What Leading Research Expects for Crypto in 2026

As 2025 comes to an end, major research institutions are releasing their annual outlooks for 2026.

Here, we have synthesized insights from multiple leading research firms, including 21Shares, Grayscale, a16z Crypto, Greenfield Capital, and Four Pillars Research, with the help of ChatGPT and Gemini.

Below are the core expectations for 2026:

• Crypto Becomes Infrastructure: Crypto shifts from speculative markets to reliable payment, settlement, and coordination infrastructure embedded across financial systems.

• Stablecoins Become the Core Money Layer: Stablecoins evolve into internet-native money used for payments, settlement, treasury, and collateral at global scale.

• Institutional Capital Becomes the Primary Driver: Pricing, liquidity, and market structure are increasingly defined by institutions rather than retail speculation.

• Tokenization Becomes Market Structure: Real-world assets move onchain as a standard issuance and settlement model, starting with treasuries and credit.

• DeFi Becomes Embedded and Invisible: DeFi transitions from explicit user interaction to backend financial infrastructure powering apps and platforms.

• AI Becomes an Economic Actor: AI systems autonomously execute financial decisions, requiring crypto rails for settlement, control, and auditability.

• Regulation Enables Scale: Clear regulatory frameworks unlock bank, exchange, and institutional participation, accelerating mainstream adoption.

Across all research reports, 2025 is consistently viewed as a transition year rather than a speculative peak. It is the year in which infrastructure, regulation, and institutional participation began to solidify, while weak models and purely narrative-driven projects were exposed and filtered out.

Meanwhile, 2026 is the year crypto stops expanding through speculation and starts compounding through reliability. The asset class transitions into global financial and technological infrastructure, embedded into everyday systems and increasingly invisible to end users.

With the help of AI, we have summarized the key conclusions from each report. The summary below consolidates the core insights from leading research institutions.

21Shares' "State of Crypto #16: Market Outlook 2026"

(Link here for full report.)

TLDR: 21Shares expects 2026 to mark a structural transition for crypto from cyclical speculation to a durable, institutionally anchored financial layer. Rather than a classic boom-bust cycle, growth is driven by regulated access, stablecoin adoption, tokenization, and automated onchain infrastructure.

Bitcoin

• Bitcoin’s traditional four-year halving cycle is effectively over.

• BTC increasingly trades as a macro asset and monetary hedge, driven by institutional inflows rather than supply shocks.

• 21Shares expects new all-time highs in 2026.

Core Market Forecasts (2026)

Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs)

• Digital Asset Treasury companies are projected to exceed $250 billion in crypto assets by end-2026, up ~130% from 2025.

• The sector will undergo significant consolidation. Many DATs are expected to fail due to weak capital structures or prolonged trading below NAV.

  

Stablecoins

• Supply is projected to grow 3.3x to reach $1 trillion.

• Stablecoins evolve from trading instruments into global payment and settlement infrastructure.

• Institutional adoption accelerates via Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and Western Union integrations.

Crypto ETFs

• Global crypto ETP assets under management are expected to surpass $400 billion, potentially overtaking the Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ).

• ETFs become the dominant institutional access vehicle, supported by simplified SEC approval processes and expanded access via IRAs and 401(k)s.

Tokenization (RWA)

• Tokenized Real World Assets are expected to exceed $500 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL).

• Private credit leads adoption, with tokenized credit funds expected to surpass $50 billion AUM.

• Tokenized equities and the first tokenized IPO are expected by end-2026, signaling deep integration with traditional capital markets.

DeFi

• Total Value Locked (TVL) to reach $300 billion.

• Growth is driven by falling interest rates, stablecoin liquidity, perpetual futures, and institutional participation.

Emerging High-Growth Sectors

Prediction Markets

• Expected to reach $100 billion in annual volume.

• Growth is driven by heightened political and macro volatility, improved blockchain infrastructure, and regulatory clarity.

• Prediction markets evolve into real-time forecasting infrastructure, not merely speculative platforms.

Agentic Economy (AI + Crypto)

• AI agents become a major economic force, autonomously executing payments, trading, yield optimization, and liquidity management.

• Infrastructure such as x402, ERC-8004, and agent-to-agent protocols enables machine-to-machine commerce.

Grayscale's "2026 Digital Asset Outlook: Dawn of the Institutional Era"

(Link here for full report.)

TLDR: Grayscale expects 2026 to accelerate structural shifts in digital asset investing, driven by macro demand for alternative stores of value and improving regulatory clarity.

Core Investment Thesis

Bitcoin

• Expect 2026 as the end of the traditional Bitcoin “four-year cycle” narrative.

• Bitcoin likely to reach a new all-time high in early 2026.

Macro Demand & Monetary Alternatives

• Rising fiat currency risks (inflation, public debt) increase demand for scarce digital stores of value like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

• Digital assets can act as ballast against currency debasement.

Regulatory Clarity Driving Capital Inflows

• Grayscale expects bipartisan crypto market structure legislation in the U.S. in 2026, which should:

  • Cement digital assets into capital markets.

  • Facilitate regulated trading and on-chain issuance by startups and mature issuers.

Expansion of Crypto ETPs

• More crypto assets will become available via exchange-traded products as due diligence and institutional allocation processes mature.

• Currently, <0.5% of U.S. advised wealth is allocated to crypto, signaling significant runway for institutional adoption.

Top 10 Investing Themes for 2026

1. Dollar Debasement Risk & Store of Value

Bitcoin & Ethereum appeal as scarce, transparent digital stores of value. Expect continued portfolio interest as fiat risks rise.

2. Regulatory Clarity Supports Adoption

Legislation around crypto market structure and definitions will unlock regulated custody, institutional balance sheet allocations, on-chain capital formation.

3. Stablecoin Adoption Expands

Stablecoins continue breakout growth post-GENIUS Act. Institutional and payment use cases expand; integration into cross-border flows, corporate treasury, margin collateral, and consumer rails.

4. Asset Tokenization at an Inflection Point

Tokenized real-world assets (equities, credit, bonds) expected to expand rapidly from a very small base. This benefits blockchains with strong infrastructure (e.g., ETH, SOL).

5. Privacy Solutions Needed

As blockchain adoption deepens, on-chain privacy solutions will become important. Projects focused on confidential transactions and identity privacy gain strategic relevance.

6. AI + Blockchain Synergies

Blockchain addresses centralization and trust issues in AI. Emerging use cases include agent-based digital economic systems.

7. DeFi Accelerates, Led by Lending

Growth in decentralized finance continues, with emphasis on lending markets and decentralized exchanges. DeFi infrastructure gains traction versus equivalent centralized systems.

8. Next-Gen Infrastructure Needed for Adoption

Higher throughput and innovative chains emerge to support complex use cases (AI, gaming, high-frequency settlement).

9. Focus on Sustainable Revenue

Institutional investors are likely to prioritize blockchain networks and protocols with fee-based revenue fundamentals, similar to traditional revenue models.

10. Staking Becomes Default for Investors

Policy changes (SEC, IRS/Treasury) make staking more accessible and standard for Proof of Stake assets. Expect higher staking ratios and coupon-like yield dynamics.

Red Herrings for 2026 (What Grayscale Does Not Expect)

Quantum Computing Impact

While research continues, quantum risk is unlikely to affect valuations in 2026.

Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs)

Despite media attention, Grayscale does not view DATs as a major market driver in 2026. Larger DATs are trading near NAV, and their contribution to demand dynamics is marginal for the next year.

a16z Crypto's "17 Things We’re Excited About for Crypto in 2026"

(Link here for full report.)

TLDR: a16z highlights

• Stablecoins and tokenization as foundational infrastructure.

• AI and agents moving from concept to core economic actors.

• Privacy and security shifting from optional features to essential moats.

• Web3 evolving toward real utility, not just speculation, but with new paradigms in payments, identity, finance, and data verification.

1. Stablecoins & Payments Infrastructure

• Stablecoin volume set new all-time highs, far exceeding legacy payment networks (e.g., PayPal, Visa), yet deeper integration into everyday financial rails is still in progress.

• Stablecoins are expected to become the core settlement layer of internet-wide finance, enabling instant cross-border transactions, merchant acceptance without bank accounts, and real-time global payments.

2. Real-World Asset (RWA) Tokenization

• Traditional assets (equities, commodities, etc.) continue going onchain.

• The narrative shifts toward crypto-native representations (like perpetual futures) instead of just tokenized “offchain” assets.

3. Crypto as Payments + Banking Infrastructure

• Stablecoins and tokenized deposits can modernize legacy banking systems without requiring banks to rewrite decades-old software stacks.

• This positions crypto rails as practical financial plumbing, not just speculative vehicles.

4. Agents & AI Integration

• As AI agents proliferate, the internet begins to resemble a banking and payment network, where economic actions happen autonomously.

• Emerging primitives (e.g., protocols like x402) are expected to support programmable, reactive settlement between agents — for data, compute resources, API usage, etc.

5. Identity for AI Agents

• The bottleneck for agent economies isn’t intelligence but identity (“Know Your Agent” or KYA).

• Agents will need cryptographically verifiable credentials that tie them to principals, constraints, and liabilities before they’re widely permitted to transact.

6. AI Augments Research & Reasoning

• AI is increasingly used for task automation and reasoning in technical fields, enabling novel research workflows and discovery strategies.

7. Privacy as a Competitive Moat

• Privacy is predicted to become one of the most important differentiators among blockchains.

• Full privacy networks could secure substantial network effects because private data cannot be trivially bridged, unlike public chains.

8. Decentralized Messaging

• Messaging should evolve beyond centralized servers, moving toward trustless, open protocols with strong encryption and resilience against shutdowns or censorship.

9. “Secrets-as-a-Service”

• As agentic systems proliferate, cryptographic data access controls, where access rights and conditions are verifiable and programmable will become essential.

10. Security: “Spec Is Law”

• Crypto security will evolve from informal, heuristic methods to principled, specification-driven defenses where safety properties are enforced at runtime.

11. Prediction Markets Expand

• Prediction markets will grow in scale and sophistication, integrating decentralized governance and AI oracles to resolve complex, disputed conditions.

12. Staked Media

• A new media model where credibility is tied to public, verifiable commitments, not just content could emerge, enabled by token-linked stakes and onchain provenance.

13. SNARKs Beyond Blockchains

• zkVMs and zero-knowledge proofs are expected to become efficient enough (10,000x performance improvements) that they can enable verifiable cloud computing, not just blockchain proofs.

14. Web3 Development is Maturing

• Founders are encouraged to treat trading infrastructure as a way station, not the end goal, instead building durable, differentiated products beyond mere trading functionality.

15. Wealth Management Transformations

• Tokenized portfolios and AI-assisted wealth strategies may become accessible to all investors enabled by automation and DeFi yield tools.

16. Consumer Experiences Shift

• Platforms will offer personalized, AI-driven portfolio management, with DeFi protocols optimizing yield allocations, and tokenized private assets integrated into diversified strategies.

17. Crypto Unlocks New Financial Primitives

• The combination of tokenized assets, decentralized settlement, AI agents, and programmable identity will enable financial compositions and use cases previously impossible in TradFi.

Greenfield Capital: 2026 Expectations

(Link here for full report.)

TLDR: Greenfield views 2026 as a year focused on solving coordination problems, improving capital efficiency, and removing UX and regulatory friction. The emphasis is on building infrastructure that supports institutional participation, scalable consumer adoption, and AI-integrated economic systems.

Key Takeaways:

1. Solver Coordination Networks

Solvers face high friction when integrating new AMMs and liquidity sources. Greenfield expects the emergence of a coordinated, trustless solver network that shares order flow, routing integrations, analytics, and intent auctions. This would reduce fragmentation and accelerate innovation in liquidity primitives.

2. Performant and Private Compute

Pure cryptographic privacy systems are too slow, while hardware-only solutions risk data leakage. Greenfield expects hybrid models combining cryptography and secure hardware to deliver fast, private, and verifiable compute.

3. Unified Stablecoin Liquidity Layer

Stablecoin liquidity remains fragmented across chains, leading to inefficiency and higher costs. Greenfield expects a unified cross-chain liquidity layer that dynamically rebalances stablecoin capital and provides consistent depth for payments, trading, and treasury use cases.

4. On-Chain Risk Management and Underwriting

DeFi still lacks robust risk frameworks, real-time underwriting, and structured risk products. Greenfield expects new protocols that introduce on-chain risk scoring, tranching, and transparent risk mitigation tools to improve safety and attract institutional capital.

5. Transparent Market Making

Market-making agreements are often opaque, causing projects to overspend on liquidity and lose long-term value. Greenfield expects protocols and interfaces that standardize and make market-making terms transparent, including spreads, obligations, and performance metrics.

6. Robo-Advisor 2.0

Current automated investing tools fail to capture on-chain microstructure alpha. Greenfield expects next-generation DeFi robo-advisors that leverage AMM rebalancing, solver arbitrage, and protocol-native strategies, paired with strong UX and risk dashboards.

7. LLM Interfaces for Prediction Markets

Prediction markets are powerful but difficult to use. Greenfield expects LLM-driven interfaces that allow users to express beliefs in natural language and route them to the best on-chain markets, significantly expanding participation and liquidity.

8. Scaled On-Chain Capital Formation

On-chain fundraising remains largely crypto-native. Greenfield expects capital formation primitives to be embedded into mainstream consumer platforms, enabling mass-market token and equity fundraising without requiring deep crypto knowledge.

9. Crypto Discovery Layer

Crypto lacks a unified discovery experience. Greenfield expects an AI-powered discovery layer that aggregates on-chain data, prices, governance, news, and social signals into a single intuitive interface, similar to a search engine for crypto.

10. Clear Protocol Rules and Bank Access

Regulatory uncertainty continues to block institutional and banking participation. Greenfield expects clearer global standards around decentralization, token classification, and prudential treatment, enabling banks and institutions to interact directly with crypto protocols.

Four Pillars' "2026 Outlook: Restructuring"

(Link here for full report.)

TLDR: Crypto is shifting from narrative-driven expansion to institutional-grade systems, clearer rules, and economically sustainable models. The market is converging around payments, stablecoins, tokenization, AI-assisted finance, and exchange-led platforms, rather than isolated protocols.

Key Takeaways:

1. Macro Theme: Restructuring & Regulation

• Regulatory Clarity: The passage of the GENIUS Act (stablecoins) and CLARITY Act (digital commodities) in 2025, along with a crypto-friendly SEC, has reduced regulatory uncertainty.

• Shift to Fundamentals: The market is moving from "narrative-driven" valuations to "cash-flow-driven" valuations. Projects are now judged by their ability to generate real revenue and accrual value to tokens, rather than just hype.

• A stablecoin clearing house becomes necessary to guarantee 1:1 exchange and settlement across issuers.

2. The Future of Money & Stablecoins

• USDT Super App: As finance evolves toward greater accessibility, USDT is positioned to become the core asset for a "Crypto Super App" (like WeChat or Grab) that unifies financial services on a single backend, especially in developing region.

• Stablecoin Clearing House: With the explosion of regulated stablecoins, liquidity fragmentation is a risk. A "clearing house" entity will be essential to guarantee 1:1 exchange between different stablecoins (e.g., converting jpmUSD to boaUSD).

• Form of Money: Money is diversifying; stablecoins act as catalysts, enabling businesses to integrate payments without bypassing domestic regulations.

3. Asset Tokenization (RWA)

• Stock Tokenization: Following the success of tokenized U.S. Treasuries in 2025, the next frontier is tokenized stocks. While currently fragmented and facing legal hurdles, 2026 is expected to be the year this sector matures and standardizes.

• Expansion of "Money": Tokenization expands the concept of money. Assets like real estate, funds, and equities are becoming "programmable money" that can be transferred instantly and used as collateral.

4. Infrastructure & Layer 1s

• Monad & MegaETH: These two chains are highlighted as the biggest potential competitors to Solana and Base in 2026. They are building strong communities and distinct ecosystems (Monad via culture/memes, MegaETH via high-performance apps.

• Ethereum's Institutional Grip: Institutions are expected to continue choosing Ethereum due to its regulatory safety (commodity status), yield opportunities (DeFi participation), and security. It is viewed as "Active Money" rather than just a store of value.

• ZK Technology: Zero-Knowledge technology is entering an industrial phase with the rise of zkVMs (general-purpose infrastructure) and a marketplace for proving and verification.

5. Exchanges (CEX) & DeFi Convergence

• CEX Evolution: Centralized exchanges are evolving into comprehensive financial hubs, focusing on non-trading revenue (payments, custody, staking) and aggressive M&A to diversify beyond trading fees.

• In-App DeFi: "Neobanks" and fintech apps are integrating DeFi yields directly into their interfaces (e.g., paying for coffee with yield-bearing stablecoins), blurring the lines between traditional finance and DeFi.

• Hyperliquid's Rise: Hyperliquid is cited as a prime example of a protocol reaching "maturity" by successfully combining a product (exchange) with a sustainable token model (revenue buybacks), creating a "PvE" (Player vs. Environment) growth regime.

6. Emerging Trends & Niche Markets

• AI Agents (DeFAI): Retail investors will increasingly rely on AI agents for investment decisions. This drives demand for "verifiability" (using TEEs and ZK proofs) to ensure agents act according to user constraints.

• On-Chain Collectibles: The market for physical collectibles (like trading cards) moving on-chain is expected to grow, solving liquidity and verification issues found in Web2 markets.

• Prediction Markets: Platforms like Polymarket are evolving from gambling venues into financial tools that "quantify expectations," providing real-time probability data for institutions.

7. User Experience & Abstraction

• Wallet Abstraction: Tools like Privy and Turnkey are making onboarding seamless, allowing users to interact with Web3 apps without managing complex keys.

• "Chain-as-an-API": New architectures like Rialo aim to let smart contracts interact directly with Web2 APIs, removing the need for complex oracle and bridge middleware.

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