Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan Names Chainlink Among His “Mt. Rushmore” of 4 Digital Assets

Mt. Rushmore of Digital Assets

Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan has picked Chainlink (LINK) as one of four assets he expects to lead the digital asset market, alongside Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL). He laid out the selection in an interview with the New Era Finance podcast published on Monday, October 12, describing the four as a Mt. Rushmore for the sector. The arrangement of the list matters as much as the names on it. Hougan classed Bitcoin as a store of value and treated Ethereum and Solana as the networks on which digital financial services are being built. Chainlink he placed in a separate category: infrastructure that connects blockchains with external financial data, a role no settlement network plays. Unlike Ethereum or Solana, Chainlink does not compete for users or applications; it sells verification and connectivity to whoever builds. That role is why the blockchain oracle provider made the cut among the three altcoin selections. As traditional instruments such as stocks and bonds move on-chain, Hougan expects demand to grow for technology that verifies outside price information and links separate chains, since a tokenized asset is only as useful as the data and connectivity behind it. The reach of that service is already wide: per Bitwise, Chainlink’s services are used by more than 70 major financial institutions worldwide and are deployed across the decentralized finance ecosystem, giving the network customers on both sides of the on-chain divide. The figure gives his ranking a practical anchor: the endorsement rests not on trading momentum but on contracts already held with banks and asset managers. Hougan’s reasoning runs through a single question for each pick, namely what role the asset plays in a financial system migrating on-chain. On that test Bitcoin stores value, Ethereum and Solana run financial applications, and Chainlink (LINK) supplies the data layer that lets them work, which is what earns the network a place beside chains many times its size.

Tokenized Stocks Up 65.5%

Bitwise’s own research supplies the growth figure behind the argument. A report the firm released on October 8 found the tokenized stock market expanded 65.5% over the third quarter, reaching roughly $3.2 billion. That base is small by traditional standards, which is the point: the figure measures a market in its early quarters, compounding at a pace conventional equity issuance does not approach. Hougan reads the expansion as demand for exactly what Chainlink sells, since every tokenized share needs verified pricing and settlement that spans chains. He does not treat the four picks as permanent, however. Hougan named Hyperliquid (HYPE), a growing force in decentralized derivatives trading, and privacy-focused Zcash (ZEC) as challengers. Hyperliquid, he said, is working to prove it deserves its name carved into the market’s Mt. Rushmore, while Zcash argues that privacy should hold that spot. The Altcoin field, in other words, stays open even for a list that looks settled. Artificial intelligence is a second frontier in his outlook. In an investment memo published on October 7, Hougan cited NEAR Protocol as an example of AI agents fusing with blockchain technology, pointing to NEAR’s Intents cross-chain service, whose cumulative transaction volume has surpassed $30 billion. His central caveat concerns value capture rather than technology. Rising network usage does not automatically translate into a higher token price, he cautioned. How effectively a project’s revenue returns to token holders, the question tokenomics answers, is the variable that will separate future winners. He expects non-Bitcoin digital assets to be valued on their earnings the way stocks and bonds are, a standard that replaces narrative-driven valuations and applies whether an asset settles payments, feeds data or verifies private transactions.

Revenue, Not Usage, Decides

Tokenized equities at roughly $3.2 billion remain a small base, so the 65.5% quarterly growth rate carries more weight than the level itself; the Chainlink (LINK) thesis depends on that base compounding across quarters rather than on any single print. Our recent coverage points the same direction as the endorsement. The network unveiled the Fulcrum institutional collateral platform, citing $346 million in yearly losses from idle collateral, and its CCIP 2.0 issuer-set verifiers extend a 16-node verifier base toward asset issuers. What the sources here do not fix is the pass-through: how much of the institutional flow Chainlink wins actually returns to LINK holders once tokenomics decides value. That gap explains why outcome projections range as widely as our report on a Chainlink at $300 by 2027 scenario while the market that is supposed to drive it still measures a few billion dollars.