Internet Capital Markets - a tale of 2 cities

ICM has been a top buzzword over the past year, but when most people refer to ICM they think about Pump Fun and various crypto launchpad ICOs - I would call this “Crypto Capital Markets” which is a subset of Internet Capital Markets

The other half of ICM is the institutional capital markets that’s happening onchain - I call this “Institutional Token Markets”

ITM includes tokenized equity (moving towards native equity issued onchain), tokenized primary debt issuance, and other forms of capital raises using tokenized versions of traditional products

So my definition of ICM is inclusive of both the crypto and institutional capital markets activity that’s happening onchain

What is most interesting is that these two segments of ICM are currently going in opposite directions

Crypto Capital Markets are struggling after a tough period of depressed token prices and poor launch performances

This is a highly cyclical segment and I expect conditions to improve, but only so much as these events become less extractive to the general public

The focus needs to be on restoring trust, going for quality over quantity, and more realistic valuations that match the liquid market demand, otherwise Crypto Capital Markets may cease to be relevant

Institutional Token Markets are growing incredibly fast with new announcements each week featuring some of the top institutions adopting tokenized markets for product launches and new offerings

The institutions are coming in a big way and validating what many of us in the industry have known for a long time - that blockchain rails are the future of finance

So where does that leave us?

I expect these two segments of ICM to remain bifurcated for the time being - the institutions don’t care about crypto capital markets and the people in the trenches generally don’t care about tokenized TradFi

But that leaves room in the middle for the right teams who can combine the best elements of both worlds - native token launches that have the quality and features of institutional capital

The one overarching conclusion is that @solana stands to gain as the rails for all of ICM

Both can co-exist and together they provide a more hedged outcome for Solana activity - no longer is the chain at the mercy of highly volatile and cyclical token activity

This bodes well for the metrics that actually matter to Wall St, the ultimate buyers of $SOL