I just read something interesting from the CEO of Keyrock that makes me think differently about where we are really in the crypto cycle.

Kevin de Patoul argues something many don’t want to hear: Bitcoin should be trading much higher than it is now. And not because he’s a maximalist, but because the numbers don’t add up. Look, we have increasing institutional adoption, real regulatory progress, and yet BTC behaves like a pure risk asset. That’s... strange.

The point that hits me is this: the capital that entered aggressively over the last 18 months was mostly institutional, but now it acts more tactically than ideologically. When there’s stress in the markets, it simply leaves. It’s not a true hedge against risk like many promise it to be.

But here’s where it gets interesting. De Patoul sees something most are missing: 2026 isn’t a year of takeoff, it’s a year of transition. And that transition is what matters. While the native crypto market (DeFi, altcoins, the usual speculative cycle ) cools down, another market is developing in parallel. One that almost no one is talking about.

They are real assets tokenized, stablecoins, on-chain funds. Real financial infrastructure migrating to blockchain. The institutions Keyrock works with haven’t lost their enthusiasm or their building efforts. Nothing has changed there. The goal is to make crypto assets accessible and to reconfigure parts of the financial markets. That doesn’t depend on Bitcoin’s price.

The crazy part is that RWAs could grow to match or surpass everything the crypto market was at its previous peak, but probably not in the way we expect. It won’t be a boom driven by speculation. It will be because utility finally becomes available at scale.

We are in an intermediate phase now. The pieces exist, but they’re not truly connected yet. Tokenized funds exist, but without real liquidity. Stablecoins proliferated, but the question remains: where are they really used? Who accepts them as collateral? Can they provide liquidity at scale?

De Patoul believes 2027 and 2028 will be the real inflection point. By then, infrastructure will be ready, liquidity will flow, and traditional capital markets (which are orders of magnitude larger than crypto ) will start migrating. Even a small percentage would make everything else seem small.

The price action now seems uninspiring, I know. But if you have a long-term vision of what crypto can be, the quiet building of infrastructure is much more important than a short-term rally. The foundations are being laid. Scale is still to come. And that’s what truly matters.