A new discussion among analysts at Delphi Digital has reignited a long-running debate in the crypto industry: Can a crypto token and a company’s equity both hold significant value without competing for the same economic benefits?
During a July 15 roundtable titled “Are Crypto Tokens Fundamentally Broken?”, Delphi analysts argued that many crypto projects may be overvaluing their tokens when the majority of a project’s profits and assets are actually controlled by a private company.
The debate centres on a simple question: Who ultimately receives the money generated by the business?
According to analyst Ceteris, company shareholders generally have stronger rights because equity represents ownership in the business. Shareholders can benefit from profits, dividends, company growth, and potential sale proceeds. By contrast, many crypto tokens provide utility, governance rights, staking rewards, or access to a network but do not automatically give holders a legal claim on company revenue or assets.
Because of this, Ceteris argued that a token’s market value should usually be lower than the value of the company behind it unless there is a clear mechanism that transfers value from the business to token holders.
The analysts warned that confusion often arises when projects blur the line between the company and the token. A project may promote its token as the centre of its ecosystem while keeping valuable assets such as intellectual property, customer relationships, revenue streams, and ownership rights within the corporate entity. In such cases, investors may assume the token benefits from the entire business even when it has no direct claim on those assets.
This can create conflicting interests between shareholders and token holders. Equity investors may prefer profits to remain within the company or be used for growth, while token holders may want revenue-sharing, token buybacks, token burns, or other mechanisms that increase token value.
Delphi used projects such as Grass and Venice as examples of businesses operating with both company equity and publicly traded tokens. The analysts did not argue that every dual structure is flawed, but they stressed the importance of clearly defining where value flows.
The discussion also highlighted that strong market conditions can sometimes hide structural weaknesses. During bull markets, token prices may rise because of investor enthusiasm, user growth, exchange listings, or broader market momentum rather than because token holders have meaningful economic rights.
However, problems can emerge if business conditions worsen or if the company is sold. In those situations, shareholders typically have formal legal claims, while token holders may find they have limited rights unless specific protections were built into the project’s structure.
To address these concerns, some crypto projects have introduced mechanisms designed to link token value more directly to business activity. These include:
- Token buybacks, where revenue is used to purchase tokens from the market.
- Token burns, which permanently reduce supply.
- Fee-sharing programmes, where part of protocol revenue benefits token holders or participants.
Examples include Hyperliquid, which uses trading revenue to buy HYPE tokens, and Uniswap Labs, whose fee mechanisms include token-burning features.
Even so, Delphi noted that these systems do not make tokens equivalent to shares. Token holders generally still lack ownership rights, dividend rights, and claims on company assets or acquisition proceeds.
The analysts’ main conclusion was that investors should carefully examine how value moves through a project. If a company keeps most of the revenue and economic benefits while the token depends mainly on market demand and speculation, the token’s valuation may not accurately reflect its true economic position.
In short, Delphi argues that the key question for any crypto project is not simply whether it has a token, but whether that token has a clear, enforceable connection to the value being created by the business.
