Bernstein Expects Crypto Revenue to Jump to Around $400B by 2033

The broker expects on-chain revenue to grow to about half of total cryptocurrency revenue from around 15% today.

AccessTimeIconJan 16, 2023 at 11:21 a.m. UTC
Updated May 9, 2023 at 4:06 a.m. UTC
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This year will lay the foundations for a decade-long “golden age” of innovation for cryptocurrency applications, as crypto pivots from a fat infrastructure thesis to a fat application thesis, Bernstein said in a research report on Monday.

The broker expects total crypto revenue to grow by sixteen fold in the next 10 years, from around $25 billion in 2023 to about $400 billion by 2033.

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  • Of the estimated $400 billion revenue pool, Bernstein says that “decentralized blockchain-driven revenue” will account for nearly half of the total revenue pool from only 15% today.

    Bernstein expects on-chain revenue to inflect from less than around $4 billion today to close to almost $200 billion in the next ten years, driven by “innovation in blockchain scalability and application growth across financial services and consumer tech segments.”

    Consumer and finance applications are expected to account for about 75% of on-chain revenue from around 40% last year, the report said.

    Within on-chain financial applications, decentralized exchanges (DEX), lending and structured/tokenized products are expected to be the lead revenue drivers, the report added.

    Non-fungible-token (NFT) based gaming revenue is predicted to be the largest driver of growth within on-chain consumer applications, and for off-chain revenue, Bernstein expects institutional services - including prime broking, custody and market making - to be a growth driver.

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    Will Canny is CoinDesk's finance reporter.


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