After the Valuation Collapse: The Crypto Market Enters the 'Revenue Pricing' Era
The crypto market is shifting from speculative narratives to a focus on real revenue generation, entering an "earnings-based valuation" era. Despite industry-wide fear and declining sentiment, crypto-native protocols have generated $74.8 billion in fees since 2018, with nearly half ($31.4 billion) occurring between January 2024 and June 2025. However, valuations have collapsed as novelty premiums fade. Key trends include:
- **Stablecoin dominance**: Tether and Circle now account for 34.3% of all fees, benefiting from global demand and near-zero marginal costs.
- **Trading platforms surge**: Meme coin trading and perpetual exchanges (e.g., Hyperliquid, Jupiter) grew from 1% to over 15% of total revenue by 2025, driven by consumer demand for high-risk, high-reward products.
- **Protocol decline**: Layer 1 and Layer 2 tokens (e.g., Solana, Arbitrum) saw price-to-fee ratios drop sharply as infrastructure matured and competition increased. The median monthly revenue per protocol fell to $13,000.
- **Valuation rationalization**: The average price-to-sales ratio for crypto assets compressed from 40,400x in 2020 to 170x today, aligning with or below traditional financial infrastructure multiples (e.g., Visa at 15x P/S). Protocols like Aave (4x P/S) and Hyperliquid (7x P/S) now trade at reasonable valuations.
The era of building pure infrastructure is over. Success requires business models with real revenue, clear moats (first-mover advantage, liquidity, or distribution), and tokens that offer actual economic rights and governance—not just speculative value.
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