What Wall Street Wants: Metrics That Matter

What if the metrics everyone uses to evaluate Solana are completely wrong? That's the provocative thesis presented by Jon Ma, founder of Artemis, at Breakpoint 2025. His message to the Solana community: stop celebrating developer activity and transaction counts—Wall Street doesn't care. Instead, Ma proposes a radical reframing of how Solana should be valued, one that could justify a trillion-dollar market cap and a $1,000 token price.

Summary

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Jon Ma, whose company Artemis provides data and analytics to major financial institutions including Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, VanEck, and Franklin Templeton, dropped a truth bomb on the Solana community: the metrics that the crypto industry obsesses over simply don't matter to institutional investors. TVL (Total Value Locked), developer activity, daily active addresses, and transaction counts may look impressive, but they don't move markets or influence valuations on Wall Street.

The core problem, according to Ma, is that Solana currently trades like a commodity—like oil and gas—based on supply and demand flows rather than fundamental business metrics. This stands in stark contrast to high-growth technology stocks like Nvidia, where revenue growth directly translates to stock price appreciation. Ma's solution is to reframe Solana as a marketplace—specifically, as "Internet Capital Markets"—connecting users who bring capital with financial applications built by developers.

This marketplace framework isn't just theoretical. Ma demonstrated that tokens and stocks with clear revenue metrics significantly outperform. BNB saw 3x revenue growth paired with roughly 3x market cap growth. Hyperliquid's 2.5x revenue increase corresponded with a 2x price increase. Robinhood's stock is surging alongside 50% year-over-year revenue growth. The pattern is clear: Wall Street rewards revenue and earnings, not vanity metrics.

Using this framework, Ma constructed a model showing how Solana could reach a $1,000 token price by 2030. The math relies on capturing just 5% of BCG's forecasted $9 trillion tokenization market, applying historical velocity multipliers to estimate transfer volume, and calculating take rates based on current fee structures. The result: a potential $20 billion in net income supporting a trillion-dollar valuation at 50x price-to-earnings.

Key Points:

The Failure of Traditional Crypto Metrics

Ma was blunt about the limitations of metrics the crypto industry typically celebrates. Despite Solana being number one in users, transactions, developer growth, application revenue, trading volume, and new token launches, these achievements don't translate into higher valuations among institutional investors. Wall Street analysts—both buy-side and sell-side—simply don't factor these metrics into their models.

The reason is straightforward: these metrics don't generate cash flows that traditional financial analysts can model. Developer activity doesn't appear on an income statement. Daily active addresses don't produce earnings per share. Artemis tried for four years to make these metrics matter, creating market comparisons for TVL and daily active addresses, but they found these simply don't move markets.

Solana as a Marketplace

The breakthrough insight is positioning Solana as a marketplace rather than a technology platform. Just as Uber connects riders with drivers and measures success through gross bookings and GMV (Gross Merchandise Value), and Airbnb connects hosts with guests measured by nights booked, Solana connects financial applications with users who bring capital.

In this framework, the key metric becomes "global transfer volume"—the GMV equivalent for Solana. This can be broken down into comprehensible subcategories: trading volume from perpetual and spot DEXs, payment volume from partnerships like Cash App and Western Union, and other volume from RWAs (Real World Assets) and DeFi protocols. This breakdown allows analysts to model growth based on concrete business developments—a new partnership with Western Union brings quantifiable transaction processing volume.

The Path to $1,000 SOL

Ma presented a detailed model responding to community questions about how Solana could reach $1,000 per token. The assumptions are grounded in third-party research: BCG forecasts $9 trillion in assets moving on-chain by 2030. If Solana captures just 5% of this market, that represents $450 billion in assets under management on the chain.

The model then applies a "velocity multiple"—how many times a single dollar moves in a year. Tron currently sees each dollar of stablecoin move approximately 90 times annually. Using a more conservative 60x multiple for Solana yields $27 trillion in transfer volume. Applying Solana's 2024 take rate (fees, Jito tips, and other revenue streams) produces $27 billion in revenue. After accounting for operating expenses and other costs, net income could reach $20 billion. A 50x price-to-earnings multiple—reasonable for high-growth technology—generates a trillion-dollar market cap and approximately $1,000 per token.

What Institutional Investors Actually Want

The asset managers and hedge funds that Artemis works with have a simple request: they want free cash flow and earnings numbers they can write reports about. They need models that can be presented to investment committees to justify allocating capital to SOL. The current lack of standardized revenue and earnings metrics makes this nearly impossible.

The marketplace framework provides exactly what these institutions need: AUM (Assets Under Management) to track capital on the chain, transfer volume broken down by category, and take rates that calculate ultimate revenue. This is the language Wall Street speaks, and it's the framework that could unlock significant institutional capital flows into Solana.

Facts + Figures

• Artemis customers include Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, VanEck, and Franklin Templeton—some of the largest asset managers in the world

• BNB's 3x revenue growth in 2024 corresponded with approximately 3x market cap growth

• Hyperliquid's revenue increased 2.5x with price rising approximately 2x in fall 2024

• Robinhood stock surged alongside 50% year-over-year revenue growth

• The three tokens with positive returns in early 2025—Hyperliquid, Tron, and BNB—all generate over $100 million in revenue with buybacks and value accrual to token holders

• Solana has had zero downtime in over 22 months

• BCG forecasts $9 trillion in assets will move on-chain by 2030

• Tron's velocity multiple is approximately 90x—each dollar of stablecoin moves 90 times per year

• Using a 60x velocity multiple and 5% market capture, Solana could generate $27 trillion in annual transfer volume by 2030

• At current take rates, this could translate to $27 billion in revenue and $20 billion in net income

• A 50x P/E multiple on $20 billion net income produces a trillion-dollar market cap

Top Quotes

"Solana trades like oil and gas. It trades like a commodity based off of supply and demand, based off of flows, unlike a high growth technology asset."

"TVL, developer activity, daily active addresses, transactions do not matter to Wall Street. It does not matter for evaluation. We tried that."

"Solana is a marketplace for financial applications that developers build and users that bring capital. That's why we call Solana internet capital markets."

"A lot of the asset managers come to us and they're like, we just want a free cash flow, like an earnings revenue number, that we can write a report on and convince additional hedge funds and asset managers to buy Sol."

"There's basically two paths forward for Solana. Solana can continue to trade based off flows like oil and gas as a commodity, or Solana can trade a high growth technology business like Robinhood, which trades on earnings, trades on 74 times earnings."

"At Artemis, we strongly believe the world is shifting towards fundamentals."

Questions Answered

Why don't traditional crypto metrics matter for Solana's valuation?

Traditional crypto metrics like TVL, developer activity, and transaction counts don't generate the cash flow and earnings numbers that Wall Street analysts need to build financial models. Institutional investors are trained to evaluate assets based on revenue, earnings, and free cash flow—metrics that can be compared across asset classes and presented to investment committees. Artemis spent four years trying to make metrics like "market cap to TVL" relevant to their institutional clients, but found they simply don't influence buying decisions or price movements.

How should investors think about Solana's value?

Solana should be viewed as a marketplace connecting users who bring capital with financial applications built by developers—similar to how Uber connects riders with drivers or Airbnb connects hosts with guests. The key metric becomes global transfer volume, which serves as the GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) equivalent for the blockchain. This transfer volume can be broken down into trading volume, payment volume, and other categories, allowing analysts to model growth based on concrete business developments like new partnerships.

What would it take for Solana to reach $1,000 per token?

According to the marketplace model presented, Solana reaching $1,000 requires capturing about 5% of the forecasted $9 trillion tokenization market by 2030, representing $450 billion in on-chain assets. With a velocity multiple of 60x (each dollar moving 60 times per year), this generates $27 trillion in transfer volume. At current take rates, this produces $27 billion in revenue and potentially $20 billion in net income. A 50x price-to-earnings multiple would yield a trillion-dollar market cap and approximately $1,000 per token.

What tokens have successfully driven price through revenue growth?

BNB, Hyperliquid, and Tron have demonstrated the correlation between revenue and token price that institutional investors expect. BNB's 3x revenue growth matched roughly 3x market cap appreciation. Hyperliquid's 2.5x revenue increase corresponded with 2x price gains. In traditional markets, Robinhood stock has surged alongside 50% year-over-year revenue growth. All three positive-performing tokens in early 2025 generate over $100 million in revenue and return value to token holders through buybacks.

What does Wall Street actually want from crypto projects?

Institutional investors want simple, comparable financial metrics: free cash flow, earnings, and revenue numbers they can analyze and report on. They need frameworks that allow them to track assets under management on a chain, understand where transfer volume comes from (payments, trading, RWAs), and calculate take rates that determine ultimate revenue. This standardized approach allows them to write research reports, make presentations to investment committees, and justify capital allocation to digital assets using the same analytical frameworks they apply to traditional equities.