A new era of digital finance: how crypto will change the world by 2026

Stablecoins processed $46 trillion in trading volume last year — a figure that is truly staggering in scale. For comparison: this exceeds the annual payment volume of PayPal by more than twenty times and is nearly three times the amount processed by Visa. However, this is only the beginning of a new era of financial architecture transformation, as envisioned by leading venture fund a16z in its 17 key forecasts for the coming years.

Stablecoins as the “Operating System” of Modern Finance

The current banking system operates according to rules of the past. Most global assets are stored on outdated ledgers written in COBOL from decades ago, where communication occurs through bulky batch systems instead of modern APIs.

This is where the revolutionary role of stablecoins emerges. They enable financial institutions to launch new services and attract previously unknown clients without rewriting outdated digital systems. It’s not just a parallel system — it’s a bridge between the old financial world and new infrastructure.

Innovative startups see the space between crypto-assets and daily payments as a huge unmet challenge. They integrate cryptographic verifications, connect to local payment networks, and create global multi-layer wallet systems. The result: digital dollars can be easily converted into familiar payment methods and local currencies without intermediaries.

The current wave of “real asset tokenization” often remains superficial copying. True innovation is “native issuance on-chain,” where debts and securities are created directly on the blockchain rather than transferred there post-factum. In this world, workers will receive salaries instantly regardless of borders, merchants without bank accounts will be able to accept payments from any country, and global apps will settle instantly with users.

“Digital Agents” Economy: When Artificial Intelligence Needs Identity

The number of AI agents in the financial sector already exceeds the number of humans in a 96 to 1 ratio. Yet these “digital workers” remain outcasts in the traditional system — they cannot open bank accounts or access services. A paradox for a new era.

This requires a radically new infrastructure. Instead of the traditional “Know Your Customer,” there is a need for “Know Your Agent.” Each AI agent needs cryptographic certificates linked to its operators, restrictions, and responsibilities. The uniqueness of this moment is that the entire standardization process could take only a few months, not decades as with traditional KYC systems.

Progress in artificial intelligence is simply astonishing. At the beginning of the year, models didn’t understand even basic workflows. By year’s end, they are issuing abstract recommendations like experienced graduate students. Some AI systems even independently solve problems from the prestigious Putnam Mathematical Competition — one of the most difficult university tests in the world. This opens a new paradigm: a “universal specialist” who finds connections between distant ideas, draws conclusions from hypothetical scenarios, and exploits unpredictable model errors to discover new solutions.

The Internet as a Payment System: When Value Moves as Information

In a world where AI agents control most business processes automatically, capital movement should become as simple and fast as data exchange today. The internet is transforming into a global bank.

Replacing step-by-step instructions are “intentions.” Systems must understand the goal, not wait for commands. New protocols, similar to x402, make payments programmable and reactive. Agents will be able to instantly pay for data, GPU computing resources, API requests — completely bypassing the traditional cycle of billing, reconciliation, and batch processing.

Imagine: software updates from developers will embed payment rules, limits, and audits without any involvement of fiat currencies or banks. Payment will cease to be a separate operation — it will become an integral part of network behavior.

Democratization of Wealth Management through Tokenization

Personalized portfolio management services have historically been a privilege of the wealthy. Why? Because individual recommendations across different asset classes are expensive and complex to implement.

Tokenization is changing the landscape. With the advent of crypto versions, an increasing number of assets can be analyzed by AI to generate investment recommendations and automatically rebalance portfolios instantly and with minimal fees. This is no longer just a “robo-advisor” — it’s active asset management accessible to everyone.

By 2026, platforms specifically designed for “wealth accumulation,” not just preservation, will emerge. Traditional fintech giants like (Revolut, Robinhood), and centralized crypto exchanges like (Coinbase) will leverage technological advantages to capture this market. Simultaneously, decentralized DeFi tools like Morpho Vaults will automatically redistribute assets among lending platforms with the best risk-adjusted yields. Holding reserves in stablecoins instead of traditional currencies and investing in tokenized money market funds will further expand income opportunities.

Privacy as the Last Frontier of the Crypto Revolution

For most blockchains, privacy has always been a secondary feature. Today, it could become a unique competitive advantage that sets one chain apart from dozens of others. Privacy creates a “lock-in effect”: when data is protected, migrating from one blockchain to another becomes much more difficult, as each transition between private and public spaces reveals metadata.

Decentralized communication protocols are gaining momentum. Classic messengers, even those using quantum encryption, still depend on trust in private servers of a single company. Open networks provide a guarantee: no government, company, or individual can deprive people of the right to communicate. Apps can be deleted, but users always control their data and identity.

DeFi Evolves from Rules to Norms

Recent hacker attacks on transparent, well-studied DeFi protocols have shown: standard security practices in crypto still rely on empirical rules and guesses. The next wave will seek new approaches based on architectural properties. Instead of post-factum real-time system reactions, embedded control mechanisms will encode key security attributes as “runtime assertions.”

Legislation Strives to Keep Up with Technology

The last decade in the US has faced a major obstacle: legal uncertainty. Initiatives like the “CLARITY Act” aim to create clear regulatory frameworks for the digital asset market, putting an end to the chaos that stifles innovation. This bill introduces a “maturity framework” based on oversight, allowing blockchain projects to issue and commercialize products without excessive regulatory burdens.

From Trading to Building: Lasting Value

Almost every successful crypto company has already moved or is moving into the trading sphere. a16z warns of the danger: companies that focus too early on speculative trading risk losing the opportunity to build a truly long-term, resilient business. Founders who concentrate on creating a “market-ready product” will have the greatest chance of success.

The technological breakthrough of Jolt zkVM has sharply reduced the cost of zero-knowledge proof computations by several orders of magnitude. By the end of 2026, a single GPU will be able to generate proofs of CPU execution in real time. This will radically change the economics of verification.

Conclusion: When the Future Becomes Reality

When AI agents independently review markets, select assets, and make decisions, and when value moves through the internet as easily as information, the financial system will cease to be merely a reflection of the real world. It will become part of the very internet infrastructure.

a16z partner Ali Yahya emphasizes: privacy will become a strategic shield for the crypto sector. This is the moment when crypto technologies will shift from the margins to the mainstream, from tools of speculation to the foundational protocols of a new era of the digital economy.