What Is the Main Reason an Option Holder Would Exercise an American Call Early?

The primary reason to exercise an American call option early in traditional finance is to capture a large, impending dividend, though this is not applicable to most crypto assets. In the crypto context, a holder might exercise early to immediately acquire the asset for use in a staking or DeFi protocol, or to realize the intrinsic value if the option is deep ITM and extrinsic value is minimal.