Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer of digital asset management firm Bitwise, predicts that the cryptocurrency market will "effortlessly" grow 10 to 20 times within the next 10 years, calling it the "most conviction bet" of his investment career.
Matt Hougan, in a report released on Monday, specifically cited comments made by SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, who predicted that the overall U.S. stock market will be "fully on-chain" in a few years.
Matt Hougan stated that the current total market capitalization of the U.S. stock market is approximately $68 trillion, while the market capitalization of tokenized stocks is around $670 million, indicating a huge gap that shows that "U.S. stocks going on-chain" is still in its early stages, with substantial growth potential in the future. He wrote:
Stablecoins will become more important. Tokenization will become more important. Bitcoin will also become more significant. I believe that in the coming years, a dozen other important use cases will emerge: prediction markets, DeFi, privacy technologies, digital identity, new equity models, and so on.
Despite being optimistic, Matt Hougan stated that he cannot determine which blockchain networks will dominate. He believes that at this stage of cryptocurrency development, the future direction of the industry is still 'unpredictable,' and the final outcome will be influenced by hundreds of variables such as regulatory policies, enforcement capabilities, the overall economic environment, decisions by a few key individuals, and luck.
This uncertainty precisely shapes his investment strategy. Matt Hougan stated that he personally prefers to buy the overall market through a 'Market-Cap-Weighted Crypto Index Fund' rather than placing large bets on a single network or individual token.
Matt Hougan emphasized that while he would make small individual bets on the fringes, index exposure is the core of his investment portfolio, aimed at effectively reducing the risk of 'betting on the wrong asset' while the market grows rapidly.
Imagine if you accurately predicted the market would rise 100,000 times — yet you underperformed the market because you bet on the wrong chain.
As the variety of cryptocurrency applications continues to expand and the narrative trends become increasingly diverse, Matt Hougan believes that as a tool capable of capturing the overall market trend while reducing the risk of 'betting on the wrong chain,' cryptocurrency index funds will rise in 2026.
"Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan: The cryptocurrency market will grow 10 to 20 times in the next 10 years" This article was originally published on (Block Media).
