Even in crypto, what goes up must come down.
“You really just mathematically can’t have that [explosive upside] forever,” Coinbase (COIN) head of institutional strategy John D’Agostino told Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid. (Disclosure: Yahoo Finance has a partnership with Coinbase.)
He noted that if bitcoin’s (BTC-USD) growth continued indefinitely at its historical compounding rates, the asset would eventually become “larger than the global economy.”
Bitcoin has seen its price fall over 25% year to date. The digital asset’s value now is far below its $125,000 high reached in October 2025.
But these periods of “mean reversion” or so-called corrections are a “very natural” part of a scarce asset’s life cycle, D’Agostino argued.
While the narrative of mean reversion implies a long-term cushion, the short-term reality remains bleak. D’Agostino acknowledged that the logic “is not comforting to anyone who came in at the top,” but he urged nervous investors to look past the price tickers and toward the underlying infrastructure.
Read more: How to navigate a crypto meltdown
The institutional shift has continued. D’Agostino noted that traditional finance giants like Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) are now using USDC to accelerate payment settlements, introducing the concept of “settlement finality.”
He compared the current financial system to waiting days for an Amazon (AMZN) package to arrive during a snowstorm. In his view, society is no longer willing to tolerate the delays and wants to move toward instant, secure transactions.
“Once we have the chance to have things done much, much faster, securely, safely, with finality, we will choose to do it that way,” D’Agostino said.
Despite the institutional optimism, a healthy dose of skepticism remains the safest bet for retail traders. While the infrastructure is undeniably improving and the “math” of a correction makes sense on paper, the volatility of the scarce asset leaves individual investors exposed to massive swings.
Likening crypto to the tech industry, D’Agostino admitted the digital asset ecosystem now needs a catalyst to get out of its sideways trading.
The most potent catalyst may be legislative. D’Agostino compared the potential impact of the Clarity Act to the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which transformed global commodity markets decades ago. By establishing a formal market structure to govern how banks and ecosystem participants behave, the act would provide the legal guardrails for the industry to move beyond its “negotiation process.”