Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley States That Crypto Has Split Into Four Independent Tracks
Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley stated that crypto is no longer a single industry but has split into at least four highly differentiated areas.
These four tracks are: stablecoins and payments, Bitcoin as a crypto asset class, tokenization and on-chain financial services (DeFi), and blockchain infrastructure. Although they are interconnected, they are increasingly diverging in terms of regulation, users, capital, and product logic.
In market mechanisms, institutional capital is accelerating its specialized allocation by track, shifting funds from mixed crypto funds to vertical specialized products. This perspective drives capital towards stablecoin payment infrastructure, Bitcoin custody, RWA/DeFi protocols, and Layer 1/2 projects, while generalized crypto narrative projects are under pressure.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Hunter Horsley, as the long-time CEO of Bitwise managing multiple crypto funds, continues the framework of the "four tracks" which aligns with his past approach of separating Bitcoin ETFs from Altcoins, emphasizing that different assets and protocols face entirely different regulatory, liquidity, and adoption curves during market maturation.
In terms of capital pathways, Bitwise is shifting institutional funds from a single crypto basket to track-specific allocations through products like Bitcoin ETFs, stablecoin funds, and DeFi indices, aiming to allow LPs to precisely match their risk-return preferences while attracting dedicated institutional and corporate capital to each vertical.
Similar cases can be seen in traditional finance with the complete differentiation of stocks, bonds, commodities, and derivatives, as well as the separate adoption of stablecoins and RWA by banks and corporations in 2024-2025. The current crypto industry is transitioning from a unified narrative to a multi-track independent control phase.
Essentially, this is a restructuring of the industry chain: the early chaotic growth of the entire industry is being replaced by four vertical infrastructures. The root of this mechanism is that after regulatory certainty improves, different tracks face entirely different compliance costs, user pain points, and capital requirements. Only by achieving complete differentiation of products, talent, and narratives can each field independently capture institutional-level funding and mainstream adoption, realizing a structural shift from a speculative unity to a mature financial parallel ecosystem.
ABAB News · Law of Cognition
A sign of industry maturity is the shift from "one story" to "multiple pricing powers."
Correlation does not equal similarity; when context diverges, capital must be track-focused.
True long-term players shift from betting on crypto to betting on the certainty of a specific crypto sub-industry.