue, actual pay-for-service users and funds retained in the network, including the stabilization of currency balances and the size of monetized assets. By contrast, the number of addresses and the total number of lockouts are more likely to be amplified by incentive schemes or robotic behaviour.

In the case of Arbitrum, the network has processed more than 2.7 billion transactions, more than 500 million in 2026. According to the Foundation, the current annualized income of Robinood Chain is approximately $40 million. According to its expansion plan, 10% of net proceeds from this chain will flow back to the Arbitrum ecology.

  • Arbitrum, cumulatively, over 2,7 billion.
  • Over 500 million in 2026.
  • Robinwood Chain, annualized income is about $40 million.

Stable coins, RWA and DeFi are still appreciated.

Grayscale Research Manager Zach Pandl indicated to CoinDesk that bitcoin is still considered primarily as a macro asset associated with the demand for French currency substitution, while markets outside bitcoin are being subjected to a more rigorous fundamentals test.

He believed that, in the coming years, the stabilization currency, monetized assets and DeFi instruments would continue to drive the growth of demand for digital assets, but that the real benefits would be only a few more basic tokens, and that projects that lacked income and were supported by real use would be more difficult to access.