Crypto Bulls Find Hope in On-Chain Data Despite Bear Market
Crypto's biggest bull case right now has nothing to do with price, according to Kam Benbrik, Head of Research at Bitwise Onchain Solutions. Instead, it's about the divergence between on-chain activity and token prices. He points out that Ethereum transactions nearly doubled year-over-year, Solana's tokenized equities volume went from $1M to $3B in 12 months, and Avalanche processed 4x more transactions while token prices sat near the floor.
This 'fees got cheaper on purpose' thesis suggests that networks made fees cheaper to onboard the next wave of users, and the market hasn't caught up yet. Kam also cites institutions staking record amounts of ETH as proof that someone is already paying attention.
On a separate note, Algorand's Marc Vanlerberghe warned about the security risks of AI agents, saying most are 'one hack away from disaster.' He calls out OpenClaw's security model as fundamentally broken and proposes using persistent agents with zero secrets, which would also solve the spoofing problem.
John Gillen from Milk Road believes that companies shutting down is a classic bear market bottom indicator. He points to a list of crypto companies winding down and exchange layoffs, but argues it's not a death spiral, rather, every cycle purges projects that never found product-market fit, leading to a rotation of capital.