Over the past few years, one of the main threads in the crypto market has been the gradual entry of traditional finance into the digital-asset space.
But many investors’ way of observing still stays at a relatively simple level: wait for an ETF to appear, wait for large financial institutions to buy, wait for Wall Street’s public rollout—then judge which assets have long-term value.
The problem with this approach is that when institutional capital truly moves into a field at large scale, it often means the market has already completed a significant portion of value discovery.
Therefore, instead of waiting for Wall Street to tell the market “what to buy,” it’s better to research an even more important question in advance:
If traditional finance enters on-chain economies at scale in the future, what infrastructure will they actually need?
That may be the direction of the crypto market that’s worth researching more in the coming years.
First, institutional entry into the crypto market doesn’t mean it’s only about buying BTC and ETH
The first phase of institutionalization is largely reflected in the financial productization of Bitcoin and Ethereum. ETFs, custody, compliant trading systems, and institutional asset allocation cause BTC and ETH to gradually shift from native crypto assets into traditional finance asset allocation frameworks—but this is only the first layer of institutional entry into crypto.
If, in the future, stablecoins, RWA, on-chain funds, on-chain stocks, and other financial assets continue to expand, then the focus for traditional finance entering may shift from: “holding crypto assets”
Gradually shift to: “using blockchain infrastructure to conduct financial activities.”
These are completely different markets. The former mainly corresponds to asset allocation; the latter corresponds to a potential market for financial infrastructure.
Second, what’s truly worth researching is “what institutions will use”
Assume that, in the future, trillions of dollars of traditional financial assets enter the on-chain space.
So the question is no longer: will BTC continue to become the core asset reaching $1 million?
Instead of that, it’s: after these assets are issued, where do they trade? Where do they settle? How is cross-chain transfer performed? How is liquidity obtained? How is lending carried out? How are assets priced? Who provides real-world data? How do different financial institutions interact with each other on-chain?
Ultimately, these questions will all boil down to a set of protocols and infrastructures.
Therefore, what’s truly worth focusing on in the future may not be whether a particular token has a sufficiently compelling narrative, but rather: whether it is becoming an indispensable layer of infrastructure for the on-chain economy.
Third, this is also why we need to study top protocols in advance
Markets usually have a clear time lag: industry trends form → real demand grows → institutional adoption → the market reprices.
If investors wait until the very last step to start researching, they often miss the earlier value-discovery phase.
So when studying top protocols, what we truly need to pay attention to isn’t: “Has Wall Street bought?”
Rather than that, it should be: as the scale of the on-chain economy grows in the future, will the protocol’s usage grow in sync?
It can be further broken down into several indicators:
Demand: whether the problems the protocol solves are real and exist;
Revenue: whether it has already generated verifiable economic income;
Network effects: whether users, liquidity, and developers form a positive feedback loop;
Moat: whether competitors can easily replicate it;
Value capture: whether protocol growth can ultimately translate into the token;
Supply structure: whether unlocks, additional issuance, and circulating supply will dilute value;
Scalability: once the on-chain financial market expands, can the protocol handle larger economic activity?
This framework matters more than simply observing whether “institutions are calling the shots.”
Fourth, when institutions truly enter, it may no longer be early opportunities
One frequently overlooked question is: institutions don’t create infrastructure out of thin air.
They usually choose protocols that have already been validated by the market, have liquidity, and have the technical and ecosystem foundation. This means that once traditional finance starts using a certain type of on-chain infrastructure at scale, market attention may shift from: “Will this protocol have a future?”
Turn into: “How much value can this protocol capture from how large an economic scale?”
The two correspond to completely different valuation stages, so what’s truly worth researching in advance is those top protocols that haven’t been fully priced by traditional finance yet—but already have a solid basis for real usage.
Fifth, the core variable of the future is the total size of on-chain finance
Over a longer time horizon, crypto’s real ceiling isn’t just the market cap of BTC.
An even bigger variable may be: how much of the world’s financial assets ultimately becomes digitized and tokenized—and completes issuance, trading, and settlement through blockchain.
If this market keeps expanding, then blockchain is no longer just an asset trading market—it may gradually become part of the financial system.
At that time, value capture will expand beyond just “asset price appreciation” to include: trading, settlement, lending, data, liquidity, asset issuance, and settlement.
That’s also why I’m increasingly focused on top protocols now—not because they’re guaranteed to go up.
It’s not because of that, but because it requires judging in advance who might become the infrastructure of the next generation of on-chain financial systems.
So don’t simply wait for Wall Street to enter.
The kind of research that’s truly worth doing should be:
Study the industry structure first, then study where the capital flows.
Study real demand first, then study institutional adoption.
Study protocol value capture first, then study token prices.
Wall Street entering is an important validation signal, but it shouldn’t be the reason we first study a protocol. If we wait until all institutions start using it and then begin studying the protocol, the research may no longer be “an opportunity,” but “consensus.”
But the truly interesting part of the capital markets is precisely this: before consensus forms, how many assets already have the potential to become infrastructure.