Crypto’s maturing into a ‘token pickers market:’ Analyst

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Unlike what I’m seeing on CT, I don’t need to convince any of y’all that crypto looks good in the long term. 

You all know this because, dang, we’ve never been in such a bullish position (stop looking at current price action, and close the tab please).

Ryan Connor of Blockworks Research says we’re seeing fundamentals play a role in crypto. And if that sounds familiar, it’s because he said a similar thing literally a month ago . 

There are a few examples of this — get ready for some alpha — but my big takeaway is that we’re starting to see some parts of crypto act like stocks. And it’s really kicking off, more so than what we discussed last month.

Geodnet is one such example, Connor said. His team at Blockworks Research has been “pounding the table” on it since November because “they’re building out an RTK network globally. It’s seeing real revenue. It’s seeing ARR revenue. That revenue is steadily climbing up … it is completely untethered from this self-reflective crypto capital market,” he explained. 

Most importantly: It hasn’t moved on crypto volatility in the past few months. 

For Connor, that’s perhaps the most important snippet because it shows that folks aren’t taking profit just because of the current market conditions and reaffirms the “fundamental story.”

Grass is another such example. It’s a “business that’s not correlated to crypto capital markets, and that thing’s up 20-40% since February 16, when this drawdown in crypto markets really started accelerating. So again, just another example of a pocket of the market that’s generating real income, uncorrelated to” the volatility we’re seeing across crypto.

If you’re looking for more tokens that buck the trend, then it’s all about figuring out what makes the token tick, Connor said. That’s how he and his team think about it. A lending protocol, for example, would be lending out to something like a crypto-native fund. The fund’s investments go up, it’s good for the protocol. A more negative environment makes that situation slightly trickier. 

The thing is that crypto’s not just about the vibes anymore. 

That’s not going to stop me from monitoring them, because I think — like retail investors in the stock market — it helps establish a sense of where we are and what people are interested in. But the reality is the market itself won’t keep reacting to vibes unless we stay focused on things like memecoins (which I’m clearly skeptical about). 

“We have a market that is maturing. And while it might have paid to be a vibes-based trader in the past, it helps to have different skills. Now this is a market [focused on revenues and business strategy] and less so about marketing and what people are thinking,” which means it might be time to stop doomscrolling CT. 

In this day and age, it’s all about being savvy.

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