【Block Rhythm】Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan recently discussed a topic — for cryptocurrency to continue thriving through 2026, it needs to overcome three hurdles.
The first hurdle has already been safely overcome. This refers to large-scale liquidation risks. Remember those previous crashes? The market was afraid of repeating the same mistakes. But recently the market has been performing stably, and there were no major liquidation events by the end of 2025, so this concern has basically dissipated.
The truly critical hurdle is the second one — legislation on the U.S. side. Whether the Cryptocurrency Market Structure Act can pass determines a lot. The bill is currently being pushed through Congress, with the Senate expected to review it on January 15th. But the problem is, how to regulate DeFi, stablecoin issues, and the political interests conflicts among various parties — these still haven’t been sorted out. Once this bill is actually approved, it means the U.S. will write crypto-friendly regulatory principles into law, and they won’t be so easily changed by future political winds. For the market, this is a long-term reassurance.
The third hurdle is the correlation with the stock market. Hougan said that cryptocurrency rising doesn’t necessarily require the stock market to be booming, but if the stock market crashes, it could drag down all risk assets in the short term, and cryptocurrency is no exception. Although the market currently doesn’t expect a high probability of economic recession in 2026, and the probability of U.S. stocks rising is quite high, this is ultimately still uncertain.
2026年暗号資産の継続的な上昇には三つの障壁を克服する必要があり、米国の立法が鍵となる
【Block Rhythm】Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan recently discussed a topic — for cryptocurrency to continue thriving through 2026, it needs to overcome three hurdles.
The first hurdle has already been safely overcome. This refers to large-scale liquidation risks. Remember those previous crashes? The market was afraid of repeating the same mistakes. But recently the market has been performing stably, and there were no major liquidation events by the end of 2025, so this concern has basically dissipated.
The truly critical hurdle is the second one — legislation on the U.S. side. Whether the Cryptocurrency Market Structure Act can pass determines a lot. The bill is currently being pushed through Congress, with the Senate expected to review it on January 15th. But the problem is, how to regulate DeFi, stablecoin issues, and the political interests conflicts among various parties — these still haven’t been sorted out. Once this bill is actually approved, it means the U.S. will write crypto-friendly regulatory principles into law, and they won’t be so easily changed by future political winds. For the market, this is a long-term reassurance.
The third hurdle is the correlation with the stock market. Hougan said that cryptocurrency rising doesn’t necessarily require the stock market to be booming, but if the stock market crashes, it could drag down all risk assets in the short term, and cryptocurrency is no exception. Although the market currently doesn’t expect a high probability of economic recession in 2026, and the probability of U.S. stocks rising is quite high, this is ultimately still uncertain.