The European Central Bank (ECB) plans to invest a small portion of its reserves in tokenized securities, giving the central bank direct exposure to blockchain-based financial markets.

The purchase would be settled through Pontes, the new Eurosystem platform, which allows wholesale transactions to settle in central bank money. The platform essentially bridges the ECB’s payment system to blockchain-based financial markets. The plan to invest in tokenized securities and Pontes reflects a more significant bid by central banks in the EU to adapt to the increasing use of blockchain in finance.

The ECB intends to test the technology as an investor, from buying tokenized bonds to settlement and portfolio management.

“Pontes brings the stability and trust of central bank money to the European tokenized finance ecosystem,” said Piero Cipollone, member of the ECB’s executive board. “It will give an important advantage to help it scale.”

The ECB’s initial investments would focus on euro-denominated securities issued by euro-area governments, regional authorities, agencies and European supranational institutions.

NEAR RSI, Source: CryptoWaves

NEAR Exchange Netflow, Source: CoinGlass

Strategy has resumed Bitcoin purchases after a two week pause, spending $75.7 million on 950 BTC while deploying another $174 million to repurchase its STRC preferred stock.

According to a Form 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Sept. 21, Strategy acquired the Bitcoin between Sept. 14 and Sept. 20 at an average price of $79,670 per coin, including fees and expenses.

The purchase increased the company’s holdings to 846,000 BTC, acquired for a total of $63.80 billion at an average cost of $75,416 per Bitcoin.

Bitcoin was trading near $84,925 at the time of publication, putting the market value of Strategy’s holdings at roughly $71.85 billion. Based on the company’s reported acquisition cost, the position carried an unrealized gain of approximately $8.05 billion.

Strategy shares gained 7.4% to $165.20 in Monday premarket trading as Bitcoin traded above the price paid for the latest acquisition.

Strategy returns to Bitcoin buying after two week pause

The latest purchase ended two consecutive reporting periods without any new Bitcoin acquisitions.

Strategy last returned to Bitcoin buying at the end of August, when it purchased 4,603 BTC for $369.7 million at an average price of $80,318. The transaction raised its holdings from 840,447 BTC to 845,050 BTC.

Unlike the latest transaction, that purchase was financed through Strategy’s at the market common stock program. The company sold 4.53 million MSTR shares for $602.8 million in net proceeds, allocating $369.7 million to Bitcoin and $151.8 million to STRC repurchases.

Buying activity then stopped for two weeks as Strategy directed more cash toward its preferred securities.

During the first week of the pause, the company spent $176.3 million repurchasing 1.81 million STRC shares while leaving its Bitcoin holdings unchanged. Its board simultaneously doubled the Digital Credit Securities Repurchase Program from $1 billion to $2 billion.

Another $139.3 million was spent on 1.42 million STRC shares during the following reporting period, while Strategy again bought no Bitcoin and made no sales through its at the market programs. As crypto.news previously reported, the company entered that period with 845,050 BTC and $1.30 billion in deployable USD Cash.

The latest 950 BTC purchase has returned Strategy’s holdings to 846,000 BTC, the same total it reported at the end of the second quarter before Bitcoin sales during July and August reduced the balance.

STRC buybacks remain larger than Bitcoin spending

Strategy continued repurchasing STRC even as Bitcoin accumulation restarted, spending $174 million on approximately 1.77 million shares between Sept. 14 and Sept. 20.

The amount was more than twice the $75.7 million allocated to Bitcoin during the same period.

STRC, formally known as Strategy’s Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock, has a stated amount of $100 per share. The company has used repurchases and its dividend policy in an effort to keep the security trading close to that level.

Strategy had spent roughly $950.8 million repurchasing nearly 9.96 million STRC shares between July 20 and Sept. 13. The security had recovered toward $100 after falling near $70, reaching above $99 during intraday trading earlier this month before pulling back.

Monday’s latest repurchases pushed Strategy’s spending on STRC further above $1 billion since the current sequence of buybacks began.

The company has said purchases below STRC’s $100 stated amount allow it to retire preferred securities for less than their stated value while reducing future dividend requirements.

STRC was trading at $98.85 during Monday’s premarket session, up 0.35%.

Strategy retained $875.1 million in authorization for further preferred stock repurchases after the latest transaction. Its separate MSTR common stock repurchase program remained untouched, leaving the full $1 billion authorization available.

Strategy uses existing cash without ATM sales

Funding for the latest transactions came directly from Strategy’s cash balance, as the company made no sales through its at the market offering programs between Sept. 14 and Sept. 20.

Strategy used $75.7 million of USD Cash for the Bitcoin acquisition and another $174 million for STRC repurchases, bringing combined spending on the two transactions to $249.7 million.

The absence of ATM sales meant Strategy did not issue common or preferred shares to replenish the cash used during the reporting period.

Deployable USD Cash fell to $1.05 billion as of Sept. 20, down nearly 20% from $1.30 billion a week earlier. The balance had stood at $1.44 billion on Sept. 7 and $1.61 billion at the end of August as repeated STRC repurchases drew down the account.

Strategy maintains USD Cash separately from its USD Reserve. The cash account can be used for Bitcoin purchases, capital management and other corporate purposes, while the reserve is primarily intended to cover preferred stock dividends and interest on outstanding debt.

Its USD Reserve declined to $5.04 billion from $5.10 billion during the latest reporting period after $57.4 million was used for preferred dividends and debt interest.

Combined, Strategy held approximately $6.09 billion in USD assets at the end of Sept. 20.

Strive expands Bitcoin treasury to 26,355 BTC

Another publicly traded Bitcoin holder disclosed a purchase on Monday as Strive acquired 1,355 BTC, increasing its treasury to 26,355 BTC.

The purchase followed a series of recent additions to Strive’s balance sheet. The company had reached 25,000 BTC earlier this month after acquiring 469 BTC for approximately $36.6 million at an average price of $77,954 per coin. That transaction was funded through proceeds from its SATA preferred stock.

Strive had previously purchased 1,800 BTC for roughly $143 million in late August, taking its holdings to 23,156 BTC before subsequent acquisitions pushed the treasury higher.

Its latest filing places the company’s holdings at 26,355 BTC, keeping Strive among the largest publicly traded corporate Bitcoin holders.

ASST shares gained 6.44% to $32.03 in Monday premarket trading following the disclosure.

For two years, writing “AI” in your whitepaper was enough to raise money. That era just ended. And most crypto projects have no idea what comes next.

The Line That Changes Everything

Alice Liu, Head of Research at CoinMarketCap, said it this week:

“More capital, fewer names. The AI tag is free; the market is finally charging for it.”

Eight words that describe the end of an era.

For the past two years, “AI” was the most valuable word in crypto. Stick it in your whitepaper, your pitch deck, your Twitter bio, your token name. Capital would follow. Questions wouldn’t.

That’s over.

Capital is now flowing into a handful of AI crypto projects with real traction while hundreds of AI-labeled tokens bleed out quietly. The market stopped being naive. And most projects built on a narrative instead of a product are about to find out what that means.

How The AI Tag Became A Free Pass

Cast your mind back to 2024.

The AI hype cycle was at its peak. ChatGPT had just crossed 100 million users. Every VC was looking for AI exposure. Every founder was rebranding. The word “AI” in a pitch deck added zeros to valuations without adding anything to the product.

Crypto was the perfect vehicle. No revenue requirements. No product-market fit standards. No profitability timeline. Just a whitepaper, a token, and the right vocabulary.

So the projects came. Hundreds of them. AI-powered trading. AI-enhanced oracles. AI-driven DAOs. AI-optimized yield. AI everything.

Most of them were one of three things:

• A real crypto project that added “AI” to its marketing
• A real AI tool that added a token to its business model
• Neither, held together entirely by narrative

All three raised money. Because the tag was free. Because nobody was asking hard questions yet.

What Changed

Two things happened simultaneously that broke the spell.

First: Real AI Companies Shipped Real Products.

When you can compare a project claiming to be “AI-powered” against actual AI infrastructure that demonstrably works, the gap becomes visible. Vague claims about “machine learning optimization” don’t survive contact with projects that actually deploy AI agents, actually process data at scale, actually generate verifiable outputs.

The reference point shifted. And suddenly, most “AI crypto” projects looked like what they were: marketing exercises.

Second: The Market Got Burned Enough Times To Learn.

Token after token launched with AI narratives, pumped on the label, and collapsed when the product didn’t materialize. Not once. Not twice. Hundreds of times.

At some point, even the most speculative retail investor starts to notice the pattern. Flashy AI claims plus a token launch plus a roadmap that never delivers equals a loss.

The market learned. Not because it became sophisticated. Because it became tired.

What “The Market Is Charging For It” Actually Means

When Liu says the market is now “charging” for the AI tag, here’s what that looks like in practice:

Capital is concentrating. Projects with actual users, actual transaction volume, actual revenue are capturing the majority of new investment. The long tail of AI-labeled projects is being starved of attention and capital simultaneously.

The filter is simple and brutal: show me what your AI actually does. Show me who’s using it. Show me the numbers.

“Our AI optimizes cross-chain liquidity through proprietary machine learning algorithms” used to be enough.

Now the response is: “How many users? What volume? What’s the retention?”

That’s not a sophisticated investor question. That’s the most basic product question. And the fact that crypto projects couldn’t answer it for two years tells you everything about how low the bar was.

The Marketing Implications Nobody’s Discussing

Here’s where this gets directly relevant to everyone building or marketing in crypto:

The entire playbook for crypto marketing was built around narrative.

Create a compelling story. Build hype before launch. Get influencer coverage. Drive FOMO. Launch token. Capture early buyers. Let the price chart do the rest of the marketing.

AI made this playbook even easier. You didn’t even need a compelling original story. You just needed to connect your existing project to the AI narrative convincingly enough to ride the wave.

That playbook is broken now.

Not because narrative stopped mattering. Narrative always matters. But because narrative without substance now actively signals risk to investors who’ve been burned before.

When a sophisticated investor sees an AI narrative without a product behind it, they don’t see opportunity. They see a warning sign.

The question is: what does marketing look like when the shortcut stops working?

What Actually Works Now

The projects capturing capital in September 2026 share specific characteristics. None of them are accidental.

They Lead With Metrics, Not Claims.

Not “AI-powered cross-chain optimization.” But “2.6 billion in cumulative tokenized-stock trading volume.” Not “revolutionary AI governance.” But “140,000 active wallets, 89% month-over-month retention.”

Numbers that don’t need interpretation. Numbers that speak before the narrative does.

They Show The AI Working, Not Just Claim It Exists.

Demos. Live products. Verifiable outputs. The difference between “our AI analyzes on-chain data” and “here’s what our AI produced last Tuesday, here’s the methodology, here’s the result.”

Proof of work in the literal sense: evidence that something is actually happening.

They Build Trust Through Transparency, Not Hype Through Mystery.

The era of the vague roadmap is over for anyone serious. The projects winning now publish what they’re building, show progress against it, and acknowledge what hasn’t worked yet.

Counterintuitively, honesty about limitations builds more trust than inflated claims. Because investors have seen inflated claims fail too many times.

They Connect To Real Economic Activity.

The AI projects with genuine traction in 2026 are processing real transactions, serving real users, generating real fees. Not simulated activity, not wash trading, not manufactured metrics.

If your AI project can’t point to economic activity it enabled, the market has already priced that in.

The Harder Truth For Projects That Rode The Wave

Here’s what nobody wants to say directly:

A significant portion of the AI crypto projects that raised money in 2024-2025 will not survive 2026-2027.

Not because the market is cruel. Because they were built on a condition that no longer exists: a market willing to fund narrative without substance.

That condition existed for specific reasons at a specific moment. AI hype was genuine and new. Crypto capital was abundant. The reference points for what “real AI” looked like were unclear enough that vague claims could pass.

All three conditions have changed.

AI hype is now calibrated against actual AI capabilities, which are extraordinary and well-documented. Crypto capital is more selective. And everyone has seen enough real AI products to know what genuine capability looks like versus what marketing copy looks like.

The projects that survive will be the ones that used the narrative window to actually build something. The ones that used it only to raise money are running out of runway.

What This Means For Crypto Marketing In 2026

The shift from “AI tag as free pass” to “market charging for substance” is the most important marketing change in crypto this year.

It means the audience has changed. Not just in what they believe, but in what they need to see before they believe anything.

Old audience: “AI crypto? Interesting. What’s the token?”

New audience: “AI crypto? Show me the product. Show me the users. Show me what problem it actually solves.”

Marketing to the old audience meant creating excitement. Marketing to the new audience means building credibility.

Those are different skills. Different channels. Different timelines. Different measurements of success.

The projects and marketers who figure out how to build credibility in public, demonstrate substance consistently, and earn trust through transparency rather than hype will define the next cycle.

The ones who keep trying to run the old playbook will fund the next round of “lessons learned” articles.

The Opportunity In The Shift

There’s an upside to all of this that’s easy to miss when you’re watching tokens bleed.

A market that charges for substance rewards substance. That sounds obvious. But for the past two years, it wasn’t true.

If you’re building something real in AI crypto, the current environment is actually better for you than 2024 was. Not because there’s more capital. Because the capital that exists is more likely to find its way to projects with genuine traction rather than being absorbed by narrative-first competitors with better marketing budgets.

The noise is clearing. The signal is becoming visible.

Projects with real products, real users, and real economic activity are now easier to find and fund than they were when the AI tag made everything look the same.

That’s not a consolation prize. That’s the market working correctly, finally.

The Question For Every AI Crypto Project

Strip away your narrative. Remove the whitepaper language. Take out the roadmap claims and the influencer endorsements.

What does your AI actually do? Who is actually using it? What would stop working tomorrow if you shut it down?

If you can answer those questions with specifics, you have a real project.

If you need the narrative to make the project sound meaningful, the market already knows.

And now it’s charging for that knowledge.

What’s the most credible AI crypto project you’ve seen in 2026 – and what makes it actually credible? Drop it in the comments.

The immediate outcome of the failure to pass the law is that crypto regulations in the United States will continue to be created outside Congress. The SEC moved quickly after the vote, issuing a temporary conditional exemption that allows eligible venues to trade tokenized U.S. stocks through permissioned liquidity pools on public blockchains.

Soon after, the CFTC sent crypto rules to the White House for review. The agency submitted a new proposal; the details were not disclosed. For now, which crypto assets it contemplates, what exchanges would need to do to qualify for licenses, what restrictions would apply and how far the agency believes its authority extends, remains unclear. All the meanwhile, the “Clarity Act is dead, at least for now,” Jesse Hamilton, CoinDesk’s deputy managing editor in charge of global policy and regulation, wrote in an analysis that explains what very few appear to know: what the Clarity Act actually is.

“While the U.S. continues debating the Clarity Act, in the UAE we actually have clarity,” Irina Heaver, a Dubai-based crypto lawyer and founder of NeosLegal, said via Telegram. More than 110 regulated virtual-asset businesses operate in the country, with about 20 more holding in-principle approvals, she added.

Bitmine chairman Tom Lee has said a crypto bull market is underway and could strengthen in the fourth quarter as the Ethereum treasury company added another 27,562 ETH worth roughly $75 million.

According to Bitmine Immersion Technologies, Lee believes the bull market began in late June, supported by capital rotating from artificial intelligence stocks into crypto, stronger fundamentals around tokenization and AI, and what he described as the end of the four year crypto cycle.

“We believe a crypto bull market is underway, having started in late June, driven by a multitude of factors including the rotation from AI back to crypto, strengthening crypto fundamentals centered around both tokenization and AI and lastly, the ending of the 4-year cycle,” Lee said.

His comments accompanied Bitmine’s latest weekly treasury update, which showed its Ethereum holdings had climbed to 5,983,940 ETH. The position was worth around $16.3 billion at current prices, while the company reported $17.1 billion in total crypto, cash, marketable securities and other investments.

Tom Lee expects crypto bull market to strengthen in Q4

Lee pointed to Ethereum’s performance during the third quarter as one reason for expecting further gains during the final three months of 2026.

According to the Bitmine chairman, ETH has outperformed other macro assets by 6,519 basis points quarter to date. He described that performance as a possible precursor to a stronger move during the fourth quarter.

“To us, this massive outperformance of ETH in 3Q26 is viewed as a prelude to a potentially stronger up move in the 4th quarter of 2026,” Lee said.

Institutional positioning could provide another source of demand, according to Lee. He said institutions remained underweight crypto during 2026, partly because AI stocks had performed strongly earlier in the year, but expects that allocation gap to narrow during the remainder of 2026.

“We expect institutions to substantially increase their exposure in the final 3 months of 2026,” Lee said. “We believe this could add meaningful upside to the gains seen since June 30.”

Lee has maintained a bullish view on Ethereum through its recent recovery. In August, Ethereum gained 29% over seven days as Lee argued that a rotation toward ETH had begun, with the token outperforming Bitcoin during the same period.

US spot Ethereum exchange traded funds attracted $365 million during July compared with $205 million for Bitcoin funds, providing another measure of institutional demand during that period.

A month later, crypto.news previously reported that Lee identified the approaching CLARITY Act vote, renewed Korean crypto demand and the four year market cycle as potential market catalysts heading into the final months of the year.

Lee said at the time that the four year cycle was “bottoming within the next few weeks,” while tokenization and agentic AI could support institutional demand for crypto.

Bitmine adds another 27,562 ETH

Against that market view, Bitmine continued its Ethereum accumulation during the past week, purchasing another 27,562 ETH since its Sept. 14 update.

The company did not disclose an average purchase price for the acquisition. At current prices, the tokens are worth close to $75 million.

Bitmine held 5,956,378 ETH a week earlier after acquiring 27,180 tokens, meaning its latest purchase pushed the treasury to within roughly 16,000 ETH of the 6 million mark.

The company has continued buying Ethereum every week since beginning its ETH treasury strategy in June 2025. Its holdings stood at 5,901,112 ETH at the end of August after a 53,501 ETH purchase, leaving the treasury up by more than 82,000 ETH over the following three weeks.

Bitmine’s current holdings represent more than 4.9% of Ethereum’s circulating supply of approximately 122.1 million ETH. The company said it has now completed 98% of its “Alchemy of 5%” target, under which it plans to control 5% of the cryptocurrency’s supply.

Lee has previously linked Ethereum’s investment case to the expansion of tokenized financial assets and AI applications. In August, he expected Ethereum to outperform Bitcoin during the current cycle, while Fundstrat data cited by Bitmine showed an 80% correlation between the company’s shares and ETH.

More than 5 million ETH is now staked

Bitmine’s accumulation has been accompanied by a large increase in the amount of Ethereum committed to staking.

As of Sept. 20, the company had 5,067,309 ETH staked, worth roughly $13.8 billion and representing around 85% of its total Ethereum holdings.

“Bitmine has staked more ETH than other entities in the world,” Lee said.

Based on the company’s seven day annualized staking yield of 2.62%, Bitmine projects its current position could generate approximately $357 million in annual staking revenue.

If its entire Ethereum treasury is eventually staked through its Made in America Validator Network, known as MAVAN, and other staking partners, Lee said annual rewards could reach $421 million.

Staking has become a significant source of revenue for the company as its treasury has expanded. During the three months ended May 31, Ethereum staking generated $45.7 million of Bitmine’s $46.5 million in quarterly revenue.

Bitmine remains the largest Ethereum treasury holder

Bitmine remains the largest public Ethereum treasury company, followed by SharpLink and The Ether Machine, which hold approximately 888,938 ETH and 496,712 ETH, respectively, according to Strategic ETH Reserve data cited in the update.

Its nearly 5.98 million ETH treasury makes Bitmine the second largest public crypto treasury company by the value of its principal digital asset holdings.

Strategy remains the largest after its latest weekly purchase increased its Bitcoin holdings to 846,000 BTC, worth approximately $71.9 billion at current prices. The position represents more than 4% of Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million supply cap.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy has resumed Bitcoin accumulation after a brief two-week pause, buying 950 BTC for $75.7 million at an average price of $79,670 per coin, according to a Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

The latest purchase lifted Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings to 846,000 BTC, acquired for roughly $63.8 billion at an average cost of $75,416 per Bitcoin (including fees and expenses). With Bitcoin quoted around $84,925 at the time of publication, the company reported an unrealized gain of about $8.05 billion on its treasury position, based on the figures included in its filing and CoinGecko’s price reference.

Key takeaways

• Strategy bought 950 BTC for $75.7 million (avg. $79,670) after pausing for about two weeks, per an SEC Form 8-K.
• Strategy’s Bitcoin treasury now totals 846,000 BTC, with the company citing an unrealized gain of roughly $8.05 billion versus a referenced BTC price of $84,925.
• Alongside Bitcoin buys, Strategy continued repurchasing its STRC preferred stock—spending $174 million for about 1.77 million shares.
• Strategy’s “USD Cash” balance fell to $1.05 billion, while “USD Reserve” edged down to $5.04 billion following dividend and debt-interest payments.
• Strategy’s action aligns with broader corporate Bitcoin accumulation activity, including Strive’s reported addition of 1,355 BTC last week.

Bitcoin buying resumes at Strategy

Strategy’s SEC filing details the pace and cost of its most recent Bitcoin acquisition. The company reported purchasing 950 BTC between Monday and Sunday for $75.7 million, returning to its announced accumulation program after an earlier stretch of inactivity lasting roughly two weeks.

The move matters for investors who monitor whether the company’s treasury strategy remains consistent through market cycles. Even when Bitcoin prices fluctuate, Strategy’s approach depends on a steady deployment plan—one that is now being carried out while it also manages preferred securities and capital levels.

After the transaction, Strategy said its Bitcoin portfolio consists of 846,000 BTC acquired for approximately $63.8 billion at an average cost of $75,416 per coin (including fees and expenses). The referenced Bitcoin price of $84,925 at the time of publication implied an unrealized gain of about $8.05 billion.

Preferred stock repurchases continue with STRC buybacks

While Strategy added to its Bitcoin holdings, it simultaneously continued reducing its preferred equity exposure. The company reported that it repurchased approximately 1.77 million shares of its perpetual preferred stock, STRC, for about $174 million during the same week.

In pre-market trading on Monday, STRC was up 0.35% to $98.85. Strategy also stated it had $875.1 million remaining under its preferred-stock repurchase program and $1 billion available under its MSTR share repurchase program.

Separately, the filing notes that Strategy reported no sales under its at-the-market offering programs between Sept. 14 and Sept. 20, indicating the company did not raise incremental capital through those facilities during that window.

Cash buffers shrink as Strategy pays dividends and services debt

Strategy’s ability to balance Bitcoin buys with equity buybacks hinges on its treasury liquidity. In its most recent reporting, the company showed that its deployable cash declined.

“USD Cash” fell nearly 20% to $1.05 billion from $1.30 billion a week earlier, when Strategy had last reported a higher cash position. Meanwhile, its “USD Reserve” decreased slightly to $5.04 billion from $5.10 billion as the company used $57.4 million to pay preferred-stock dividends and interest on outstanding debt.

Strategy’s stated framework distinguishes between these balances: USD Cash is used for broader treasury purposes, including Bitcoin purchases and capital management, while USD Reserve is intended primarily to support preferred-stock dividends and debt interest. For observers, the direction of these balances is important because it can signal how quickly the company may need to rely on one source of liquidity versus another to sustain both Bitcoin accumulation and capital return activities.

Corporate Bitcoin accumulation stays active beyond Strategy

Strategy’s resumed buying also fits into a wider pattern of corporate treasury activity. Yahoo Finance data cited by the article showed Strategy’s shares rose 7.4% to $165.2 in pre-market trading on Monday.

Another corporate Bitcoin holder, Strive, also announced Bitcoin purchases on Monday. According to the SEC filing linked in the original report, Strive added 1,355 BTC last week, bringing its total holdings to 26,355 coins. Strive’s shares were reported up 6.44% to $32.03.

Together, these updates underline how treasury-focused firms are continuing to deploy capital into Bitcoin while managing their own balance-sheet mechanics—often through a mix of direct purchases, preferred equity activity, and cash reserve management. The exact mix varies from company to company, but the common thread is that Bitcoin accumulation remains a central part of their capital allocation.

Looking ahead, investors should watch whether Strategy maintains this renewed buying cadence while its cash balances continue to adjust—particularly the pace of USD Cash declines versus ongoing STRC repurchases. If Bitcoin prices stay elevated relative to Strategy’s average cost, the company’s unrealized position could remain a powerful narrative driver; however, liquidity trends will likely remain the key factor determining how sustainable both Bitcoin buys and preferred-stock buybacks are over the coming weeks.

Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani believes the next phase of crypto company building could tilt further toward Solana as developers look for networks that are simpler to operate while still offering robust functionality. In a discussion with Cointelegraph, Samani argued that Solana is likely to become the “default” smart contract platform for more firms during the current market cycle, potentially eroding Ethereum’s long-held dominance in that role.

Samani’s stance is notably consistent with his track record: Multicoin accumulated an early position in Solana, and he has been one of its most persistent public advocates. His comments also come as Solana’s token has outperformed Ethereum in the recent upswing, while showing a deeper drawdown during the prior bear market—two dynamics that investors may want to reconcile when assessing the sustainability of the current momentum.

Key takeaways

• Kyle Samani predicts more crypto companies will default to building on Solana instead of Ethereum, citing operational ease and network “functionality.”
• He claims Ethereum’s value accrual is “questionable,” arguing that Ether’s largest role today is tied to stablecoins and collateralized borrowing.
• Recent market performance shows Ether up about 30% over the past month versus Solana’s roughly 34% gain, according to TradingView.
• On a longer window, TradingView data cited by Cointelegraph shows SOL down 59% over the past year versus ETH down 45%.
• DefiLlama fee data referenced in the report shows Solana collecting more monthly fees than Ethereum in the period cited, reinforcing Samani’s operational and usage argument.

Why Samani thinks Solana could replace Ethereum’s “default” status

Speaking on Cointelegraph’s “Trade Secrets,” Samani said he expects Solana to “flip” Ether during the current market cycle. His core argument is not only about technical capability, but about how easy it is for companies to consolidate their operations on a single chain.

“They’ll all switch their default over to Solana because it’s the most functional network for all of them and it’s just easier to consolidate their operations around Solana to the extent that they can.”

From an investor’s perspective, the implication is straightforward: if more new products, deployments, and enterprise-minded launches choose Solana by default, demand for Solana’s ecosystem resources could strengthen relative to Ethereum. At the same time, Samani’s framing suggests he sees network choice as something that compounds—once companies standardize on one environment, switching costs rise for the next set of funding rounds, partnerships, and product iterations.

Samani’s forecast also carries a valuation challenge. The report notes that reaching Ether’s current market cap (about $293 billion at the time of the cited discussion) would require SOL’s market capitalization to multiply roughly fivefold, with SOL referenced at about a $58 billion market cap in the underlying comparison.

Criticism of Ethereum’s value accrual

Alongside his Solana preference, Samani was sharply skeptical about Ethereum’s ability to capture and sustain economic value for token holders. He described Ethereum as a large smart contract network whose asset value accrual is, in his view, unclear or limited.

“It’s a $400 billion to $300 billion asset that has questionable value accrual, if any, and it’s not growing at all.”

Samani argued that investors may not find Ether’s valuation compelling relative to other opportunities available at what he characterized as “more reasonable prices.” He also suggested that Ethereum’s continued relevance stems primarily from stablecoins and from stablecoins or capital strategies that use Ether as collateral—rather than from broader organic adoption that, in his view, would drive stronger accrual mechanics.

Notably, this critique is paired in the report with his prediction that companies will pivot toward Solana. If investors accept the premise that “usage” and “operational convenience” are what drive product ecosystems more than abstract platform status, then Ethereum’s role could shift from default builder environment to a more specialized settlement and liquidity base—at least for certain categories of new deployments.

What the recent market and fees data suggest

The Cointelegraph report ties Samani’s thesis to performance and on-chain activity indicators. In the recent market upturn, both ETH and SOL moved higher in similar percentage ranges, but Solana’s outperformance was slightly stronger in the cited window: Ether rose about 30% over the past month, while Solana rose about 34%, according to TradingView.

The comparison becomes more nuanced when the discussion shifts from short-term rallies to the prior downturn. TradingView data cited by Cointelegraph shows SOL fell about 59% over the past year, versus ETH’s roughly 45% decline. In other words, Solana has had both larger relative losses and slightly stronger recent gains—an asymmetry that can matter to traders assessing risk, drawdown tolerance, and the likelihood of “mean reversion” versus a new regime.

Fees provide another lens. The report states that, while SOL represents less than one-fifth of Ethereum’s market capitalization, Solana has surpassed Ethereum in weekly and monthly fees. According to fee rankings from DefiLlama referenced in the article, Solana generated $23 million in fees over the past 30 days and ranked fourth in monthly fees, while Ethereum generated $12.6 million and ranked in sixth place.

For builders and investors, fee generation can be interpreted in multiple ways. It may signal more demand for blockspace and on-chain execution, but it can also reflect changes in application mix or volatility-driven usage. Still, within Samani’s broader argument—“functionality” and operational consolidation—higher fee throughput is presented as evidence that Solana can deliver measurable economic activity even while competing against Ethereum’s scale.

Samani’s shifting stance—and his continued bet on Solana

The article also revisits Samani’s relationship with the crypto industry over the past few years. In February, he said he was stepping down as managing partner of Multicoin Capital after 10 years in the industry, describing it as a “bittersweet moment.” The report notes that around that time he appeared dispirited about crypto’s broader direction and briefly deleted an X post in which he said he no longer believed in the web3 vision, arguing that crypto had become less interesting than many enthusiasts expected.

But the same report indicates that his outlook did not translate into an exit. In September, Samani joined the US board of directors at crypto trading platform Backpack, suggesting he remained engaged with the operational side of the industry rather than stepping away completely.

On Solana specifically, the report frames the bet as long-running. Samani says he entered crypto through Ethereum in 2016 and later became dissatisfied with how Ethereum developers addressed scaling issues, according to Cointelegraph’s references in the piece. He encountered Solana soon after founding Multicoin in May 2017, and Multicoin went on to lead some of Solana’s earliest investment rounds in 2018.

Multicoin’s prominence is also contextualized in the report: it cites that the firm reported managing $5.9 billion in assets in May 2025, positioning it among the most prominent crypto investment firms. The underlying message is that Samani’s current prediction isn’t coming from a standing-on-the-sidelines viewpoint—it’s tied to a sustained investment and belief structure.

The report further adds biographical context: before co-founding Multicoin, Samani co-founded Pristine, a healthcare IT company that built software for Google Glass used by surgeons.

What to watch next

Samani’s prediction hinges on whether more companies treat Solana as the default operational environment—and whether Ethereum’s value accrual narrative continues to weaken for token holders. Investors should watch for concrete signs of ecosystem consolidation on Solana, alongside continued fee and usage comparisons, to see whether this “default switch” thesis holds beyond commentary.