Bitcoin is climbing, but the price only tells part of the story. The rest is in the data — who is buying, what they are buying, and why. Few companies see more of that than Blockworks. In June, Blockworks acquired another major crypto data company, bringing two of the industry's biggest data platforms under one roof. Joining me is Jason Yanowitz, Co-Founder of Blockworks. Jason, welcome to the show.
Good to be with you.
Bitcoin is moving higher. What is actually driving this rally and what makes it different from past run-ups?
The conversation around Bitcoin has always been — is this just a greater risk asset? As equities and tech stocks climb, Bitcoin goes up. What you have started to see for really one of the first times in history is a huge decoupling. If you look at what happened in September — the Fed hiked for the first time since 2023, the ten-year went through 5%, the dollar had its best month since June, and Bitcoin is still up 7% in September. I would say that is an amazing place to be going into Q4.
How have you positioned yourself and what has changed this year?
The biggest thing happening right now is the institutionalisation of the industry. In July, Bitcoin ETFs were almost $6 billion in the red for the year. Last week alone they took in $2.5 billion in five days — the best week in over a year. It flipped 2026 positive. The big trend investors need to be positioned for is how institutional investors think about this space as they come in. Looking at Blockworks data right now — at the beginning of the year, 130,000 people owned a tokenised stock. Today that is 4.6 million people. We have gone from 130,000 to 4.6 million people owning tokenised equities. That is the biggest trend in the industry — bringing capital markets, stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities onto public blockchains.
Who is actually buying right now and what are they buying besides Bitcoin?
The biggest new buyer right now is buyers who buy through traditional brokerages. For the first 15 years of digital assets, the only way to purchase tokens was through crypto exchanges — Coinbase, Kraken, OKEx. Now you can buy digital assets through a traditional brokerage and through ETFs. So the big new buyer is the accredited investor, maybe a financial advisor placing clients into these as part of a portfolio. The tokens that savvy investors are looking at beyond Bitcoin are Solana, HyperLiquid which is getting a lot of attention, Morpho, and Aave — the biggest lend-and-borrow protocols. These are protocols generating real revenue with real cash flow — and that is where the token comes in.
AI is showing up in crypto. Are AI agents real activity or mostly hype?
It is definitely reality. Our prediction at Blockworks is that in five years there will be a thousand times more AI agents online consuming information than humans. What this means for a data business — you have two huge exogenous shocks happening right now. Tokenisation is a massive supply shock bringing billions of assets onto public blockchains. AI and agents are a massive demand shock for information. BlackRock just published a paper called The Machine Native Economy, naming X402, USDC, and Base — Coinbase's blockchain — as the rails for agent payments. We think the next big financial data company will be really well positioned for the end consumer of their data being agents and AI, rather than just humans sitting behind an Excel model.
If you could show viewers one piece of Blockworks data instead of just the Bitcoin price — what would it be?
For the first time in this industry, there are real companies building real products generating real revenue. A protocol called HyperLiquid — in Q3 they generated over $100 million in revenue. Q2 they generated over $100 million. Q1 they generated over $100 million. Three quarters in a row generating nine figures of revenue. These are real companies building real products with real employees. I think what we are entering is going to be a historic bull run — not just in Bitcoin, but for the entire industry.
Awesome. Jason, thank you so much for joining us.
Jony, thanks so much.
