Dan Tapiero, founder and CEO of 50T Funds, says a new bull phase has begun for the core assets in digital markets, and that Hyperliquid has been leading the move. Tapiero made the call during a podcast episode this week, pointing to what he described as real revenue growth in stablecoins, tokenization, Kraken, Ledger and Polymarket. The firm, meanwhile, is in the market raising $500 million with institutional interest behind it.
The comments land at a moment when the debate about crypto's maturity is louder than ever. Tapiero's answer is simple: look at the businesses, not the charts.
Hyperliquid takes the lead
In Tapiero's telling, this leg of the market isn't being driven by speculation in the usual suspects. Hyperliquid has been the leader, he said, and the businesses showing genuine revenue growth are spread across infrastructure and trading. Stablecoin issuers and tokenization platforms made the list. So did Kraken, the exchange, and Ledger, the hardware wallet maker. Polymarket, the prediction market, rounded it out.
That's a deliberately unglamorous set of names. No memecoins, no layer-two tokens promising the world. Tapiero's framing is that this cycle rewards platforms that actually charge for something.
The deals 50T passed on
Tapiero also revisited what he didn't buy. He said he passed on FTX, Celsius and BlockFi, and the reason was valuation. All three later collapsed. The admission is a reminder that in crypto, sitting out a hot deal is sometimes the best trade on the board.
The firm's recent check-writing tells a different story. 50T put $42 million into MoonPay, a payment infrastructure company that has quietly become one of the more durable names in the sector. The $500 million raise now underway suggests Tapiero sees more of those opportunities coming.
Japan, the yen and the macro trade
The conversation wasn't only about crypto. Tapiero called Japan's 30-year bond base the biggest macro theme on his radar. The episode touched on Scott Bessent, the yen, and Kevin Warsh's rate hike, alongside a broader discussion of AI, productivity and where the natural rate of interest is actually heading.
Those threads connect to the reason Tapiero thinks Bitcoin and gold win over the long run. He cited the debasement trade — the idea that fiat currencies lose purchasing power over time, and hard assets absorb the difference. It's a well-worn thesis, but it's the one he's sticking with.
What to watch
The $500 million raise is the near-term item. Whether institutional appetite shows up at the size 50T is targeting will say a lot about how this bull phase actually gets financed. Tapiero's call on Hyperliquid's leadership is the other one to track — if the core assets keep running, he'll have called it early. If they don't, the revenue-growth argument gets harder to defend.
