TL;DR:
- Matt Hougan’s highest-conviction crypto view is not on Bitcoin or Ethereum individually, but on the long-term growth of the entire asset class.
- He argues that regulation, macro forces and technology shifts make winners unpredictable, so he favors market-cap-weighted crypto index funds as a core holding.
- Pointing to a $68 trillion onchain equity shift, he warns of “right call, wrong chain” risk and expects index products to be central by 2026.
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan is challenging single-asset thinking, arguing that his highest-conviction crypto view is not about Bitcoin, Ethereum or any individual chain, but that the most robust bet is on the long-term growth of the entire crypto market itself. In a recent memo to investors, he says broad index exposure better fits an industry where structural change is accelerating faster than any narrative built around one dominant network.
Indexing into an unknowable crypto future
Hougan notes that even after eight years working full-time in digital assets and debating ideas with venture capitalists, founders, researchers and protocol teams, he still cannot confidently say which blockchain will dominate, underscoring a landscape where claims that “Ethereum will crush Solana” or that “Bitcoin is the only thing that matters” ignore deep, unresolved uncertainty. Regulation, execution risks, macro shocks, the actions of key individuals and luck interact in ways that make precise forecasts impossible.
Instead of trying to solve that puzzle, Hougan says his core approach is to buy the market through a market-cap-weighted index, arguing that the more realistic conviction is that crypto will be vastly more important in 10 years than it is today. He expects Bitcoin, stablecoins and tokenization to sit alongside decentralized finance, prediction markets, privacy tools, digital identity and equity models as drivers that could lift crypto markets by 10 to 20 times without heroic assumptions.
To illustrate the scale of that possibility, Hougan points to comments from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins, who said U.S. equity markets could move onchain “in a couple of years,” highlighting a potential shift in which about $68 trillion of stocks migrate onto blockchain rails from today’s tokenized base near $670 million. For Hougan, the magnitude of that 100,000x gap matters more than arguments over which layer-one offers cheaper fees or faster throughput.
That backdrop leads him to focus on index-style exposure and the risk of being right on direction but wrong on venue, warning that calling a 100,000x opportunity but backing the wrong chain is precisely the trap broad crypto index funds are designed to avoid. Hougan makes individual bets “around the edges” but believes index products will be central by 2026 as tokenization, stablecoins and onchain capital markets expand the investable universe and investors seek ways to hold whichever chains ultimately win.
