Bitcoin’s recent price drop rattled investors across the market. But Arca CIO Jeff Dorman says crypto wasn’t the cause.
In a Milk Road Show interview, Dorman explained that the crash came from big Wall Street funds pulling money out across all markets, not from crypto traders selling. He pointed out that institutional trading platforms saw heavy selling, while crypto-native exchanges like Deribit and Binance stayed relatively calm.
In other words, it was traditional finance dragging Bitcoin down with everything else. Meanwhile, Coinbase data showed that everyday crypto holders were actually buying the dip.
Dorman also went after one of crypto’s most popular beliefs. He said the four-year cycle theory is built on just two examples, 2018 and 2022, and both of those crashes were triggered by the Fed hiking interest rates, not by anything happening inside crypto.
Now that Bitcoin is deeply connected to ETFs and institutional money, those old patterns matter even less. Dorman argued the cycle can only work now if enough people believe in it and panic sell at the first sign of a dip.
Dorman identified three areas where growth is real and measurable, regardless of what Bitcoin is doing.
DeFi is seeing more users, more money locked in protocols, and more trading volume shifting away from centralized exchanges. Protocols like Hyperliquid and Pump.Fun are generating actual revenue and using it to buy back their own tokens.
Stablecoins hit $10 trillion in transaction volume in January 2026 alone. JP Morgan, Citi, and PayPal have all entered the space with their own stablecoin products.
RWA tokenization carries the biggest long-term potential. Roughly $600 trillion worth of real-world assets like stocks, bonds, and real estate sit off-chain today. Only about $1 trillion has moved on-chain so far. BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and Apollo are already building here.
Dorman was blunt about what separates real value from hype. He said buybacks are the only way a protocol’s success actually flows back to token holders.
He used Pump.Fun as an example. The protocol sits at a $2 billion valuation, pulls in roughly $500 million in daily revenue, and puts 99% of it toward buying back tokens. At that rate, the entire supply gets bought back in under 3.5 years.
“I’ve been investing in crypto professionally for eight years,” Dorman said. “I’ve never heard anybody come up with even a reasonable argument for why Bitcoin should be worth anything other than just it’s gold is worth X and therefore Bitcoin should be worth some percentage of X.”
For anyone spending all their time watching Bitcoin’s price, Dorman’s message is interesting. The parts of crypto that may be growing in 2026 aren’t waiting for BTC to make a move.
DeFi, stablecoins, and real-world asset tokenization are seeing measurable growth, user adoption, and revenue, independent of Bitcoin.
Buybacks return protocol revenue to token holders, creating real value; projects like Pump.Fun use buybacks to reduce circulating supply.
No, the crypto ecosystem grows beyond BTC. DeFi, stablecoins, and RWA tokens are creating tangible returns regardless of Bitcoin’s moves.
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