The trading of cryptocurrencies has always been one of the sensitive factors affecting Bitcoin prices, but that situation is coming to an end.

Written by: Charlie

Compiled by: Block unicorn

Recently, our discussions have increasingly moved away from cryptocurrencies. We have ended up talking about lending businesses, artificial intelligence subscription models, and the payment channels that Stripe and Mastercard are competing over. Last Friday, we discussed how the impending trillion-dollar IPOs of OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic would affect the broader financial markets. Even when someone mentioned cryptocurrency projects, you would notice halfway through the discussion that no one mentioned "token prices."

This shift is also reflected in our recent reporting. Over the last two weeks, our focus has turned to stories on the fringes of the cryptocurrency space. For example, fintech companies using blockchain as infrastructure, tokens as distribution mechanisms rather than consumer products themselves, and cases of infrastructure companies being acquired with valuations unrelated to cycles. Regardless of whether Bitcoin prices are $100,000 or $70,000, these developments continue to advance.

This article was originally published by Hepworth Iron Capital, and this week's piece builds a framework for this phenomenon. Charlie Booth believes that the era of cryptocurrency as a singular sensitive factor of Bitcoin is coming to an end, paving the way for a new cycle driven by non-cryptocurrency factors rather than cryptocurrency prices.

Historically, trading cryptocurrencies has been one of the sensitive factors affecting Bitcoin prices. But that situation is coming to an end.

The crypto economy is diversifying into two categories: endogenous economy and exogenous economy.

The former represents traditional cryptocurrencies: the value of tokens and projects depends on cryptocurrency prices. The latter merely bears the name of cryptocurrency, with its value increasingly detached from cryptocurrency prices.

The value of Bitcoin derives from its characteristics, which in turn reflect in its price. Price increases reinforce perceptions of its characteristics. At the peak of a bull market, Bitcoin is seen as a universal currency and the most scarce digital credential known to mankind. In a bear market downturn, it is viewed as a digital collectible without any cash flow.

Super liquidity resides between endogenous and exogenous groups. Most of its business still relies on cryptocurrency prices, but both supply and demand sides continue to expand. Many on-chain financial infrastructures are located here, with their underlying assets shifting towards tokenized real-world assets.

The volume of open contracts in HIP-3 can roughly represent the volume of open contracts unrelated to cryptocurrency. HIP-3 accounts for about 30% of the total volume of open contracts in super liquidity, up from about 4% in November 2025. HIP-4 (result market) is expected to further drive this ratio while attracting new demand (traders) and new supply (markets, assets).

From the perspective of purely exogenous factors, projects like Venice are driven entirely independent of the cryptocurrency market. Although there is some overlap in user demographics, its business model resembles consumer-facing AI rather than Uniswap. Uniswap still primarily relies on users trading assets with endogenous value, making its business closely related to the prices of those assets. Venice, on the other hand, packages private multimodal reasoning into a "use + subscription" model.

The only link between Venice and cryptocurrency lies in choosing tokens as a tool to measure commercial value, and some of its derivative suppliers coincidentally carry the cryptocurrency label. Perhaps Erik Voorhees, the manager of Venice, has contributed to this understanding with his deep insight into cryptocurrency, believing that if used properly, tokens can serve as excellent marketing tools.

Figure 1 is a simple example from the public equity space: a fintech lending institution utilizes its self-developed blockchain to reduce the approval time for home equity loans to under five minutes. Blockchain technology is merely ancillary; the business model is key.

The massive emergence and growth of exogenous categories in public stocks and token markets is significant. Historically, due to most business models being highly sensitive to cryptocurrency prices, purely bottom-up investment has always been challenging. Exogenous narratives in the cryptocurrency space have not been absent; each "blockchain, not Bitcoin" cycle has promised such narratives. But in most cases, these narratives ultimately returned to the beta category of cryptocurrencies, as demand was never truly realized and income was not captured (even if there was income, it was not absorbed by tokens); once token prices stopped rising, they were left hollow.

This time is different because you can answer who is paying and why. Demand is measurable in many cases and is no longer so reflexive, and the performance of tokens as a tool is gradually improving (to be discussed in detail later). Venice's revenue comes from true money paid by users obtaining inferences. When cryptocurrency prices fall, there is no obvious reason for a reversal because it has never been a function of price. You now possess two points that past cycles lacked: sustained usage and buyers investing based on fundamentals rather than merely narratives.

Taking the stablecoin sector of the private equity market as an example. In March 2026, Mastercard agreed to acquire BVNK for up to $1.8 billion, just 15 months after BVNK's Series B funding round completed with a valuation of $750 million. According to Stripe's annual letter, Bridge (acquired by Stripe for $1.1 billion in February 2025) has an internal annual growth rate of up to four times. These growths are unrelated to the cryptocurrency cycle.

This does not constitute a bearish forecast for endogenous asset classes. Just as gold and even small gold mining companies have their respective significance in a portfolio, Bitcoin and endogenous asset classes also have their value and timing. Fundamentally, different driving factors may continue to influence their performance and relevance. You can see these two relationships in the data:

This metaphor can be visualized: small gold miners have rarely deviated much from a correlation of around 0.75 with gold. The way cryptocurrencies are traded today is roughly similar: small miners have a correlation to Bitcoin like that of gold, while leveraged trading bets on the same underlying asset. The blue line represents another relationship. Gold and the S&P 500 have some correlation in macroeconomic terms, but their trading is influenced by their respective different driving factors. This is precisely the ultimate destination of exogenous asset classes. Over time, these assets should move from the line correlated with gold towards the blue line, transitioning from leveraged proxy assets to occasionally correlated independent assets with economic conditions.

These external names exemplify this point and serve as exceptions to it.

Many "endogenous" assets still closely correlate with Bitcoin. Some exogenous assets have seen declines, but the time window is too short to draw any conclusions currently. Fundamentals will change first, and then correlations will shift.

This alters the analytical approach. Exogenous categories need to be underwritten like ordinary businesses: who pays for the product, how the unit economics work, and where the moats lie. Bitcoin prices are no longer the most important variable; your analysis sounds like that of a fintech investor with a peculiar custody method.

Some exciting "exogenous" categories, in no particular order and with varying notes:

• On-chain exchanges and brokers
• Credit/redemption solutions for long-tail tokenization (Grove Basin looks promising in this aspect)
• True crypto x AI (private inference, distributed open-source model training, similar to Nous Research's Psyche)
• Neobanks (I prefer platforms focused more on privacy like Payy and Raycash, and the programmable privacy infrastructure supporting them, like Aztec and Zama, is also quite interesting)
• Lending (Morpho is becoming an institutional standard similar to a repo market, while smaller companies like Valinor and 3jane are targeting interesting niches in private credit)
• Stablecoins and real-world asset/token issuers
• Payment channels (in terms of broad payment channels, Stripe and Tempo are the current most in need of surpassing; in proxy payments, Coinbase currently leads)
• Non-financial consumer cryptocurrencies (like products such as Venice and Collector Crypt, these special cases demonstrate that assigning value to tokens derived from non-cryptocurrency businesses can enhance market value and reach)
• Proxy economy (key here is the coordination between access-layer agents and suppliers/creators, which is less interchangeable than railroads. Cloudflare occupies a favorable position, but whether it is taxing traffic or merely selling switches is currently inconclusive)

Currently, the most enduring way to invest in this theme is through equity rather than tokens. Quality tokens are exceptions, and can only serve as greater catalysts if the tokens themselves improve, which requires cooperation between regulators and the industry. Progress has been made in both regulation and transparency: on one side is the regulatory CLARITY Act, and on the other are companies like Blockworks making efforts to enhance transparency. Tokens still have a long way to go.

None of this changes the emphasis. Driving factors are shifting from singular to multiple; the work now is no longer interpreting Bitcoin charts but providing financing to enterprises. Don’t be confused in the next decade as to why "cryptocurrency" is no longer developing uniformly like before.