Matt Hougan calls June the bottom, flags 130% dispersion as sign of a fundamentals-driven bull market

Hougan says June marked the bottom of a fundamentals-driven bull market

Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise, says he believes the market "bottomed in June" and is now in a new bull cycle driven by "a confluence of very positive events," including improved SEC and CFTC regulation, real revenue in crypto for the first time, tokenization of real-world assets, and developments in AI. He expects the next leg up to come from institutional capital, particularly wealth advisors at large wire houses who, in his view, wanted to allocate earlier in the year but held back while the market was "relentlessly down" and are now getting "the all clear."

Hougan points to dispersion as evidence the market has become more rational: over the last 30 days he cites "about 130% dispersion between the best and worst performing of the top 20 crypto assets." He argues this is healthy because gains are tied to specific, explainable catalysts rather than indiscriminate momentum.

"It's very specific, idiosyncratic driven results. And that is much healthier than a momentum driven cyclical market."

He expects this to be a "differentiated bull market" in which some "zombie chains" fade from relevance, while acknowledging the market hasn't yet seen "wildly bullish momentum" return.

Sal Ternullo details NEAR's buyback path and inflation cut proposal

Sal Ternullo, CEO of Sovereign, says NEAR halved emissions from 5% to 2.5% inflation starting October 28 of last year, building product-market fit via NEAR intents before shifting to "monetizing and delivering value back to token holders through buybacks." He credits Hyperliquid as inspiration for the broader market's move toward value accrual mechanics, and says recent debate has centered on whether buybacks should also burn tokens, an idea NEAR's Illia proposed partly reframing as a "sovereign wealth fund" concept, which the ecosystem has since shelved.

Ternullo says NEAR published a proposal last week to cut inflation from 2.5% to 1.6% over a two-year curve, comparing it to a similar change recently approved on Solana. He frames the goal as reaching "an equilibrium that maximizes the value of NEAR on a relative valuation basis to dollars, Bitcoin, and other assets." Hougan adds he thinks it's too early to say there's one correct approach to buybacks, but says the key is keeping "long-term value accrual" as the guiding principle.