Morning Minute: Wall Street Moving Onchain Will Drive the Next Bull Market

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors mostly flat despite falling stocks & rising oil; BTC at $65.5k
• Senate Republicans publish new Clarity Act draft, Dem Leaders still oppose
• SEC Commissioner Pierce warns some DeFi vaults and onchain lending fall under securities law
• BTC ETFs see 7 straight days of inflows; ETH validator exit queue goes to 0
• Rhynotic’s new FWA protocol token runs to $11M, pumps multiple NFT sets

🏦 Bitwise’s CIO Says Wall Street Moving Onchain Will Drive the Next Bull Market

The next crypto bull market won’t look like the last ones.

That’s the argument from Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan, who laid out in a new memo that the coming cycle will be driven by the convergence of traditional and onchain finance, stablecoins, tokenization, 24/7 trading, instant settlement, and institutional DeFi, rather than the speculative demand that powered previous rallies. His key claim is that because this cycle would be built on real financial activity and revenue, it could be bigger than what came before, even if it arrives slower and with less volatility.

Hougan framed the opportunity as two “lanes.”

• The first is the “Hyperliquid Lane”—crypto-native protocols that generate serious revenue and route it back to their tokens. For those unfamiliar, Hyperliquid crossed $1 billion in cumulative revenue in June, is on pace for roughly $800 million this year, and directs 99% of that revenue into buying HYPE on the open market.
• The second is the “Robinhood Lane”—established companies building real financial services on blockchain rails instead of running pilots. Robinhood Chain went live July 1 and has already passed $3 billion in volume.

The Hyperliquid Lane fixes crypto’s chronic flaw, where applications rack up fees and volume without creating any demand for their token. He named Uniswap, Aave, and Morpho as protocols moving the same direction, along with onchain darlings like Pump.fun. The TradFi stampede, Citadel into Crypto.com, Morgan Stanley onto E*TRADE, the DTCC going live on tokenization, is his Robinhood Lane.

So here we have a credible institutional voice arguing that revenue and crypto rails will drive the next cycle, not speculation. This is not necessarily a new opinion, as many on CT (Crypto Twitter) have made Hyperliquid their shining star for months now. And as for the institutional driver, that’s not really a new concept either. But it is important when the CIO of Bitwise writes the thesis up formally covering these two factors.

It’s no longer “the institutions are coming.” It’s “the institutions are here—and they’re going to drive the next bull cycle.” We’ll find out soon if he’s right…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are mostly flat despite red stocks and rising oil; BTC -0.3% at $65.5k; ETH even at $1,925; SOL even at $78; HYPE even at $59.30
• Stable (+16%), WLFI (+13%) and ENA (+4%) led top movers
• Oil +4.5% at $90; Gold -1.5% at $4,090
• Stock futures are red after rough earnings calls from TSLA and Google; DOW -0.4%, Nasdaq -0.5%
• Senate Republicans published a new CLARITY draft that would impose limits on Trump’s crypto empire along with other updates
• Seven key Senate Democrats said the draft “falls short” on ethics, consumer protection, illicit finance, and market integrity
• SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce warned that some DeFi vaults and onchain lending products may fall under securities laws, a notable caution from the agency’s most crypto-friendly commissioner
• Franklin Templeton’s Sandy Kaul called blockchain the next AI trade, arguing that as autonomous agents transact in fractions of a cent, card networks become uneconomical and blockchains win the machine-to-machine payment layer
• BitMEX (co-founded by Arthur Hayes) announced it will permanently close on Sept 23, 2026, and has stopped accepting new users
• Ethereum’s validator exit queue has fallen from a peak of 2.6M ETH to 0, while its staking queue now has 2.48M ETH and a 43-day waiting period

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mostly flat; DOGE -1%, SHIB -1%, PEPE even, PENGU -1%, TRUMP +3%, BONK -3%
• Robinhood chain was led by GME (+425x), AI (+80%), and SWOGE (+190%); Cashcat -25% to $48M and PONS -18% to $26M as prior winners sell off hard
• Solana leaders included Jimothy (+5%), KET (+110%) and BOP (+170%); ANSEM -10% to $175M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Kalshi launched a US Midterms Hub with live odds on Senate and House races alongside polling and FEC data
• An Arbitrum USDC bridge lost about $24.15M after attackers compromised its hot-validator signing path, clearing quorum to authorize a withdrawal the contract treated as legitimate
• The Verus-Ethereum bridge was exploited for the 2nd time in 2 months with $7.54M drained, after attackers abused the bridge’s import path

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were flat while multiple other sets climbed; Punks even at 32 ETH, BAYC even at 8.65 ETH, Pudgy even at 4.18 ETH; Hypurr’s even at 185 HYPE
• Cyberkongz (+53%), Memeland MVPs (+29%), TTT (+38%), Creepz (+77%), mfers (+16%) and CrypToadz (+16%) led top movers
• Robinhood NFTs were led by Hood Mundo (+39%) and Pepe Hood Town (+9%)
• Rhynotic’s new Fake World Assets (FWA) NFT gacha platform saw its token soar to $11M overnight before retracing
• An FWA user won a Cryptopunk off a 0.06 ETH gacha spin (550x return), before selling it back for FWA tokens