Every asset class eventually gets its pantheon. For crypto, that list has traditionally been short: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. Now Bitwise’s Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan is arguing there’s a fourth face that belongs on the mountain.
Hougan has named Chainlink as a potential “fourth member of Mount Rushmore in crypto,” a designation that carries weight coming from the head of one of the largest crypto-native asset managers. The firm isn’t just talking, either. Bitwise launched the Bitwise Chainlink ETF, trading under the ticker CLNK on NYSE Arca, on January 14, 2026, with a management fee of 0.34%.
Why Chainlink, and why now
Blockchains are, by design, isolated systems. They don’t natively know what’s happening in the outside world. The price of a stock, the outcome of an election, the current interest rate: none of that data exists on-chain unless something puts it there. That something is an oracle, and Chainlink is the dominant player in that market.
Every smart contract that needs real-world information, whether it’s a lending protocol checking collateral prices or a stablecoin verifying reserve balances, relies on oracles to deliver that data reliably. Chainlink’s network powers roughly 70% of DeFi protocols, according to Hougan’s analysis.
