There’s a $450 billion behemoth forging BTC’s path to $100k

The Crypto-Industrial Complex is always churning, gobbling up coins much faster than they can be mined and sold

article-image

Sem_Sem/Shutterstock and Adobe Stock modified by Blockworks

share

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


Long ago, skeptics insisted that bitcoin was worthless because it had no intrinsic value. Times have really changed.

BTC wasn’t backed by anything, they’d say. There’s no revenue, cashflow or profits pooling with a single source, so no reliable framework for figuring how much each coin is worth. To zero, they said!

The correct answer was: Bitcoin doesn’t need to be backed by anything. Bitcoin backs bitcoin. After all, the first coins were sold only for the cost of the energy spent to mine them.

Today, there’s so much more to it. Bitcoin isn’t just powered by its industrialized mining sector. 

There’s now a whole Crypto-Industrial Complex forging a path for bitcoin and the wider crypto space — and it’s worth almost half a trillion dollars.

The half-trillion behemoth at the heart of crypto

To be clear, the entire crypto market — as in the actual coins and tokens — has a $3 trillion-plus capitalization. The Crypto-Industrial Complex is a different beast. 

It consists of the most prominent, influential, valuable entities and vehicles in the industry right now: 

Publicly-traded stocks: MicroStrategy, Coinbase, bitcoin miners and ETFs.

Stablecoins: USDT, USDC and USDS (formerly DAI)

DeFi governance: Uniswap and Raydium (DEXs), Aave (lending) and restaking apps (Lido and Jito).

There are, of course, other big players worth including. Perhaps Ethereum giant Consensys, last valued at $7 billion in March 2022. Or Solana Labs and Binance, although the latter would’ve almost certainly taken a meaty hit to its valuation after its run-in with the DOJ.

Not to mention the other funds holding billions in crypto altogether that aren’t ETFs, which don’t show up in this data, like Bitwise’s index fund BITW and the ever-expanding roster of Grayscale trusts.

The Crypto-Industrial Complex now closely follows the price of bitcoin

Still, for many, the Crypto-Industrial Complex as presented here would be the first points of entry into crypto (and, perhaps more critically for this newsletter, their valuations are easily trackable: up 140% year-on-year and 50% above its previous top in 2021).

  • Michael Saylor, the bitcoin alpha bull provides the orange pull. 
  • Tether, the stablecoin with a compelling history, reveals just how deep the rabbit hole goes. 
  • Uniswap, Lido and Aave form the basis for DeFi 101.
  • All while the public miners help keep Bitcoin humming.

The Crypto-Industrial Complex is always churning, gobbling up coins much faster than they can be mined and sold.

And here we are, just one more ~10% rally away from $100,000. If it felt unrealistic before, perhaps it’s because the Complex was much smaller than it is today, with fewer players.

Who knows what happens on the other side.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

recent research

LTIPPanalysis.png

Research

This report is a retroactive analysis of Arbitrum's Long Term Incentives Pilot Program (LTIPP). We collect relevant data at a protocol level and review bi-weekly updates to analyze recipients, their strategies, and the impact of the incentives on high level growth metrics. In particular, we want to highlight outperformers and underperformers, and glean any best practices or lessons learned for protocols distributing ARB incentives in the future. The overarching goal is to synthesize lessons learned that the DAO can reference as it begins thinking about future incentives programs–namely, the working group for incentives that is being actively discussed–especially as Timeboost introduces new conditions for trading and economic activity.

article-image

Sponsored

AI project Zerebro intersects the spheres of artificial intelligence, finance, art, music, and culture

article-image

Allmight is focused on furthering the United States’ leadership in crypto

article-image

The conditions Charles Schwab is waiting for before jumping headfirst into crypto could take shape soon

article-image

The FCA’s director of payments and digital assets shared some takeaways from chats with crypto companies and law firms

article-image

Let’s take a look at how US equities typically perform this time of year and what we might see in the coming days

article-image

Lumina introduces transparency and permissionless integration via an OP stack-based optimium, challenging traditional oracle designs