Stock market returns are mainly driven by a handful of big winners. We expect the same trend in digital assets.

Between 1926 and 2016, only five of the 25300 companies generated 10% of the total wealth of $3.5 billion in u.s. stocks: Exxon Mobil, general electric (General Electric), international business machines (International Business Machines), Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL). 90 stocks account for more than half. Earnings of just under 1100 make up all profits; other profits add up to less than US Treasuries.

How can it be so one-sided?

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The rate of return of individual stocks is not easy to obey normal distribution. They are skewed in the right direction, with several attractive tails forming a "fat" right tail. Long-term investors who do not own such stocks are likely to miss the average return on the sales market.

We expect a big right end to the return on digital assets. BTC is a good example of the founder of wealth. We compare the rate of return to the market capitalization weighted portfolio of the top 10, 50 and 100 data tokens (excluding stable tokens and packaged tokens) that have been rebalanced every month over the past five years. None of the broader portfolios has primarily outperformed BTC. During this period, 50 and 100 RMB portfolios lost money.

So why? What on earth caused the tilt?

For us, a fundamental driving force is the technological revolution. In her classic book technological Revolution and Financial Capital, Carlotta Stefano defines it as "strong and relatively highly visible clusters of technology, new products and new industries that can bring about great changes to the entire industrial structure."

Stefano lists five technological revolutions since the beginning of the 18th century:

Each stage is gradually with breakthrough technological innovation, the introduction of talent and the use of funds, giving birth to a number of start-up companies. Financial bubbles, corruption and collapse generally follow, resulting in regulation, discipline in management methods and productivity-the golden phase of rapid profit growth. Since the iron and steel era, the golden stage has been the core of large enterprises. The longer the golden period, the better the chances of the big winner getting compound wealth.

Of the five companies that have made 10% of their wealth since 1926, each is the market leader of the recent revolution:

It is worth noting that each company was set up at the beginning of the era, maximizing the opportunity for compound returns for many years. But it's not enough to be there. The future imagined by the winner must be unimaginable by others.

It has been about 50 years since the dawn of the information age. A new era is likely to be taking shape. Will the era of digital assets come? In the eyes of many, only digital assets cannot ignite a reform. But they are all strong indigenous innovations that, along with other indigenous innovations such as artificial intelligence, robotics and molecular biology, have the potential to form a new era.

If we are right, the winners of this era may be today's newcomers. It is best for long-term investors to ensure that their portfolios include hidden wealth founders, who will also greatly boost sales market returns over decades. For us, digital assets are strong candidates.