Crypto is often described as being in a bull or bear market, but that framing may no longer make sense.
According to Evgeny Gokhberg, founder of Re7 Capital, the industry has become too broad, too liquid, and too fragmented for a single narrative to capture what is actually happening.
During a recent interview on TheStreet Roundtable, Gokhberg pushed back on the idea that falling token prices define the health of the sector.
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He recalled a conversation with an friend who asked whether crypto might be dying after seeing small cap tokens down as much as 90%, and argued that the visibility of crypto exaggerates failure in a way other industries never experience.
“So crypto’s problem is that everything is liquid and very visible and very loud,” he said. “Imagine if every single startup in Silicon Valley would have been publicly listed on a stock exchange on day one. Can you imagine the volatility, the noise, the drama and the percentage of them that would go into the ground?”
That dynamic creates what Gokhberg described as a tale of two worlds. From one angle, 2025 looked like a brutal year. Small cap tokens collapsed, and Bitcoin failed to meet the expectations many had set.
“It was okay,” he said, “but compared to gold, it’s very very disappointing.”
From another angle, the year looked entirely different. Some firms were generating double digit yields by providing liquidity to decentralized finance markets. Others built stablecoin infrastructure businesses and exited successfully to major payments companies.
“Crypto is converging with Stripe and Visa and MasterCard,” Gokhberg said, calling that outcome “as bullish as it gets.”
The problem, he argued, is treating crypto as a single market. Just as no one asks whether there is a bear market for the entire internet, it no longer makes sense to lump payments infrastructure, speculative tokens, and enterprise blockchain adoption into one bucket.
Looking ahead to 2026, Gokhberg sees two trends accelerating at the same time. On one side, more traditional banks and financial institutions are adopting blockchain technology and public networks.
“100%,” he said. “And that’s accelerating like there is no tomorrow.”
On the other side, many early crypto startups without real product market fit are likely to disappear as the era of easy money fades.
Whether Bitcoin catches up to gold or fails to do so may matter for investors, Gokhberg said, but it has little impact on stablecoin adoption, cross border payments, or remittances.