Bankless co-founder: ZEC is similar to ETH in 2021, BTC and ETH are unlikely to see another 10x growth.

BlockBeats news, September 24 — Bankless co-founder David Hoffman posted that the crypto market occasionally sees a single asset absorbing capital transfers from Bitcoin holders. ETH saw a similar situation in 2021, and ZEC in 2026 resembles ETH of that year. ZEC, leveraging its privacy and quantum-resistance narrative, successfully attracted some Bitcoin holders to view it as a "just in case" hedge, driving a market cap surge. What truly drove ZEC's rise was the spillover of BTC wealth, not entirely new capital.

Additionally, NEAR is absorbing the relatively weaker "smart contract buying" of 2026. Meanwhile, Hoffman believes that BTC and ETH are unlikely to achieve another 10x growth, with innovation increasingly captured by new projects like Hyperliquid and Ethena as well as traditional finance, potentially limiting the entire crypto industry's scale expansion.

Previously, in early June, Hoffman fully disclosed on X his capital allocation after liquidating ETH: VVV (Venice AI's governance token), NEAR, ZEC, LIT, and HYPE.