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

BlockBeats news, October 7 — Annabelle Huang, co-founder and CEO of Altius Labs, said the focus of the crypto industry's development is gradually shifting from the early creation of new assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, NFTs, and meme coins toward building new markets around existing things.

Prediction markets, crude oil and gold perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid, and pre-IPO perpetual contracts are building 24/7 trading markets for objects that previously lacked real-time market pricing mechanisms, such as news events, commodities, and private companies. Blockchain is thus not only creating assets, but also expanding the boundary of "what can be priced."

Price discovery in traditional finance is often limited by trading hours, access thresholds, and valuation cycles, while on-chain markets can operate continuously and quickly absorb new information, while lowering barriers to participation. Future market participants may focus more on gaining exposure to asset prices rather than actually holding the assets.

Huang said that if the crypto industry hopes to become important infrastructure for global price discovery, it will need to focus on improving throughput, latency, liquidity depth, and reliability in the future to support high-frequency trading, risk management, and large-scale capital participation. Therefore, the next stage 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.