Bitwise’s Hougan says Q3 charts point to ‘crypto spring’

Bitwise's chief investment officer, Matt Hougan, contends that Q3 was one of the strongest quarters in crypto history due to a surge in fundamental indicators. According to Bitwise's Q3 market review, the firm's large-cap crypto index rose by 46.4%, with $6 billion in inflows into US spot Bitcoin ETFs, bringing year-to-date net flows into positive territory.

This positive momentum extended beyond cryptocurrency prices, with tokenized equities soaring 65.5% to nearly $3.2 billion, and open interest on decentralized perpetual futures reaching a record $26 billion, with a growing portion tied to assets like stocks, commodities, foreign exchange, and pre-IPO shares. Hougan noted that all 10 constituents of the firm's large-cap crypto index experienced double-digit quarterly gains, with Chainlink posting the highest percentage increase at 97.6%.

While Bitcoin (BTC) surged 42.3% and Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL) climbed 69.1% and 59.2%, respectively, shares of Bitcoin miners Riot Platforms and Hut 8 declined 26.4% and 25.4%, respectively, along with Galaxy Digital's 16.8% drop. The number of public companies holding Bitcoin and Ether saw a slight decline, while those holding tokenized equities increased.

Despite these gains, Bitwise's large-cap crypto index remains down 6.2% year-to-date. Looking ahead, Bitwise anticipates the SEC's innovation exemption to draw more tokenized assets onto blockchains and expects the perpetual futures market to accelerate with more than $6 trillion in trades year-to-date, particularly as US investors engage.