Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan says crypto may have just crossed into a new structural era—and he argues that Coinbase is the catalyst. In a November 11 memo titled “The Next Big Disruption From Crypto,” Hougan writes that he “caught a glimpse of the future this week,” identifying a fourth major crypto-driven disruption: capital formation.

Hougan frames the development within his long-running meta thesis that crypto is “going to reinvent the fundamental aspects of finance.” He highlights Bitcoin as “reinventing gold,” stablecoins as “reinventing dollars,” and tokenization as “reinventing trading and settlement.” He stresses that crypto remains early in each cycle but says the endgame is already visible: “I expect that eventually most assets will be tokenized, most dollars will move on stablecoin rails, and bitcoin will be as widely accepted as gold.”

What changed this week, he argues, is the emergence of a viable, institutionalized ICO model. “We added a fourth category: capital formation,” Hougan writes. “I think it will be a defining theme of crypto in 2026.”

To make that case, Hougan revisits the traditional IPO market—one he describes as “sclerotic and heavily skewed against individual investors.” Institutions fund VCs, VCs fund the best startups, startups stay private for years, and retail is left with scraps at the end. “Retail only gets to participate at the end of the journey,” he writes, in a system weighed down by “seemingly infinite regulations.”

A Crypto Plot Twist: Coinbase Revives ICOs

Crypto attempted to break this pattern once before. “It was—let’s be honest here—a complete disaster,” he says about the 2017–2018 ICO boom. “The vast majority of ICOs turned out to be scams.” With no guardrails, “charlatans raised billions from the unsuspecting public,” eventually forcing the SEC to intervene. “Its massive crackdown in 2018 destroyed the ICO trend and drove crypto into a deep bear market.”

But Hougan insists the failure masked an underlying truth. “As bad as ICOs were, they did prove something interesting: Crypto could be used to raise capital rapidly for new projects.” ICOs showed a model that was “lower-cost, faster, and more egalitarian” than IPOs, even if the execution was fatally flawed.

The difference today, he argues, is regulatory intent and institutional architecture. Hougan highlights SEC Chairman Paul Atkins—formerly co-chair of the Token Alliance and a board member at Securitize—as a driving force behind new thinking. In July, Atkins called for “new regulations and safe harbors that would allow high-quality ICOs to happen.” According to Hougan, Atkins argued that “if we can fix what went wrong with ICOs 1.0, we could see a boom in new capital formation—all led by crypto.”

That is the backdrop for Coinbase’s move. “On Monday, Coinbase took the first major step toward making this a reality,” Hougan writes. Coinbase unveiled a new platform that will launch one “fully-vetted” token sale per month, with enforced team disclosures, mandatory lockups for insiders, and a standardized screening process. “In short,” Hougan says, “through self-regulation, it aims to fix a lot of what was wrong with the 2017-2018 ICO era.”

He is explicit about where he thinks this goes: “I bet we’ll see a half-dozen or more billion-dollar ICOs through platforms like Coinbase in 2026.” While still small relative to the traditional IPO market—“176 IPOs in the US raised $33 billion in 2024”—Hougan argues that even a handful of successful ICOs would prove a structural point: “Entrepreneurs can raise capital directly from investors, often at better terms than they would in the traditional IPO market.”

On the investment side, Hougan points first to Coinbase itself. “The obvious investment is in Coinbase,” he writes, describing the company not just as a brokerage but a multi-lane financial infrastructure giant: “It’s not just the Charles Schwab of Crypto; it’s Charles Schwab + Goldman Sachs + NYSE + …”

He also sees upside for base-layer ecosystems: “A healthy ICO market will bode well for the largest programmable blockchains, like Ethereum and Solana.”

Yet the larger thesis is index-level. “An ICO renaissance,” he writes, “is another major proof point for crypto as a whole.” Crypto’s narrative grew stronger as stablecoins and tokenization matured; billions raised through vetted ICOs would strengthen it further. His advice: “Don’t try to pick the horse; bet on the race.”

At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.42 trillion.