Bitwise Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Hunter Horsley highlights a major generational transition in the crypto industry heading into 2026. He compares 2017-era leaders such as Xapo, Polychain, and Poloniex, as well as assets like NEO and IOTA, with today’s market landscape, noting recurring cycles of leadership change. The crypto community is feeling a mix of nostalgia, loss, and uncertainty.
Horsley has shared a 2017-era snapshot of the crypto market, outlining the dominant players of that cycle. Horsley describes 2026 as a “changing of the guard”, a recurring pattern every few years where leadership in key segments of the market shifts dramatically, making way for a new generation of participants, projects, and innovations.
When Bitwise launched in 2017, the crypto landscape looked markedly different. Leading custodians included Xapo and Kingdom Trust. Prominent crypto funds were Metastable, Polychain, Blockchain Capital, and Pantera. Major exchanges comprised Poloniex, Bittrex, Bitfinex, BitMEX, Bitstamp, Kraken, GDAX, and Coinbase.
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Meanwhile, dominant assets at that time featured NEO, OmiseGo, NEM, DASH, IOTA, BCH, ETC, alongside the enduring BTC, ETH, and XRP. underscoring how significantly the market structure has evolved since then. Horsley said: “Every few years, crypto has a changing of the guard. Some of the leaders who got us here don’t continue. Others do.”
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Notably, the crypto community is feeling a mix of nostalgia, loss, and uncertainty, but Horsley emphasizes that a new crypto cycle could also mean a rebirth with new participants and projects bringing fresh vitality to the market.
He frames this phase as a “new vintage” of crypto, where innovation is likely to concentrate in more mature and utility-driven sectors. Key growth areas may include the evolution of decentralized finance (DeFi), the expansion of real-world assets (RWAs), deeper integration between artificial intelligence and blockchain systems, improved layer-2 scaling solutions, and the continued development of stablecoin infrastructure.
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});At the same time, the crypto market continues to face macroeconomic pressures, shifting liquidity conditions, and ongoing capital rotation between assets and narratives, which may drive short-term volatility. However, despite these challenges, the underlying structural trends continue to point toward a more mature, resilient, and expanding crypto ecosystem in 2026 and beyond.
Therefore, Horsley’s message serves as both a historical reflection and an optimistic forward-looking signal. The generational shift underscores crypto’s maturation of what began as a niche, experimental movement is evolving into a more robust, diverse, and institutionally anchored ecosystem.
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