Crypto-native traders are chasing privacy tokens and high-flying perp platforms. Grayscale’s head of research, Zach Pandl, says the bigger opportunity may be sitting in the large smart contract networks those traders are overlooking. In commentary reported by Coinpedia, Pandl argued that Ethereum, Solana and BNB Chain are not a consensus trade among crypto natives right now — and his advice to investors was blunt: don’t sleep on the classics.
The call cuts against the current mood. In a month when the altcoin market cap shed an estimated 134 billion USD in fifteen days and traders crowded into niche narratives, Pandl’s case rests on where traditional finance is heading rather than where the fast money is rotating today.
The Case for the Classics
Pandl’s argument is fundamentally about plumbing. He expects trillions of dollars in assets to move on-chain over the coming years, and nearly all of that activity — tokenized funds, stablecoin settlement, institutional trading infrastructure — will need a smart contract platform to run on. In his framing, Ethereum, Solana and BNB Chain are the established rails that this next wave of adoption has to flow through, giving them what he described as an absolute key role to play in a crypto portfolio.
He contrasted that with the behavior of many crypto-native investors, who he said are busy buying privacy tokens and revenue-generating niche projects while ignoring the core infrastructure layer. The implication: the crowd is trading the sizzle while the steak — settlement capacity for institutional-scale tokenization — goes under-owned.
Wall Street Keeps Validating the Thesis
It is not an abstract argument. The same day Pandl’s comments circulated, JPMorgan confirmed it was extending JPM Coin, its dollar deposit token, to the Ethereum network for institutional clients — a full-scale bank putting tokenized deposits on a public smart contract chain. Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, has built an internal Digital Asset Lab to test stablecoin settlement, tokenized assets and DeFi applications. Wall Street’s experimental phase, in other words, is increasingly happening on exactly the class of networks Pandl is pointing to.
That institutional footprint matters for the bull case. Ethereum trades near 2,394 USD and Solana near 104 USD in the latest market snapshot, both well below their highs, even as the infrastructure they run keeps absorbing more regulated, deep-pocketed participants.
Privacy Is Still on the Menu
Pandl was careful not to dismiss the trends crypto natives are actually trading. He said he maintains a positive view of Zcash, for which Grayscale offers investment products, arguing that financial privacy is something crypto now needs to import from traditional finance — where people simply expect salaries, debts and tax payments to stay confidential. He expects Zcash to keep gaining share among privacy-focused currencies, and predicted privacy tools will spread to smart contract platforms, stablecoins and perpetual futures markets, calling privacy a huge part of the next cycle.
On perpetual futures, he pointed to Grayscale’s own Hyperliquid ETF for US investors as evidence of demand, while noting that the remaining questions are regulatory — whether firms like Grayscale can use such platforms to hedge balance sheets or run carry trades. He credited the CFTC with making progress on those rules.
Grayscale Thinks the Bottom Is Already In
The altcoin call sits inside a broader constructive stance. Grayscale’s estimate, per Pandl, is that Bitcoin bottomed near 58,000 USD at the end of June, and that prices have recovered even though recent news flow has been mixed. He read that resilience as a sign crypto was oversold over the summer, with institutional clients continuing to treat Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs as long-term portfolio diversifiers rather than tactical trades.
He also linked part of the summer sell-off to pressure on Strategy’s preferred shares — a reminder that crypto now trades tangled up with traditional market stress, not apart from it.
The Takeaway for Retail Investors
For everyday investors, the message lands differently depending on horizon. Traders chasing this month’s hottest narrative may find the large-cap trio boring — they are the assets everyone already owns. But Pandl’s framing is a classic infrastructure bet: if tokenization of traditional finance arrives at anything like the scale he expects, the chains that settle those assets capture the fees, the liquidity and, eventually, the valuation premium.
Boring, in this reading, is the point. The assets without a crowd today are the ones with the most room for one tomorrow — and according to one of the industry’s largest asset managers, tomorrow’s crowd is already building on Ethereum, Solana and BNB, whether retail notices or not.
The plumbing argument from Pandl is the strongest one. Tokenized funds and stablecoin settlement all need a chain to run on, and nobody is building that on a privacy token.
pandl is right, natives are all piled into privacy tokens while eth sits right there. jpm putting JPM Coin on ethereum the same day says everything
institutions are not buying perps, they need settlement rails for tokenized funds. the classic L1s win that wave by default imo
134B wiped off altcoins in 15 days and grayscale says buy the boring ones. that call has aged well more often than not
every fund makes this exact call every cycle. long the majors, short the noise. then their next report is somehow about memecoin infra lol
difference is jpm putting JPM Coin on ethereum the same week. when the call and the bank plumbing line up it stops being boilerplate
134 billion gone from alts in fifteen days and ETH sits at 2,394 mostly ignored. Pandl pointing at where the actual cash flow is, not the narrative of the week
eh, ETH and SOL not a consensus trade is doing a lot of work here. everyone I know is overweight both, just quietly. the crowded stuff is further down the cap curve
overweight relative to what though. ETH and SOL are the default 60 percent of every retail portfolio. consensus with extra steps
sol at 104 while grayscale says this, ok adding a bit more then lol
I have been in this market since 2017 and the pattern holds. When the institutions pick their settlement layers it will be boring and it will be these three. The niche stuff rotates, rails persist.