CoinDesk: Crypto market-cap rankings lose relevance as fundamentals gain focus

Investors are beginning to evaluate crypto tokens based on fundamentals such as actual usage and tokenomics rather than market-cap rankings, CoinDesk reported. Hunter Horsley, CEO of spot Bitcoin ETF issuer Bitwise, said the era of CoinMarketCap ranking tables is fading as investors shift their focus to market size, adoption levels, and whether projects capture value. Based on his conversations with asset managers that recently won approval to enter the crypto market, those firms often do not even know where a given asset ranks by CoinMarketCap market capitalization, and the ranking does not matter to them, he said. Jasper De Maere, an OTC trader at Wintermute, added that perpetual futures volumes have recently far exceeded spot trading volumes for most major tokens, while funding rates, positioning, and liquidation flows are shaping intraday market sentiment. Those capital flows have concentrated in major cryptocurrencies and some revenue-generating tokens, and it is difficult to separate fundamentals from money flows when the former narrows the investment universe and the latter drives prices, he said.