Viewpoint: The crypto industry is shifting from creating new assets to creating new markets.

Altius Labs Co-Founder and CEO Annabelle Huang stated that the crypto industry’s development focus is gradually shifting from creating new assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, NFTs, and meme coins in its early days to building new markets around existing entities. Prediction markets, perpetual contracts for crude oil and gold on Hyperliquid, and pre-IPO perpetual contracts are establishing 24/7 trading markets for previously real-time pricing-deficient assets such as news events, commodities, and private companies. Blockchain is thus not only creating assets but also expanding the boundaries of "what can be priced." Traditional financial price discovery is often constrained by trading hours, access barriers, and valuation cycles, while on-chain markets operate continuously, absorb new information quickly, and lower participation thresholds. Going forward, market participants may prioritize gaining exposure to asset prices rather than holding the actual assets. Huang noted that if the crypto industry aims to become a critical global price discovery infrastructure, it needs to prioritize improving throughput, latency, liquidity depth, and reliability to support high-frequency trading, risk management, and large-scale capital participation. Therefore, the next phase of the crypto industry may not lie in creating the next new asset, but in building pricing infrastructure for an increasing number of existing assets and events.