Crypto’s Revenue Revolution

Most investors haven’t noticed that crypto is becoming a revenue-driven market. It’s why crypto asset prices look too low to me.

The best criticisms of crypto over the years have always focused on valuation: “Sure, blockchains are cool, but does that mean the underlying assets are valuable?”

It’s a fair question. While many projects have been successful, scaling in some cases to millions of users and billions in revenue, very little of that money has flowed to the actual tokens—or the token holders. Even a dedicated bull like me has struggled at times to explain why certain assets were worth billions.

That era is over. We’re now in a stage where, outside of Bitcoin, the value of crypto assets will increasingly be defined by the same metric that defines stocks and bonds: revenue. 

The good news is that many crypto assets are front-running this news by returning significant portions of the revenue they generate to token holders. Hyperliquid generated more than $800 million in revenue last year and uses ~99% of it to buy and burn HYPE (akin to a stock buyback). Uniswap, Aave, Solana, and other projects are all following its lead. 

Investors largely haven't caught on to the change. And that’s one reason why crypto assets are trading at prices that look too low to me.

Why People Think Crypto Projects Don't Generate Revenue

It's important to acknowledge that the “no revenue” criticism of crypto used to be true.

Bitcoin, the first and largest crypto asset, generates no revenue for token holders by design. Bitcoin is a monetary asset, and monetary assets typically do not have “productive uses.” (When was the last time people asked about gold’s revenue?) But this characteristic of Bitcoin has anchored investors' perception of every other crypto asset.

This general perception of crypto as a “no-revenue” space was made worse by a strongly anti-revenue regulatory climate under both Jay Clayton and Gary Gensler from 2017 to 2025. During that period, the SEC generally considered crypto projects that delivered revenue to token holders “illegal securities offerings.” Being an illegal securities offering is bad: The label can carry unlimited personal liability and criminal penalties for founders. Imagine if every Silicon Valley startup were told that if it shared its revenue with its investors the government would sue it. As a result, nearly all crypto projects launched as “governance tokens,” which gave holders voting rights but no claim on revenue. This included the most popular DeFi tokens like Uniswap and Aave.

What Changed?

This all started to change in July 2023, when the SEC lost a landmark lawsuit against Ripple. The agency had argued that its XRP token was an illegal securities offering, but the Southern District of New York ruled that XRP was not a security when sold to retail investors.

The ruling shocked many in the legal community because it challenged some common understandings of securities laws. Many thought it would be reversed on appeal. Instead, subsequent rulings largely broke Ripple's way, and the case ended in August 2025 when both sides dropped their appeals.

By then, Paul Atkins had replaced Gensler as chair of the SEC and ushered in a more favorable approach to crypto regulation. Suddenly revenue was back on the table.

Not coincidentally, a major new project emerged around that time that put revenue capture at its core.

Hyperliquid Set the Tone

Hyperliquid is a decentralized exchange. It launched in February 2023, offering perpetual futures contracts. It has since expanded to spot trading, real-world assets, and prediction markets. Hyperliquid has been the best-performing major crypto asset since launching its token in November 2024, up roughly 800% during a stretch when Bitcoin’s value has dropped by about a third.

Hyperliquid succeeded for many reasons, but a primary one was that ~99% of fee revenue—which is directly tied to user activity on the network—was reserved to buy HYPE on the open market. Since launch, it has bought and burned $1.3 billion of HYPE, permanently removing it from circulation and providing massive support to the token’s price. Finally, investors could be confident that a blockchain’s rising activity would flow through to the token.

This made Hyperliquid an investor darling. I've heard more about it from crypto insiders in the past year than any other asset.

Other Networks Are Catching On

With a regulatory environment less hostile to revenue and given Hyperliquid’s runaway success, other networks started catching on. Over the past year:

• Uniswap passed the “UNIfication” proposal in December 2025 with 99.9% support. It immediately burned 100 million UNI tokens (10% of max supply, worth ~$590 million) and turned on protocol fees for the first time. It has since burned another 7 million UNI and is taking in roughly $100 million in annual revenue, all of which is used to buy and burn UNI.

• Aave began using revenue to conduct weekly buybacks of its native token AAVE in April 2025; as of today, it’s on target to burn roughly $30 million worth of AAVE per year (about 20% of annual revenue). In June 2026 it went further with “Aavenomics 3.0,” a new program that routes protocol and GHO stablecoin revenue into automated, non-discretionary buybacks. It has now repurchased more than 1.2% of the total supply.

• Pump.fun has been the most aggressive of all. The memecoin platform began buying back PUMP tokens within days of its July 2025 launch, and by April 2026 it had burned $370 million worth, or 36% of its circulating supply. It also recently locked 50% of next year's net revenue into an irreversible buy-and-burn smart contract. It’s currently doing $328 million in annual revenue.

• The newest entrants are launching with revenue capture built in. Lighter, the fastest-growing perpetuals exchange on Ethereum, began using exchange revenue to buy back its LIT token immediately after launch at the start of the year. It has repurchased roughly 6% of circulating supply since then, and has committed to burning all the LIT it buys. Lighter is doing $67 million in annual revenue.

We're even seeing "revenue fever" catch on among Layer 1 blockchains. The Solana community just introduced a proposal called SGP-0003 that would lower the chain's inflation rate and increase its fee burn by up to 14x. And it's not alone: Earlier this year, Aptos raised gas fees 10x to improve token holder economics. Users weren't scared off—instead, transaction activity nearly tripled, taking the network from burning ~90,000 tokens a year to roughly 1.9 million.

Conclusion

Having invested in technology for more than 25 years, I feel like I've seen this movie before. It reminds me of internet companies like Facebook before they figured out advertising.

At the time, bears were skeptical the platforms could ever charge fees. “Users will leave if they start running ads,” people said. Meanwhile, bulls used all sorts of fuzzy arguments—eyeballs, Metcalfe's law, and so on—to argue why the platforms were valuable.

In the end, the top platforms turned on monetization and no one left. And investors realized that what mattered was not eyeballs, but profits. That’s what I think will happen here, too. In fact, it's already happening: Uniswap turned on fees in December; by July, its market share in DEX trading had hit an all-time high. The token is up 35% since July 1.

I suspect both DeFi apps and Layer 1 blockchains have far more pricing power than people think. The brands are well established and trust is scarce. Over the next 12-24 months, I expect you'll see these platforms capture more and more revenue.

The reason this is an opportunity is that no one sees it outside of crypto. Outsiders decided long ago that crypto assets have no revenue, and it will take years for that to change. Meanwhile, the people inside crypto are scarred by years of false promises and hand-wavy links between tokens and real value. This is why valuations are so low. 

Uniswap is a global brand that matches Coinbase for spot trading volume… and is valued at $2.4 billion. Aave and Morpho (another DeFi asset that’s improving its tokenomics) dominate onchain lending and have a combined market capitalization of another $2.4 billion. Hyperliquid is one of the fastest-growing fintech companies I’ve ever seen and it’s trading at a price-to-earnings multiple of 17x-60x.* Either valuation is pretty cheap for a global brand that is scaling quickly in a fast-growing vertical.

Now for the caveats. Crypto assets are not equities. They do not have a legal claim on cash flow; instead, tokenomics are set by the community and subject to change. Investors will have to decide how to balance the unique benefits of crypto with its idiosyncratic risks. 

But if I'm right that the link between revenue and token value is strong and getting stronger, we could see valuations double or more as the market catches up with reality. For years, revenue was the best argument against crypto. It's about to become the best argument for it.

Note:

*The difference depends on whether you count circulating or fully diluted supply. 

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