Growing up, my family wasn’t loyal to sports teams – my parents are foreign, and sports rivalries never translated. Even at Duke, I could have cared less about college basketball (sorry). The only real institutional or brand allegiance I inherited was my father’s commitment to Delta Air Lines, which I still maintain. Then I got into crypto – and discovered what true tribalism looks like.
The age of the tribes
Crypto’s early culture was a world of factions. Bitcoin maximalists swore that nothing else mattered. Ethereum builders thought they were building the next internet. Each new chain arrived promising to fix the last: faster, cheaper, cleaner.
As the industry grew, the debates were technical on the surface but ideological underneath. Proof of Work vs. Proof of Play – Does Mining Waste a Ton of Energy? Can proof of stake really be equal? And classic blockchain trilemma stuff. Everyone had a better way to balance security, decentralization and scalability. ICOs, fair launches, community distributions, governance structures… the whole spectrum.
Today, new cypherpunk movements and privacy narratives have begun to paint Bitcoin as something of a legacy — a store of value for institutions and the wealthy. What was once cross-border is now infrastructure. The border has simply moved.
The ETF moment
But when we finally get where we need to go – pushed by ETP access – is everyone more or less in the same boat?
Bitcoin maxis (nowadays often conflated with seed oil people), Ethereum loyalists, XRP army and LINK marines (no, the military references are not lost on us). The communities that run exciting and promising projects like Solana, Sui, TAO and Zcash. All now in the same portfolio. Belief is the constant across every network, and market structure has made them into one asset class: the increasingly accepted, ever-diversifying crypto-asset class.
Why? Because ETPs rewired how exposure works. They standardized custody, distribution and access under one regulated system. When exposure becomes a single button in a brokerage app, does brand loyalty begin to lose pricing power?
Bitcoin, Ethereum – and now Solana, XRP, Dogecoin, Chainlink – are now settled through the same pipes: the same depositories, the same authorized participants, the same DTCC rails. The same investors will buy them: institutions, RIAs and model portfolio managers. The same risk teams will monitor them. What used to be ideological loyalty is fast becoming exposure management.
Common rails, common dreams
Global crypto ETPs now have billions in assets, 80 percent of which are in Bitcoin and 18 percent in Ethereum (Source: Bloomberg, December 1, 2025). The rest follows the same route: custody through a handful of custodians, clearing through DTCC, distribution through legacy platforms.
And with stake rewards emerging across more of these assets, crypto is also becoming an income play – a structural shift that is changing how investors think about crypto’s place in their portfolios.
Correlation tells the same story. Since 2022, the 90-day correlation between Bitcoin and Ethereum has averaged 83% (Source: Bloomberg, December 1, 2025)and most large-cap tokens now trade in the same risk bucket. Not because their fundamentals have fused, but because their infrastructure has. The same pipes that brought capital into Bitcoin are now taking it everywhere else.
From maxis to market share
Crypto will always have strains – it’s human nature, and frankly half the fun. But perhaps we are increasingly part of the same team. And maybe we’ll all get to the next level: if faith built the house, maybe the infrastructure keeps the lights on.
For the next wave of investors adopting crypto as an investment asset, it may be less about tribal identity and more about portfolio construction. The new question may not be which chain is better; that is, what is your emphasis on digital assets in general?
Tribalism once served a purpose – differentiation in a speculative frontier. It organized chaos, channeled our primordial instincts to win, create culture. But in crypto’s next era, we might all win. Together.
Rayhaneh Sharif-Askary is head of product and research at Grayscale Investments.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those stated in and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of Grayscale or its affiliates. Past results are not indicative of future results. This content should not be considered investment or tax advice. For investment or tax advice, please consult a financial professional. Some sources are for platforms that sit behind a paywall and may require a subscription to fully access them.
