Hash Global: After BTC, Who Will Take the Baton for the Next Bull Market?

In an article published on August 13, we concluded:

|------------------------------| | The market consolidation is nearing its end, and a reason for a price reversal is all that is needed. |

A week later, that reason arrived.

The U.S. Treasury announced a bond buyback plan. BTC then surged, quickly breaking through the short-term holder cost line and the 200-day moving average, briefly hitting $80,000. The entire market rose in tandem, and the technical indicators have reestablished a "bull market trend."

The market began to discuss—the bull market is back.

Following the script of the previous cycle, the next plot seems predictable: institutional funds continue to accumulate, ETFs see sustained net inflows, BTC leads the charge, and funds gradually spread to ETH and other assets.

However, we believe that this time may be different.

As the market just begins to rally, some signals have emerged that differ from the previous cycle.

While BTC rebounded sharply, ETH, which was continuously viewed with skepticism in the last cycle, has instead led the charge, with the ETH/BTC exchange rate rising over 10% in a single day; assets like BNB and HYPE also performed impressively, with increases of about 20% and 42%, respectively.

This is distinctly different from the previous cycle where BTC was the sole star.

|----------------------------------| | This time, BTC will still rise, but it may not be the biggest winner of this bull market. |

Because the growth logic of the industry is shifting:

|--------------------------------------------| | The last bull market was about funds entering Crypto; the next bull market may be about assets entering Crypto. |

1. The last cycle was about "funds on-chain," this cycle may be about "assets on-chain"

In the past few years, the most significant change in Crypto has been the entry of traditional funds into this market.

BTC ETFs, DAT treasury companies, institutional allocations... fundamentally, all address one question: how to let traditional funds enter Crypto.

But now, another trend is occurring.

Stablecoins, credit assets, bonds, funds, stocks... an increasing number of traditional financial assets are beginning to be tokenized.

Recent policy signals have further fueled this trend.

The SEC's proposed Regulation Crypto establishes a clearer compliance path for token issuance and financing. As institutional uncertainty decreases, more capital has the opportunity to enter, driving project and asset creation, and further opening up growth space on the supply side of Crypto.

This is also one of the important catalysts for the recent market explosion.

However, one point that the market tends to overlook is that Regulation Crypto is not an isolated system but needs to be understood within the context of the "Project Crypto" promoted by SEC Chairman Paul Atkins.

Regulation Crypto primarily addresses asset issuance and financing issues under the Project Crypto framework; at the same time, Project Crypto is also advancing the rule restructuring of key on-chain market segments such as trading, custody, and settlement, aiming to establish a regulatory framework more suited to the on-chain financial system, laying the institutional foundation for the migration of traditional capital and assets on-chain.

On the other hand, the CLARITY Act, which Congress is advancing, aims to clarify the classification of digital assets, regulatory boundaries, and market structure, building a clearer legal foundation for the long-term operation of on-chain markets.

With both lines advancing simultaneously, a truly supportive institutional foundation for the operation of on-chain capital markets is slowly taking shape.

"Everything on-chain" is also moving from imagination to reality.

In the past: TradFi funds → Crypto

Now: TradFi assets → Onchain

The significance of these two trends for the market is entirely different.

If only funds enter Crypto, BTC is the most direct beneficiary.

But if a large amount of assets enter Crypto, then the real beneficiaries will be the financial infrastructures such as issuance, trading, settlement, custody, and lending.

This is also our core judgment for the next cycle.

2. After the explosion of asset supply, who will carry these assets?

At this moment, it is just like back then.

A bull market driven by asset supply is not unfamiliar to Crypto; the ICO boom of 2017 is the most classic example.

What truly changed the market at that time was the explosion of on-chain asset supply.

Ethereum significantly lowered the issuance threshold for on-chain assets, leading to a surge of new projects and new tokens, attracting users and funds continuously, driving rapid expansion of the entire Crypto market.

As the infrastructure that carried all of this, ETH also became one of the best-performing assets at that time, rising 27 times, significantly outperforming BTC's 13 times during the same period.

Comparison of ETH and BTC's price increases during the 2017 ICO cycle

Today, a similar growth is reappearing, but Everything-on-chain will be an upgrade of the ICO logic:

|------------------------------| | The asset scale is larger, the asset quality is higher, and the institutional foundation is more mature. |

This time, what enters the chain is no longer the uneven quality of ICO projects, but stocks, funds, and bonds that have real value and demand support.

The question thus becomes:

If in the future, there are indeed trillions of dollars of assets entering on-chain, who will carry them?

This may be the most structural opportunity worth paying attention to in the next Crypto bull market.

Meanwhile, the industry cleanup in Crypto over the past few years has made this competition different from the ICO era.

The once flourishing infrastructure is gradually concentrating. A large number of public chains, protocols, and projects have exited the market, leaving behind only a few ecosystems that have formed users, liquidity, and network effects.

So this time, an interesting phenomenon may emerge:

|------------------------| | More and more assets, but the infrastructure is becoming more concentrated. |

Once demand rises, new traffic may not be evenly distributed but is more likely to flow directly to the already validated top infrastructures.

3. So, why do we favor ETH and BNB?

--- ETH --- Certainty

ETH remains the most mature decentralized financial infrastructure currently.

We are optimistic about ETH, and the core logic is simple:

|------------------------------------------| | If asset supply begins to explode, the most mature on-chain financial infrastructure will naturally gain the largest incremental demand. |

Ethereum carries over 50% of the world's tokenized RWA, while covering nearly half of the global stablecoin supply; DeFi TVL exceeds $40 billion, accounting for about 44% of the entire market, with a scale over 8 times that of the second-tier public chains.

More importantly, the most mature DeFi protocols like Uniswap, Aave, Lido, and Sky are also highly concentrated in the Ethereum ecosystem, meaning Ethereum still possesses the largest liquidity and ecological moat.

Therefore, what ETH truly deserves to bet on is not a new story, but: a decade-old infrastructure that is about to welcome a new demand cycle.

--- BNB --- Growth Elasticity

If ETH represents certainty, then BNB represents growth elasticity.

Compared to competing in the public chain track, the BNB ecosystem is taking another path—building the most complete financial network.

If traditional financial assets really begin to enter on-chain on a large scale in the future, the focus of competition will not just be "whose chain is better," but more importantly, who can truly connect assets, users, transactions, and liquidity.

By gathering users and liquidity through top exchanges, using high-performance public chains to carry DeFi infrastructure, and connecting top institutions through brand and ecological resources. Over the past two years, BNB has become one of the fastest-growing ecosystems for RWA. The scale of RWA assets has grown from about $3.6 million at the beginning of 2025 to over $5.8 billion today, becoming the largest RWA ecosystem outside of Ethereum; the number of RWA holders has surpassed 1.15 million, ranking first among all ecosystems.

Since the beginning of this year, this Web3 financial network has further extended into TradFi, with related businesses growing rapidly, rising to the forefront of the industry.

And these positive changes have not yet been priced in by the market.

|------------------------------------------------| | ETH is the certainty of on-chain financial infrastructure. BNB is the growth elasticity of the on-chain financial super network. |

One is ETH, which has been long suppressed in the previous cycle but whose core position remains unchanged; the other is BNB, whose fundamentals continue to improve but have not yet been fully priced in.

We believe that in the new cycle, both types of value will return to the spotlight.

BNB ecosystem RWA growth trend

4. Robinhood is the mirror of BNB in the traditional financial world

If "Everything on-chain" still sounds a bit distant, take a look at Robinhood.

Robinhood is the most intuitive expression of Everything-on-chain in the traditional financial world.

It started as an internet brokerage.

Then it ventured into Crypto, exploring Tokenized Stocks, and further building its own on-chain infrastructure.

What it is doing is essentially gradually moving traditional financial assets on-chain.

Robinhood moves from TradFi to on-chain, while BNB extends from Crypto to TradFi.

They seem to come from two completely different worlds, but the trend they are betting on is actually the same:

|--------------------| | Traditional finance and on-chain finance will eventually merge. |

This is also why we not only favor ETH and BNB but also see great explosive growth potential for Robinhood in this cycle.

5. BTC opens the door, and infrastructure will be the destination

In this cycle, BTC will still be the most important core asset in Crypto and the most direct entry point for institutions into Crypto.

But if the new round truly happens as follows:

|-----------------| | More and more assets enter on-chain. |

Then the way the market captures value will change.

The more assets there are, the more transactions occur, the greater the liquidity demand, and the greater the need for financial infrastructure.

After the thorough cleanup of the previous cycle, the market shares of various businesses have also tended to concentrate.

So this time, we focus more on:

ETH------ Certainty

BNB------ Elasticity

Robinhood------ The representative of traditional finance on-chain

Our core judgment is also very clear:

|--------------------------------------------------------------| | In the last cycle, BTC brought Crypto into traditional finance. In the next cycle, we look forward to traditional finance bringing the entire asset world into Crypto. |

BTC is still important.

But in the next cycle, infrastructure may be the main character.

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