Arca Chief Investment Officer Jeff Dorman says the digital asset market is moving into a phase where investors can apply a more familiar fundamental framework. For years, the problem was not a lack of choice. There were thousands of cryptocurrencies, hundreds of blockchain protocols, dozens of listed companies, and a constant stream of new launches. The harder part was finding assets that were actually worth owning.
In Dorman’s view, that setup is starting to change. He points to stronger fundamentals, better token economics, a regulatory framework that is becoming clearer, and continued institutional participation. Together, those shifts are pushing crypto away from a market dominated by speculation and toward one where business quality, revenue, and value capture can matter more directly.
He breaks the investable universe into four main categories.
1. Public equities tied to crypto infrastructure
The first bucket is the most straightforward: stocks.
Dorman argues that while the digital asset sector can look messy, owning equity in a strong company is conceptually simple. A business generates revenue, manages costs, allocates capital, and aims to grow profits and free cash flow over time. Shareholders have a legal claim on residual value, so if the company becomes more valuable, the equity should generally benefit as well.
He also says the list of high-quality public crypto companies remains short. In his telling, even the number of private companies truly worth owning is still limited.
Arca continues to favor names such as Galaxy Digital (GLXY) and Securitize (SECZ), which Dorman says offer exposure to some of the faster-growing parts of the digital asset economy. Galaxy spans institutional trading, asset management, and the rapidly expanding AI data center business. Securitize, he says, stands to benefit from the migration of traditional financial assets onto blockchain infrastructure through real-world asset, or RWA, tokenization.
The investable pool could widen from here. Kraken is expected to begin its IPO process next year. Dorman adds that if crypto IPOs stop trading below issue price, citing COIN, BTGO, GEMI, and BLSH as reference points, more high-quality crypto startups could eventually reach public markets. He also notes that as traditional financial institutions deepen their involvement in digital assets, investors should have more listed companies to choose from.
Still, he presents equities as only one way to gain exposure to sector growth.
2. Existing tokens with real revenue and stronger token economics
The second category is one Arca has focused on repeatedly this year: established tokens tied to real businesses and real economic value.
Dorman says that for much of crypto’s history, there was a sharp disconnect between the success of a protocol or company and the performance of its token. A project could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, attract millions of users, and become essential infrastructure in the digital asset ecosystem, while token holders received little more than governance rights with limited practical value. He points to LINK and XRP as examples.
He calls that structure fundamentally flawed. In Arca’s view, the problem was driven in large part by bad legal advice, poor token architecture, and a regulatory environment that did not encourage teams to build tokens with direct economic value.
Dorman says the market is now seeing a different model emerge. More companies and protocols are using mechanisms such as revenue-funded buybacks, staking rights, and fee sharing to show that tokens can carry real economic value. These projects are not just selling a future vision of blockchain adoption. They are running actual businesses, producing actual revenue, and building systems that allow token holders to participate in that growth.
His core point is simple. If a protocol is growing revenue, gaining market share, and returning economic value to token holders, investors finally have something they can underwrite with real diligence. He is encouraged not only by projects that already fit that model, but also by newer ones being built around those principles from the start.
3. New token launches designed around utility from day one
The third bucket covers newly issued tokens with stronger design at the foundation.
Dorman describes the old playbook in blunt terms. Raise money from venture capital, issue a token with questionable utility, release only a small float to the public, and hope speculation drives the price higher before insider unlocks arrive. He says that model has been deeply unfriendly to secondary-market investors, and that most of those tokens have performed poorly. He also argues that exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase listing these structurally weak launches amounted to a form of complicity, one reason many retail investors left the market for good.
What interests him now is a newer generation of projects taking a different route. Instead of treating the token as an afterthought or a financing tool, these teams are embedding the token directly into the business model from the beginning.
His example is Venice AI and its token, VVV. Venice offers privacy-focused AI services that let businesses and individuals access top AI models without handing personal data to centralized platforms. Dorman says the most notable part is the token design. Users who stake VVV receive proportional access to Venice’s AI inference capacity, creating a direct link between demand for the service and demand for the token.
Venice also uses a revenue-funded buyback-and-burn mechanism, which ties operating performance more closely to token-holder outcomes. As demand for private AI inference rises, Dorman argues, the economic value of access to that compute should rise as well. He is careful to add that this does not automatically make VVV attractive at its current valuation. The point, rather, is that investors can evaluate it seriously on fundamentals, and that it does not need to mimic a traditional stock dividend model to create economic value.
For him, the key takeaway is not whether Venice ultimately succeeds. It is that VVV, and similar tokens that may follow, have a reason to exist beyond speculation alone.
4. Older tokens attached to strong businesses but open to redesign
The fourth category may be the most overlooked in the market today, according to Dorman. It is also one Arca says it has been discussing for more than six years.
He points back to July 2020, when Arca argued that one of the most attractive features of token investing was structural flexibility. Unlike traditional securities, token issuers can revise token-economic rules, add new functions, and create better incentive systems for holders over time. Arca repeated that point in April 2025, saying token economics and use cases can evolve across an asset’s full life cycle.
Dorman sees this as one of the most underappreciated traits in digital assets. Token economics are not fixed forever. A token designed badly five or 10 years ago does not have to remain a bad investment forever. Emission schedules can be changed. Buyback mechanisms can be added. Revenue sharing can be introduced. New use cases can be built. He notes that such changes still require team commitment, community support, and an appropriate legal structure, but the technical room to adjust is there.
That creates a specific opportunity set: projects where the business already works, the token has been left behind by the market, and the token model can still be rebuilt in a meaningful way.
Brave and BAT as the clearest example
Dorman uses Brave Browser and Basic Attention Token (BAT) to make the case. According to the article, Brave has more than 120 million users and ranks among the world’s top 50 websites by traffic, alongside Telegram, eBay, Discord, and GitHub. By almost any operating measure, he says, Brave has built a successful consumer product.
BAT, however, has not reflected that success as an investment over roughly the past decade. Dorman says the issue is not the underlying business. The issue is that BAT has been largely disconnected from the economic value created by Brave’s growth. Even as Brave added users, improved products, and expanded its ecosystem, that did not create meaningful incremental demand for BAT.
He says that may now be changing. In July, Brave released its BAT 4.0 roadmap, outlining a set of initiatives meant to integrate BAT more deeply into the Brave ecosystem. Those initiatives include a stablecoin-based Brave Rewards card, an integrated wallet connecting traditional payments and crypto, expanded payment infrastructure through BravePay, and new use cases tied to AI and digital commerce.
The most important piece, in his view, is Brave’s plan to use part of the net revenue from wallet services, payments, and other products to buy back BAT. Those repurchased tokens would then be used for user incentives, creator revenue sharing, and ecosystem development.
The article says the new rewards card passed 200,000 people on its waitlist within two months of launch, an early sign of interest. At the same time, BAT is now fully diluted, which means investors no longer face the risk of future scheduled unlock pressure.
Dorman’s reading is that Brave has already done the hardest part. It built a product used by more than 100 million people, established a global brand, created distribution, and assembled an ecosystem used daily by millions. Until recently, though, investors had little reason to own BAT. Brave is now trying to reconnect business performance with token economics.
He does not present that outcome as guaranteed. Buying back tokens and redistributing them to users is not the same as an equity buyback that permanently reduces float. It is also still unclear whether the new payments products will succeed.
That uncertainty is exactly where he sees the opportunity. Investors may be able to buy a token priced for years of weak token design rather than for the potential economic value of the underlying business. He adds that BAT is unlikely to be the only case.
Dorman says many crypto projects have spent years building real products, attracting users, and generating revenue while their tokens remained weak. In some cases, the business has grown while the token’s value has nearly gone to zero. He also points to successful non-crypto consumer brands that could potentially benefit from token models if they ever adopted them, including Netflix, Disney, Spotify, and Nike.
For years, avoiding these assets made sense because token holders had no claim on the economics of the underlying business. If that starts to change, and a token ignored for five years suddenly gains real economic value, the room for repricing could be substantial.
Arca’s broader conclusion
Dorman closes by arguing that for most of crypto’s history, investing in digital assets meant setting aside many of the basic rules investors use elsewhere. Revenue often did not matter. Profit often did not matter. Valuation often meant little. A project’s success and its token price were frequently unrelated. That, he says, helped create the impression that fundamental investing simply did not apply to crypto.
He believes that period is ending. In his framework, investors now have four increasingly credible ways to participate in digital asset growth. He says that growth is concentrated in three areas: stablecoins and payments, decentralized finance, and real-world asset tokenization.
Those opportunities span equity in strong companies, mature tokens with revenue growth and value-capture mechanisms, new tokens designed around sustainable economic utility from inception, and older tokens tied to solid businesses but capable of major economic redesign.
They are very different assets, but Dorman says they share one feature: when the underlying business or network grows, the asset itself has an identifiable economic logic that can support appreciation.
He returns one last time to the fourth category to explain why Arca has long viewed tokens as distinct from traditional securities. Equity ownership is relatively fixed. Token design can change dramatically over an asset’s life. That flexibility was abused in the past, he says, but more examples are now using it to create real economic value.
Arca made that argument six years ago. The timeline has been slower than expected, Dorman says, but the market may finally be starting to prove the point. The next strong crypto investment may not be a new company or a newly launched token at all. It could be tied to a mature business, with an older token that has finally found a way to reward investors.