Cryptocurrency is too often viewed through the narrow lens of price. The dominant narrative surrounding Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the broader crypto market has become fixated on one idea: numbers go up. Did Bitcoin break $100,000? Did Ethereum double in a month? Is this altcoin going to the moon?

Financial media, X pundits, and even crypto advocates routinely reduce an entire technological revolution to a speculative race to ever-higher prices. But this is like evaluating Apple or Nvidia solely by their stock movements while ignoring the iPhone or the GPUs powering AI infrastructure. It’s a superficial way of thinking — and in crypto, it’s also dangerous.

In traditional markets, value is ultimately grounded in usage. The more products…