In brief
- Mike Novogratz declared the “age of speculation” in crypto is over, shifting to real-world asset tokenization.
- Galaxy is launching a $100 million hedge fund with 30% crypto exposure, 70% in financial services stocks.
- An October 2025 flash crash wiped $19 billion in derivatives, leaving a lasting impact on market narratives.
The “age of speculation” that captivated crypto traders is ending, Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz told CNBC in an interview Tuesday.
Instead, he told the bitcoin-crypto-trading-speculation-galaxy-ceo-mike-novogratz.html" target="_blank" class="sc-adb616fe-0 bJsyml" rel="nofollow">news outlet the market is “going to be transposed or replaced by us using these same rails, these crypto rails, to bring banking [and] financial services to the whole world. And so, it’s going to be real-world assets with much lower returns.”
Novogratz said the recent shift in crypto market dynamics is a reflection of change in the broader finance sector. He compared the ethereum-solana-binance-ftx-acquisition" target="_blank" class="sc-adb616fe-0 bJsyml" rel="nofollow">November 2022 drawdown that followed the bankruptcy of crypto exchange FTX to the October 2025 flash crash that wiped out $19 billion worth of crypto derivatives.
Although there wasn’t one big event (like the FTX wipeout) to trigger the October Bitcoin crash, it still left a mark.
“Crypto is all about narratives, it’s about stories,” he said. “Those stories take a while to build and you’re pulling people in… so when you wipe out a lot of those people, Humpty Dumpty doesn’t get put back together right away.”
But that doesn’t mean he’s lost his taste for crypto markets.
Galaxy just launched a $100 million crypto hedge fund aimed at balancing crypto exposure with equities. The fund is set to launch before the end of March.
It will invest up to 30% of its assets in crypto tokens, and the remainder in financial services stocks that Galaxy believes will be affected by changes in digital asset technologies and laws, according to a Financial Times report.
Novogratz also credited the growing interest in tokenization with driving a shift in crypto market dynamics. Tokenization is the effort to move off-chain assets, like stocks and bonds, onto the blockchain using tokens.
But, he added, tokenized stocks will have a “a different return profile” compared to the gains that crypto traders are used to chasing.
The price of Bitcoin has fallen more than 47% from its October all-time high mark above $126,000 to a recent price of $66,551, and fell near the $60,000 mark last week. Bitcoin is down 10% over the last week, with Ethereum matching that recent decline and top altcoins like xrp" target="_blank" class="sc-adb616fe-0 bJsyml" rel="nofollow">XRP and Solana marking even sharper losses during the same span.
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