Grayscale Crypto Sectors: Setting a Standard for the Crypto Asset Class
Research Team
Last Updated: 10/23/2023 | 31 min. read
Crypto’s story may have started with Bitcoin, but this first innovation has since spurred something entirely new: a robust, fully functional digital economy leveraging blockchain technology.
For years, it was relatively easy for investors to ignore or downplay the emergence of new assets in the crypto ecosystem. However, today a completely different picture has emerged: Bitcoin is only one part of a complex, global blockchain ecosystem. While many parts of crypto share in the spirit of decentralization and transparency embodied by Bitcoin, most new projects have little to do with a global peer-to-peer payments system or a store of value. Instead, they demonstrate a wide range of possible uses of public blockchain technology including identity systems, digital artwork, file storage, web hosting, decentralized finance, user owned gaming platforms, and community-run applications. This emerging industry can be categorized into separate and distinct groupings.
In the pages to follow, we will (i) provide context on this ever-evolving crypto story, and (ii) offer a glimpse into how Grayscale organizes, understands, and defines this emerging asset class – introducing a comprehensive new framework called Grayscale Crypto Sectors (“Crypto Sectors”).
Crypto Sectors is a comprehensive new framework that identifies five distinct sectors, systematizing Grayscale’s specialized view of the crypto landscape. These five sectors are Currencies, Smart Contract Platforms, Financials, Consumer and Culture, and Utilities and Services. At Grayscale, we know that the crypto ecosystem – and thereby Crypto Sectors – will continue to evolve over time, so this systematization of the crypto landscape is designed to provide investors a framework to understand and monitor the evolution of each sector over time.
The Evolution of Technological Innovation
Throughout history, revolutionary technologies have transformed society. From the discovery of fire to the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press, technological advancements have pushed the upward bounds of human capabilities to new heights and have unleashed new levels of self-determination and upward mobility. In our opinion, the modern era has been largely influenced by four iterations of the industrial revolution, as illustrated above.
The first industrial revolution in the late 1700s was defined by mechanical production, as steam engines revolutionized transportation and production mechanisms. The application of this technology took the form of trains and ships, which enabled new levels of personal mobility for humans and rates of transport for goods. Building on this progress, the 1800s – or the second industrial revolution – was defined by the development of the internal combustion engine and industrial machinery, which modernized mass production and manufacturing processes. After millenia of watching birds soar in the air, humans themselves took flight in 1903[1]. The first two industrial revolutions marked a monumental leap forward, changing human reality in ways that only decades before might have sounded implausible[2].
By the late 1900s, tech companies in Silicon Valley commercialized these developments. The proliferation of computers, the internet, social media, and e-commerce enabled mass consumer adoption of technology, which transformed communication and business, and opened access to a truly global digital landscape. During this digital revolution, organizations and individuals around the world have gained, and continue to gain, new levels of influence and autonomy with personal, digital devices at their disposal – powering instant, global reach, distribution, and access to information and digital tools. Consistent with Moore’s Law, computational power started to double every two years, leading to an unprecedented rate of change: consider the iPhone, which possesses processing power ten thousand times greater than that of the Apollo 11 spacecraft and more than a million times the amount of storage[4]. As a result of this new rapid pace of development in computation, with the third industrial revolution, humans started to merge with technology, as computers, phones, and wearables increasingly have become extensions of the human experience[5].
The fourth industrial revolution represents the next iteration of technological expansion and the increased human-tech connection. Today, we are only at the beginning of this new era. The fourth industrial revolution consists of intelligent computing, which involves autonomous systems that augment human capabilities and coordination mechanisms. Autonomous systems include AI-powered systems, like ChatGPT, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and smart devices, but also global decentralized systems governed by code, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. In the fourth industrial revolution, some believe that code–not bureaucracies, institutions, or rules of tradition–will increasingly determine the ways humans provide value to one another[6].
What’s the role of crypto in the fourth industrial revolution?
Each iteration of the industrial revolution provided a faster and/or more cost effective means of providing value. Crypto is similar. Blockchains remove intermediaries and enable direct interactions between parties, which creates more efficient and less costly transactions for builders and users alike. As a result, we believe the crypto asset class is often motivated by a desire to update and improve legacy systems.
The traditional financial system is built on a web-like network of intermediaries, each charging fees, and thereby increasing costs and time for users. Banks may take days to settle payments using networks like SWIFT, which launched over 50 years ago. Crypto solves these inefficiencies by connecting individuals directly (peer to peer) through a protocol managed by code. By streamlining financial interactions, crypto can offer faster and cheaper ways to process value.
Unlike traditional models with intermediaries and closed ecosystems, crypto platforms are open-source and permissionless, allowing for any person in the world with internet access to use and any developer to build. This means no arbitrary deplatforming and more value accrual to network participants rather than to centralized intermediaries. The resulting effect is global collaboration, subsequent rapid innovation, and new levels of access for people in developing countries. It’s our belief that, over time, this could potentially unlock a redistribution of wealth and upward mobility.
This is particularly important as society faces unprecedented levels of income inequality and ventures further into the age of intelligent computing. Going forward, there is a risk that AI-powered systems will centralize power, data collection, and decision making to even greater levels. As we continue to integrate with technology through AI-assistants, wearables, and smart sensors made by companies such as Apple, Meta, Amazon, Tesla, and Open-AI, an increasing amount of personal data will be stored on centralized servers. This data is not only financial but social, biometric, and medical data, which presents notable risks around individual security and privacy. Crypto and the features inherent in blockchain technology (decentralization, transparency, and individual ownership of data) can help mitigate these risks.
Similar to eras of the past, in crypto, there will likely be applications in the future that have not yet even been imagined today. As this nascent space continues to evolve, Grayscale designed the Crypto Sectors framework to help investors better understand the developments of this increasingly important asset class.
Introducing Grayscale Crypto Sectors for Investors
Although crypto is less mature than many elements of the traditional global economy, it’s important to have frameworks to understand how each piece of the cryptocurrency puzzle complements each other, especially given that crypto can often appear highly technical. To better understand the crypto space, we created Grayscale Crypto Sectors, which groups crypto assets by function–both from a technical and user perspective.
We believe there are parallels in Grayscale Crypto Sectors to the way investors currently think about today’s financial markets. For example, in our framework, lending or trading crypto assets could fall under our “Financials” sector that perform similar functions to companies to the GICS “Financials” sector. Alternatively, many enterprise-level applications in crypto could fall under our “Utilities and Services” sector, similar to the GICS “Utilities” and “Industrials” sectors.
In the section to follow, we’ll outline our methodology and framework and then introduce each segment of the crypto ecosystem, sector by sector.
Framework and methodology
We believe that there are three primary considerations to understanding how crypto assets differ from one another: how the protocol works, its use case, and how it provides investable exposure.
Crypto assets differ largely in terms of function–both technically in terms of how the asset is constructed or built and in use case in terms of how it is used by the end user. Consider a Layer 1 smart contract blockchain, which can be thought of as a decentralized version of the Apple App store. While a Layer 1 smart contract blockchain differs in certain ways from a Layer 2 smart contract blockchain[9], both are grouped within the Smart Contract Platform Sector because both share a core use case: processing transactions of decentralized applications (“dApps”). Additionally, dApp users on a particular network (Layer 1 or Layer 2) must pay transaction fees in the native token for transacting on the network. In this way, its underlying token is linked to the usage and activity of the different decentralized applications built upon it.
Considering these factors, the next part of this paper is designed to be a journey through each element of the frontier of the crypto asset class. As with GICS in traditional finance, within crypto, each sector is distinct. The Grayscale Crypto Sectors can be categorized based on function, technical features, and investable exposure. However, the distinction here is that Crypto Sectors includes protocols that are permissionless, peer-to-peer, decentralized, community run, and open-source.
Currencies: a medium of exchange and store of value
Smart Contract Platforms: infrastructure that enables autonomy and accessibility for developers for building applications
Financial: financial applications to lend, borrow, and trade assets directly with one another
Consumer and Culture: gaming, art, music, and media applications.
Utilities and Services: tooling that augments the functionality of existing smart contract applications.
Examples provided for illustrative purposes
Investors can think of the Grayscale Currencies Crypto Sector similar to how they might think of traditional currencies—with some critical distinctions. For many investors, a currency is typically defined as a (i) store of value, (ii) medium of exchange, and (iii) unit of account. The value of a currency reflects its perceived worth among users as well as aggregate demand in light of local, societal, and global macroeconomic risks. The same holds true with currencies in crypto.
The open-sourced and decentralized nature of crypto inherently re`moves the need for an intermediary—traditionally a central bank. In this way, currencies in crypto are “trustless”; instead of needing a centralized authority or intermediary, network users need to trust the underlying code.
Other assets in the Grayscale Currencies Crypto Sector include Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ripple[16]. While various currencies may vary across usage, adoption, and settlement time, the similarities across all is that the primary functions of the network are as a peer-to-peer payments system and store of value.
Examples provided for illustrative purposes
Smart Contract blockchains broadened the scope of utility in the crypto ecosystem when Ethereum was created in 2015. These blockchains power decentralized applications (“dApps”) that run on smart contracts, or self-executing agreements between the underlying blockchain and the application to process transactions. These smart contract blockchains are the core piece of infrastructure that host decentralized applications, which vary from financial (e.g. Uniswap) to gaming (e.g. The Sandbox) to third-party services (e.g. Chainlink). You can think of these blockchains as decentralized versions of Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) or the Apple App Store in that they provide the platform, tooling, and resources for developer activity.
In the sections to follow we’ll explore various Crypto Sectors and use cases built on and executed by smart contract blockchains–whether they fall under the Financials, Consumer and Culture, or Utilities and Services sectors.
Examples provided for illustrative purposes
Applications in the Grayscale Financials Crypto Sector enable users to borrow, lend, and trade assets peer-to-peer rather than through intermediaries. As a result, the applications in this sector can offer sometimes more direct and efficient transactions than the traditional financial services. Oftentimes, these transactions are also cheaper. The Grayscale Financials Crypto Sector provides the economic backbone of the crypto economy as it facilitates ecosystem liquidity, leverage, and efficient capital allocation through trading, lending, and borrowing. Notably, there are several areas where blockchain-based finance is believed to have legitimate advantages over traditional forms of finance.
First, blockchain-based financial markets are “always on”, globally open 24/7 and 365 days a year—a stark contrast from the Monday to Friday workday hours of traditional finance. Second, these protocols offer significant advantages around the availability of real-time data. Unlike public companies, where financials are typically available quarterly, the transparency of blockchains allow for greater efficiency since investors can update their investment views daily with new information. Third, blockchain-based platforms are also globally inclusive. For example, individuals in countries with less developed financial systems might not have access to banking, however, so long as they have an internet connection, they may trade, borrow, or lend through protocols like Uniswap or Aave.
Lastly, in traditional finance, there is often an intermediary charging fees for financial transactions. In contrast, blockchain-based finance allows for direct financial transactions between individuals rather than through intermediaries. As a result, users can trade, lend, and borrow at significantly less expensive rates than before as their counterparty is an individual. In other words, blockchains streamline financial interactions, facilitating more efficient and less costly transactions. In the future, this could open up the marketplace for traditional financial services to a much larger audience of users at any point in time.
Consumer and Culture
Examples provided for illustrative purposes
The Grayscale Consumer and Culture Sector includes crypto applications that span creative industries such as entertainment, music, media, collectibles, sports, and art. These applications enable new levels of ownership over the platforms on which consumers devote their time and money.
At the heart of the Grayscale Consumer and Culture Crypto Sector’s value proposition are Non-Fungible Tokens (“NFTs”)—digital assets stored on a blockchain that represent ownership over a distinct, unique item. Dollars (or Bitcoin) are an example of “fungible” items as each unit is equivalent; conversely, every NFT is “non-fungible” as each is entirely unique in its characteristics. Because the blockchain is transparent, NFTs can guarantee the authenticity of a specific item. This might take the form of a rare collectible, a trading card, or piece of art. The blockchain also allows for traceability of an NFT’s provenance, or history of ownership.
Let’s also explore the art market. In the art world, centralized intermediaries facilitate auction processes. In most cases, the artist that created a particular piece of artwork doesn’t get to participate in the economics of any secondary marketplace trades of their art. Instead, only the seller and the auction house profit. However, in crypto, royalties can be programmed into digital NFT artwork, enabling artists to take a small share of each trade of the art into perpetuity. In the future, this model may become particularly relevant for other creative industries beyond digital art, such as music.
In this way, tokens allow for individual item ownership and bottom-up user-owned platforms. These assets are democratizing and reshaping our preconceived notions of ownership, unlocking fractional ownership and investing in a way never conceived, and redrawing the boundaries of owner and user.
Utilities and Services
Examples provided for illustrative purposes
The Grayscale Utilities and Services Crypto Sector is a crucial part of the crypto ecosystem as they augment the capabilities of each of the sectors mentioned above. In a sense, this sector represents the “picks-and-shovels'' for developers building in the ecosystem.
The majority of applications in this sector perform one of the following functions: (i) tie crypto applications to real world assets in real-time through oracles, (ii) increase liquidity and usability of assets through liquid staking solutions, (iii) aggregate physical, data, and computation-related services all over the world for consumers through decentralized networks.
Oracles are third-party services that connect decentralized applications with real-world data via price feeds. Prior to the advent of oracles in 2017, crypto was essentially siloed. The creation of Chainlink shifted this paradigm. Real world data from oracles can encompass a wide range of information: stock prices, geolocation and weather data, and event outcomes (like sports scores or election results). In allowing dApps to seamlessly incorporate data from activity throughout the internet, oracles exponentially expanded the use cases of crypto.
The Utilities and Services Sector also plays a significant role in staking, where token holders earn rewards in return for locking up tokens to help secure a network. Liquid Staking Derivatives (“LSDs”) are protocols that enable individuals to stake their assets and support a network’s security while also being able to hold, use, and trade a derivative of that capital. In doing so, liquid staking derivatives increase ecosystem liquidity. LSDs also enable smaller holders to pool their resources, lowering the barrier to participate in staking and contribute to network security.
In addition to staking, this sector plays a pivotal role in offering decentralized alternatives to services that have traditionally been monopolized by tech giants. In crypto, web services connect individuals seeking various services with independent providers of these services. Traditionally, capital requirements have led to market dominance by large corporate entities such as AWS for cloud computing or Google Cloud for data storage. This gets expensive, as market concentration can lead to restricted competition and, as a result, service fees. In crypto, however, tokens bootstrap independent service providers, which breaks down the barrier of capital requirements. This, in turn, allows for greater competition and pricing based on network supply and demand. Examples include data storage (Filecoin), Internet of Things (Helium) and compute power (Render).
Over the course of human history, technological innovations have spurred societal changes. From Gutenburg’s printing press to the steam engine to the internet, each distinctive era was defined by groundbreaking technologies that shaped how we learn, work, and interact. The exponential growth of technology is built on the shoulders of past accomplishments, pushing the limits of what is achievable ever higher. Today’s digital age is defined by rapid innovation and the disruption of legacy systems.
In this current age, technologies like blockchain are leading this disruption, unlocking opportunities to democratize access to finance and information, transferring wealth, and challenging traditional notions of ownership. Crypto empowers individuals with autonomy denominated in tokens that serve as the economic asset, or network currency, that power public blockchains. Of fundamental importance, in crypto, the investment is completely democratized; everyone who participates in the network is an investor. Because of this new paradigm, it is paramount that investors understand the assets within this nascent space and stay abreast of relevant developments.
Blockchains and crypto assets are waving in what is heralded as the next generation of the internet. Crypto offers a new way of providing the same kinds of services we use in a more direct manner, offering more efficient and less costly transactions. Technological disruptions–from the steam engine to planes to the internet–have always enabled greater levels of efficiency, and crypto is, through many applications, already demonstrating examples of that.
Ultimately, crypto represents a meaningful shift in how we interact with technology. No longer do we have to go through intermediaries to facilitate trading or hold assets on our behalf. As developers continue to build across the Grayscale Crypto Sectors–from currencies to infrastructure to applications–we believe a rising tide will lift all boats, propelling society into new levels of individual ownership and self-sovereignty.
[9] Specifically, Layer 2s batch transaction data and rely on Layer 1 security
[16] Assets are subject to change in the future
[18] The capability to copy underlying code and apply it to create a new chain.
Important Information
Indexes are unmanaged and one cannot invest directly in an index
Investments in digital assets are speculative investments that involve high degrees of risk, including a partial or total loss of invested funds. Investments in digital assets are not suitable for any investor that cannot afford loss of the entire investment.
All content is original and has been researched and produced by Grayscale Investments, LLC (“Grayscale”) unless otherwise stated herein. No part of this content may be reproduced in any form, or referred to in any other publication, without the express consent of Grayscale.
This information should not be relied upon as research, investment advice, or a recommendation regarding any products, strategies, or any investment in particular. This material is strictly for illustrative, educational, or informational purposes and is subject to change. This content does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to sell or buy any security in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal. There is not enough information contained in this content to make an investment decision and any information contained herein should not be used as a basis for this purpose.
This content does not constitute a recommendation or take into account the particular investment objectives, financial situations, or needs of investors.
Investors are not to construe this content as legal, tax or investment advice, and should consult their own advisors concerning an investment in digital assets. The price and value of assets referred to in this content and the income from them may fluctuate. Past performance is not indicative of the future performance of any assets referred to herein. Fluctuations in exchange rates could have adverse effects on the value or price of, or income derived from, certain investments.
Certain of the statements contained herein may be statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements that are based on Grayscale’s views and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance, or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. In addition to statements that are forward-looking by reason of context, the words “may, will, should, could, can, expects, plans, intends, anticipates, believes, estimates, predicts, potential, projected, or continue” and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. Grayscale assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained herein and you should not place undue reliance on such statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. Although Grayscale has taken reasonable care to ensure that the information contained herein is accurate, no representation or warranty (including liability towards third parties), expressed or implied, is made by Grayscale as to its accuracy, reliability, or completeness. You should not make any investment decisions based on these estimates and forward-looking statements.
There is no guarantee that the market conditions during the past period will be present in the future. Rather, it is most likely that the future market conditions will differ significantly from those of this past period, which could have a materially adverse impact on future returns. NO REPRESENTATION IS BEING MADE THAT ANY ACCOUNT WILL OR IS LIKELY TO ACHIEVE PROFITS OR LOSSES SIMILAR TO THOSE SHOWN. PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS. We selected the timeframe for our analysis because we believe it broadly constitutes the most complete historical dataset for the digital assets that we have chosen to analyze.
Share This
Like what you see?
Subscribe below for the latest research from Grayscale.
