Previously, a token's success was often measured by its position on the CoinMarketCap table — the higher its rank, the more appealing it seemed. Today, this approach is losing its relevance: investors are increasingly evaluating projects based on real-world utility, revenue, and their ability to capture value, rather than on an arbitrary rank.
According to executives from Bitwise, Wintermute, and the Arbitrum Foundation, wealth managers who have recently gained access to the crypto market show no interest whatsoever in leaderboard positions. What matters to them is the number of users paying fees, the amount of capital retained within the network, and the overall sustainability of the project's economics.
A classic example is Hyperliquid. The HYPE token is valued not as “just another smaller blockchain,” but based on its trading volume and the platform's actual economics. Over the past year, it has grown by approximately 20%, a growth driven by user activity rather than mere hype.
Short-term prices are still dictated by perpetual futures: derivative volumes significantly outweigh spot volumes, with funding rates and liquidations determining daily fluctuations. However, over a 12–18 month horizon, attention is shifting towards applications and appchains, whose metrics align more closely with traditional fintech and venture capital models.
Metrics that are difficult to fake are particularly valued: fee revenue, the number of paying users, and capital genuinely remaining within the network (including stablecoins and tokenized assets). While the total number of addresses or Total Value Locked (TVL) can easily be inflated with bonuses and bots, sustained growth in fees and user retention serves as a much more serious indicator.
Institutional flows confirm this trend: in the first half of 2026, the share of institutional counterparties in Wintermute's OTC operations rose from 59% to 72%. Funds are not flowing indiscriminately but are directed towards a select list of tokens with clear economics and into emerging categories — primarily tokenized real-world assets.
Bitcoin remains a macro asset, intrinsically linked to the demand for an alternative to fiat currency. Other crypto assets will face rigorous scrutiny regarding their fundamental sustainability. Ultimately, only those projects that genuinely create value, rather than merely occupying high positions on leaderboards, will endure in the market.
