Matthew Sigel
Head of Digital Assets Research at VanEck, Portfolio Manager of NODE ETF
The VanEck Onchain Economy ETF looks well positioned for a recovery in its beaten-down Texas exposure and a renewed bitcoin bull market. It trailed spot bitcoin by about 2,200 basis points over the past month, giving back part of a 120-point lead through Q2, mainly due to bitcoin miners and powered-land companies in Texas; it is still up about 12% this year. Spot bitcoin is its largest position, other digital assets are a rising share, and it manages leverage and governance risks. x.comÂ
Bitcoin's valuation looks stretched relative to network use, raising the risk of selling pressure. Its market value has risen faster than active addresses, lifting the NVM ratio while address activity has not kept up with price. This is a valuation warning, not a definite top like 2021 or 2025, nor a signal that price must fall immediately; it could keep rising with NVM high. x.comÂ
Crypto's maturation, alongside monetary debasement, should keep the revenue-generating and store-of-value portfolio barbell outperforming. These are its two primary drivers. x.comÂ
Crypto's Wild West reputation creates market inefficiencies and, therefore, great opportunity. It looks to have decoupled from stocks over the past year, though the risky narrative persists. x.comÂ
Bit Digital's discount to NAV is not attractive because its exposure to volatile assets like bitcoin cuts both ways. It works while bitcoin is running, and the company also carries heavy dilution. x.comÂ
Deep drawdowns and extreme pessimism are making the long-term risk/reward more attractive for AI-infrastructure names such as Cipher Mining, CoreWeave, Eos Energy, Galaxy Digital, IREN Limited and T1 Energy. After 50-90% drawdowns, many trade at bear-market discounts and near major support, making downside easier to define. This depends on believing their long-term fundamentals and growth; not every name will be a winner. x.com x.comÂ
Crypto still has room to rise because institutional adoption is accelerating and good altcoins remain underowned globally. Traditional finance is bringing assets onchain, and progress since five years ago makes it impossible to be bearish. Bitcoin looks stronger than overstretched altcoins and has shaken off severe bad news; more chop or shakeouts could come before the market moves higher. x.comÂ
DDC Enterprise trades at a $29M market cap against about $143M of net value: its 2,899 bitcoin are worth $231M against $88M of debt, and it just added more. Underdog crypto stocks are usually the last to rally as risk chasers move beyond the known names, so a clean break above the 50-day moving average on expanding volume could spark a fast move. x.comÂ
Bitcoin is a strong buy while sentiment is at its lowest, because beaten-down assets offer more upside with less risk. Bitcoin needs to rise 100% to reclaim its all-time high and ether 180%, yet after last year's chase toward $200,000 nobody wants them now. The latest crash was triggered by Michael Saylor selling 32 BTC. Bitcoin works as a store of value and ether would underpin asset tokenization, making both portfolio diversifiers. x.com x.com x.comÂ
The world is running out of compute to feed AI, and AI compute stocks are breaking away from software. Bitcoin miners, Nebius and CoreWeave are breaking out much as bitcoin broke from software last week, and Oracle, which led software lower, is close to breaking above its 50-day moving average for the first time since October. x.comÂ
Digital assets including Bitcoin, Ether, Solana and XRP could see the largest crypto rotation ever, as a 1-2% shift out of global equities or a stalled AI trade would dwarf 2017 ICO and 2021 retail money. Unlike earlier retail-and-leverage cycles, spot ETFs can absorb billions, corporate treasuries hold large BTC stacks, and tokenization gives TradFi something to underwrite. The 2024-25 ETF wave proved institutions buy when the wrapper looks like a mutual fund. x.comÂ
