Perpetual-futures volumes still run at a multiple of spot across most major tokens, while funding, positioning and liquidations set the tone intraday, he said

Over the past 12 to 18 months, however, attention has moved from infrastructure toward applications and appchains that fit more familiar fintech and venture-capital frameworks, De Maere said.

Fundamentals are starting to carry more weight in areas including decentralized finance, perpetual-futures exchanges and decentralized physical infrastructure networks.

“Fundamentals set the floor and the shortlist, while flows set the price,” De Maere said. Revenue and usage can determine which tokens survive drawdowns or make it onto allocator shortlists, but they rarely determine the…