Everyone's Bleeding. TCG Collectors Are Thriving. The Next Big Narrative?

We’re in a bear market, and sentiment is deteriorating fast. But while everyone's staring at charts, trading cards are quietly having their moment on-chain.

Trading Card Games, or TCGs, are not a crypto-native invention. They’ve existed since the 1990s, built on physical booster packs, secondary markets, and tight-knit collector communities. Players collect, trade, and battle with physical cards, forming entire ecosystems around shared IP and scarcity.

Now, that same model is migrating on-chain - not replacing the physical experience, but enhancing it with verifiable ownership, global liquidity, and permanent provenance.

This Is Why Digital Collectibles Win

At its core, TCG in the crypto space is categorized as RWA (Real-World Asset) collectibles. The value proposition is straightforward: digital ownership solves many of the pain points that physical collectors have dealt with for decades.

With digital collectibles, you will never lose your cards. They cannot be damaged, stolen in transit, or deteriorated over time. Your collection is secured on-chain, accessible from anywhere, and verifiably authentic. The only real risk is a compromised wallet, and that's largely preventable with proper security practices.

Sharing a short story from last year:

In November 2025, @Xeer shared a devastating story about losing valuable childhood Pokemon TCG cards. He had sent his original Charizard and Venusaur cards to get signed by artist Mitsuhiro Arita through a third-party service called tcgKL for an artist signing event in Malaysia. The runner reportedly walked off with the cards.

The incident went viral on CT, and Xeer himself summed it up: "this is why digital collectibles > physical collectibles."

A question arises then, "But you can't get digital collectibles signed?"

Here's the answer if you're wondering the same:

Physical TCG Is Bigger Than NFTs

For years, crypto has aspired to replace traditional finance, Web2 companies, and legacy business models. But the data shows that this transition is far from complete. The lesson is clear - rather than trying to displace existing markets, the most successful crypto products enhance and integrate with them.

• The global physical TCG market reached approximately $7.5-8.4 billion in 2025, while total NFT trade volume was approximately $5.63 billion. TCG was roughly 30-50% larger than the NFT market.

• NFT revenue declined 37% year-over-year (from $8.9B in 2024 to $5.63B in 2025), while the physical TCG market continued to grow, driven by strong product sales from Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering, One Piece, and others.

Wait... all we've talked about is physical TCG.

Here, we had a look at Dune Analytics and found weekly revenue data for the crypto TCG sector, capturing four primary markets: Courtyard, Emporium, Phygitals, and Collector Crypt. While this doesn't represent the full market, it provides a useful overview of the sector's trajectory.

• Revenue was near zero through early 2024, with gradual growth from mid-2024, mostly driven by Courtyard.

• A clear revenue step-up emerged in Q1 2025, with a major breakout around August-September 2025. Weekly revenue peaked at approximately $5.5M-$5.7M.

• Even after the initial hype peak, revenue remains multiple times higher than the early-2025 baseline, suggesting sustained and growing interest rather than a temporary spike.

TLDR: The category is growing, and this is important.

From Pokémon to One Piece

Pokemon has consistently led the physical TCG space in both player/collector volume and sealed product sales. This dominance extends into the crypto TCG space, where Pokemon-related digital collectibles have historically driven the most engagement and volume.

Another highlight: 2026 marks Pokemon's 30th anniversary. Just imagine how big that could be for crypto TCG if even a fraction of that anniversary hype flows on-chain.

For those outside the TCG world, the next part might come as a surprise. The hottest trend in TCG right now isn't Pokemon. It's One Piece.

The One Piece TCG has experienced explosive growth, capturing significant market share and collectors' attention. As the best-selling manga series of all time, One Piece's global fanbase is now pouring into the card game.

Here are some of the crypto TCG projects worth noting:

Fun Fact: NFT projects are also venturing into TCG. Orange Cap Games' main product, Vibes, is a hybrid digital and physical TCG featuring Pudgy Penguins (and Moonbirds) IP. Azuki also launched an official Azuki TCG in 2025.

The Best Web3 Products Don’t Feel Like Web3

The TCG-to-crypto pipeline offers a critical lesson for builders in the Web3 space. The most successful Web3 products are not those that attempt to replace existing systems wholesale, but those that enhance proven models with blockchain's unique advantages: permanence, verifiability, global accessibility, and trustless ownership.

Much like Polymarket, a successful Web3 product should make users unaware that it's actually a crypto product. It should be easy to onboard, intuitive to use, and feel no different from any Web2 product. Most people wouldn't even know Polymarket is a crypto product, and that's exactly the point.

As @uhhdub put it in his article: "They kept the crypto simple. NFTs for cards, one token max for economy. Players don't need to understand blockchain to play."

Crypto TCG ticks all of these boxes.

That said, 2026 might actually be the year crypto TCG explodes.