Welcome to our institutional newsletter, Crypto Long & Short. This week:
- Jordan Brewer on the missing piece in token markets: institutional quality investor relations.
- Martin Burgherr on crypto markets maturing, becoming more efficient and lower risk for institutions.
- Top headlines institutions should be aware of by Francisco Rodrigues.
- Collector Crypt: Revenue recovery meets token revaluation in Chart of the Week.
-Alexandra Levis
Expert insight
Guide, live, repeat: the hidden driver of token performance
By Jordan Brewer, Investment Analyst, Runa Digital Assets
In early March, just three months after a Solana Breakpoint appearance on the main stage by Ranger Finance co-founder Fathur Rahman, and two months after the ICO, token holders forced the liquidation of the protocol’s treasury. How does a 14x oversubscribed ICO unravel so quickly? The answer: poor investor relations.
Institutional-quality investor relations remain the missing piece in token markets. Crypto has spent years in a venture-style framework, but protocols are now seeking public market investors to provide more lasting capital. An important part of investor relations is a regular investor call where management reviews forward guidance – teams at Maple Finance and EtherFi lead here. These calls are solid, but this is just the beginning and the stakes are high. Done well, token valuations are rewarded; done poorly, the downside is steep.
It pays to give guidance (as long as you beat it)
Research shows that the value of forward guidance isn’t just in providing it, it’s in its accuracy. Bartov, Givoly, and Hayn (2002) found that firms that consistently meet or beat their own guidance enjoy a measurable share price premium relative to firms that do not. This premium composition for “seasoned beaters”, meaning that the market increasingly trusts and rewards management teams that repeatedly deliver. In addition, beat guidance is a leading indicator of future stock performance, regardless of whether the beat was genuine or the result of earnings or expectation management. Skinner and Sloan (2002) also demonstrated the reverse: growth stocks that disappoint relative to earnings expectations experience an asymmetrically large negative price reaction that far exceeds the upside of a positive surprise. Guidance accuracy is a proxy for management credibility, and credibility is a direct input to valuation multiples.
Crypto is starting to produce its own version of this dynamic. In December 2024, when Maple’s AUM was $460 million and their ARR was $4 million, Maple set guidance of $4 billion in AUM and $25 million in ARR for 2025, and later raised guidance to $5 billion in AUM and $30 million in ARR. Maple delivered and reached $5 billion in AUM and $28 million in 30-day annualized revenue in October (see table below). It’s a guide-and-live cadence that any public market investor would recognize and reward. From December 2024 to June 2025, the SYRUP token price rose from $0.10 to a peak of $0.60, outperforming competitors such as AAVE by 475%.
EtherFi is a good example of this dynamic. On their March 2026 token holder call, the team projected a 55% reduction in customer acquisition costs while increasing their advertising budget by 420% throughout 2026, which would translate to 11x year-over-year customer growth. It’s that kind of specific guidance that gives investors something concrete to hold onto.
However, guidance without delivery is just marketing. Investor relations in crypto doesn’t end with a dashboard, that’s where it starts. Guidance and accountability are at the heart of the credibility of protocol teams, and it is credibility that builds conviction with public investors.
Principled perspectives
Institutions separate custody from execution in crypto
By Martin Burgherr, customer manager, Sygnum Bank
There is a quiet but significant shift underway in how institutional capital moves through crypto markets. Large trading firms are increasingly separating where they hold assets from where they execute trades. More than a tactical change, it signals a broader evolution in the market structure for digital assets.
For most of crypto’s institutional history, there has been a basic architectural assumption: To access liquidity, you keep capital on the exchange. Historically, if you want to trade on an on-chain options exchange or run strategies across multiple venues, you transfer the security to each exchange and leave it there. The model works until you ask what it costs.
These costs are not just counterparty risk, although that matters too. It is capital inefficiency. Every dollar posted as margin on an exchange is inactive, earns nothing, and cannot be redistributed. For an institutional trading desk managing hundreds of millions in positions, the opportunity cost is huge – and in a rising rate environment, it’s getting harder to justify.
The infrastructure is catching up
The separation of custody and execution is not theoretical. Firms including Wintermute and Nomura’s digital asset arm Laser Digital already operate this way, using collateral in regulated bank custody while retaining full access to exchange liquidity. BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized money market fund, which sits at around $2.5 billion AUM, is now accepted as OTC collateral. The infrastructure is not built by startups. It is built by the institutions that intend to use it.
When collateral is moved into regulated custody, it can take a different form. US Treasuries or tokenized money market fund shares can serve as trading collateral while earning returns. The security doesn’t just sit in a box – it stays productive while still supporting trading activity. Capital that was previously idle can now generate returns, reducing the effective cost of maintaining trading positions. This is not a marginal efficiency gain. It fundamentally changes the economics of running an institutional crypto trading operation.
A maturing market structure
Crypto is starting to follow a familiar pattern. Traditional finance solved this problem a long time ago – shares are traded on exchanges, assets are settled through custodian banks. The two functions live in different places, controlled by different entities. This separation is what makes institutional participation possible on a large scale.
According to EY-Parthenon’s 2026 Institutional Investor Survey, 73% of institutional investors plan to increase their digital asset allocations this year, with respondents becoming more selective about counterparty risk. The infrastructure is scaled to accommodate them. The migration is already underway.
This week’s headlines
By Francisco Rodrigues
This week’s headlines highlight that while the bridge between traditional finance and the crypto sector continues to grow, the devastation caused by smart contract exploits is hitting the market.
- US military runs a Bitcoin node, sees crypto as ‘power projection’ vs China: Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, told Congress that INDOPACOM runs a live node on the Bitcoin network for cyber security testing and sees the protocol as a tool for US power projection against China.
- Aave raises nearly 80% of the $200 million it needs to cover bad debt left by the Kelp DAO exploit: The DeFi United recovery initiative has raised about $160 million of the $200 million needed to recapitalize rsETH and erase the bad debt, with Mantle and Aave DAO providing 57,000 million ETH in total.
- More than 100 crypto firms urge Senate to move forward with US market structure bill: A coalition including Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, Andreessen Horowitz and Paradigm wrote to the Senate Banking Committee pushing for a markup of the Clarity Act, warning that without a federal crypto framework, investment and jobs will move offshore to EU jurisdictions.
- JPMorgan says persistent security flaws are curbing DeFi’s institutional appeal: Wall Street’s biggest bank told clients that repeated bridge and infrastructure exploits, headlined by the KelpDAO attack that wiped out about $20 billion in TVL within days, and flat ETH-denominated growth are pushing capital toward Tether’s USDT and keeping institutions on the sidelines.
- The EU’s biggest move against Russia so far includes escalating crypto-sanctions evasion: Brussels’ 20th sanctions package imposes a sectoral ban on all Russia-based crypto service providers and DeFi platforms, bans transactions in the digital ruble and RUBx stablecoin, and designates the Kyrgyz stock exchange for the third time that TengriCoin has been hit for the third time in the VA, Garantex–Grinex–A7A5 evasion network.
Chart of the week
Collector Crypt: revenue recovery meets token revaluation
After peaking in September 2025, Collector Crypt’s weekly revenue retreated sharply before falling back to ~$1M/week since March – with the CEO’s revenue-funded buyback program providing a mechanical bid below CARDS throughout the recovery. The latest price surge was then turbocharged by a community update on April 24 that claimed $146.9 million in Q1 revenue and $8.6 million in profit, though the token remains 73% below its all-time high.
Listen. Read. Clock. Engage.
- Listen: Did you hear? Consensus Miami is heating up. Recently added speakers include: US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, US Senator Ashley Moody and Donald Trump Jr., Co-Founder, World Liberty Financial. Get 20% off your ticket today!
- Read: In Crypto for Advisors, First Digital’s Vincent Chok unpacks the rise of “agentic finance”, where #AI agents move beyond advice to execute financial transactions.
- Clock: CoinDesk’s NYSE Public Keys with host Jennifer Sanasie. Brett W. Redfearn, president of Securitize, joins in to discuss the $30 billion in tokenized assets on the chain, Michael Reinking of the NYSE provides a macro outlook for digital assets, and AVAX One CEO Jolie Kahn explains a financial strategy around Avalanche.
- Engage: David LaValle will speak at June’s ICI conference in Nashville. Let’s connect on the spot!
Looking for more? Receive the latest crypto news from Pakinomist.com and market updates from Pakinomist.com/institutions.
Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of CoinDesk, Inc., CoinDesk Indices, or its owners and affiliates.
