Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan sees the CLARITY Act at 50-50 odds, but says crypto will be too large to kill by 2028. He flags DeFi tokenomics as an underappreciated opportunity.
Matt Hougan sees the CLARITY Act's odds at roughly 50-50 with the August 7 deadline approaching. The Bitwise chief investment officer told CoinTelegraph the industry could survive a failed attempt either way.
Two more years of the current regulatory environment, he argued, gives the sector enough runway to become too large for any future administration to meaningfully roll back. "The genie's out of the bottle," Hougan said. "I think the industry will be too big to kill two years from now."
If the CLARITY Act passes, Hougan said it triggers an immediate bull market. If it fails, he expects volatility but not the end of the cycle, because stablecoins and tokenization have already achieved what he called escape velocity.
On Polymarket's 40% odds, Hougan pushed back on how most people read that number. "The best thing you can say for the CLARITY Act is it has had a thousand chances to die, and it hasn't died yet," he said.
Hougan also flagged a shift in DeFi tokenomics as an underappreciated opportunity. Under prior regulatory conditions, apps could not pass revenue to token holders without SEC risk. That is changing. "You can now value them on a price-to-earnings ratio," he said. "They now look more like stocks."
He pointed to Hyperliquid, as measured by Hyperliquid Strategies Inc (NASDAQ: PURR) and Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ: HOOD) as the two clearest examples of on-chain and traditional finance converging. Hyperliquid started in crypto and now handles more than 50% traditional asset volume. Robinhood started in traditional finance and launched its own Layer-2 chain integrated with DeFi protocols.
Hyperliquid redirects 99% of protocol revenue to buying back its token. Uniswap (CRYPTO: UNI) and Aave (CRYPTO: AAVE) are moving in the same direction, and Hougan said most of these assets are dramatically undervalued relative to traditional fintech peers.
Hougan said Bitcoin's (CRYPTO: BTC) next run will be slower and more methodical than prior cycles as attention splits across AI and other emerging technologies. He expects crypto to end 2026 higher and 2027 to be a strong bull market year, with the biggest upside sitting in DeFi applications he believes could reach $10 billion to $20 billion valuations.
Coinbase (COIN) reported Q2 financial results with a 19% year-over-year decrease in revenue. Analysts have adjusted their price targets accordingly.
Hougan noted that BlackRock's (NYSE: BLK) largest ETF is now a crypto ETF, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) is hiring in tokenization, and JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) is building on blockchain.
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