Five Key Trends for Cryptocurrencies in 2026: What to Expect from the New Year

With 2025 coming to an end and the cryptocurrency sector in a phase of strategic reflection, the community of researchers, analysts, and innovators is questioning what will be the true drivers of growth in the coming months. After examining over 30 studies and forecasts from Galaxy Research, Delphi Digital, a16z, Bitwise, Hashdex, and Coinbase, five development themes emerge on which there is particularly strong consensus. These trends are not just about price fluctuations but involve structural transformations destined to redefine the role of cryptocurrencies in the global economy.

Stablecoins: from crypto tool to global financial infrastructure

The most robust narrative concerns stablecoins, whose role is undergoing a radical metamorphosis. Throughout 2026, these assets will shift from niche technical instruments to a cornerstone of modern finance. The data speak clearly: stablecoins already processed about $46 trillion in transaction volume last year, a number twenty times higher than PayPal’s annual traffic and nearly triple Visa’s, approaching the size of the US ACH network.

However, the real bottleneck is not demand but the ability of these digital tools to integrate into daily financial flows. A new generation of startups is precisely addressing this issue, building solutions with multiple layers. Some use cryptography to allow users to convert local balances into digital dollars while preserving privacy; others connect regional banking infrastructure directly with real-time payment systems; still others are creating interoperable wallets and card issuance platforms that enable stablecoin use at traditional merchants.

a16z researcher Sam Broner highlights a crucial technical aspect: current banking systems remain anchored to COBOL mainframes with batch interfaces, stable but evolutionarily rigid structures. Adding instant payment capabilities can take months or years of work. Stablecoins find their natural space precisely in this infrastructural gap, offering speed and flexibility that legacy systems cannot provide.

Galaxy Research envisions an even more ambitious scenario: by the end of 2026, 30% of international payments will transit through stablecoins. Bitwise predicts a doubling of stablecoin market capitalization, with the passage of the GENIUS Act at the beginning of the year catalyzing new operators in the sector.

AI Agent: when artificial intelligence becomes an economic participant

The second emerging trend concerns the growing role of AI agents as active participants in on-chain economy. When autonomous systems begin executing transactions, making decisions, and interacting at high frequency, they naturally require a fast, cost-effective, permissionless transfer infrastructure. Traditional ecosystems, built for people with verified accounts and identities, generate friction for these intelligent agents.

Cryptocurrencies, especially stablecoins combined with protocols like x402, represent a native solution to this problem: instant settlement, supported micropayments, full programmability, and no access barriers.

Sean Neville, a16z researcher and co-founder of Circle, frames the real strategic constraint as: the shift from “insufficient intelligence” to “nonexistent identity.” In the contemporary financial system, non-human entities already outnumber human workers at a ratio of 96:1, but almost all remain “ghosts without bank accounts.” There is a lack of a KYA (Know Your Agent) framework equivalent to human KYC. Until robust KYA implementation, many merchants will continue to block AI agents at the firewall level.

a16z’s research further emphasizes that agents need cryptographic circuits for micropayments, data access, and computational power regulation. The x402 standard will become the infrastructural pillar. The valuable asset will no longer be the model itself but the real, high-quality, scarce data (DePAI), with projects like BitRobot and Chakra gaining prominence.

Lucas Tcheyan of Galaxy Research quantifies: by 2026, x402-compliant payments will account for 30% of daily volume on Base and 5% of non-governance transactions on Solana. Base will benefit from Coinbase’s promotion of the x402 standard, while Solana will leverage its large developer base. Payment-focused blockchains like Tempo and Arc will grow rapidly in this dynamic.

RWA: towards concrete and structural implementability

The narrative around tokenized real-world assets has surpassed the initial enthusiasm of “everything can be tokenized,” evolving into a rigorous search for practical implementability. The sector’s focus is no longer on theoretical market sizing but on actual execution capability.

Guy Wuollet, a16z analyst, sharply criticizes the current “tokenization” of stocks, commodities, and indices. He emphasizes that most of these efforts essentially represent a change in technological shell: the design logic, trading modalities, and risk structures remain deeply rooted in traditional finance, rather than leveraging the native properties of crypto systems.

Galaxy Research proposes a “structural shift” perspective, focusing not on the form of the product but on the core of the traditional financial system: guarantees. Their central forecast is that a major bank or broker will officially accept tokenized stocks as collateral during 2026. If this happens, the symbolic significance will surpass any single product launch, marking the bridge to mainstream integration. So far, tokenized stocks have remained confined to internal DeFi experiments or private pilots without substantial connection to the mainstream financial system. However, traditional financial infrastructure providers are accelerating migration to blockchain systems, and regulators are showing increasingly favorable attitudes.

Hashdex advances an even more aggressive thesis: tenfold growth of tokenized RWA assets supported by clearer regulation, institutional readiness, and infrastructural maturity.

Predictive markets: from decentralized entertainment to informational aggregation

Predictive markets have emerged as one of the most promising sectors for the coming year, but the reason for their favor has undergone a transformation: they are no longer just “decentralized gambling,” but sophisticated tools for informational aggregation and decision support.

Andy Hall of a16z, professor of political economy at Stanford, states that predictive markets have already crossed the threshold into mainstream viability. In 2026, with deeper integration between cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence, these markets will expand in scale, geographic reach, and sophistication. However, this expansion entails costs: higher trading frequencies, accelerated informational feedback, and automated participation structures generate new complexities, including the challenge of judging outcomes fairly without disputes.

Will Owens of Galaxy Research quantifies: Polymarket’s weekly volume will consistently exceed $1.5 billion in 2026. This projection is based on solid foundations: predictive markets are already among the most dynamic crypto sectors, and Polymarket’s weekly volume is already approaching $1 billion. Three forces will drive this further growth: deeper capital efficiencies, AI-driven order flows that significantly amplify trading frequency, and improved distribution capacity of Polymarket that accelerates capital inflows.

Ryan Rasmussen of Bitwise envisions an even more aggressive scenario: Polymarket’s open interest will surpass the all-time high reached during the 2024 US presidential elections. The opening to US users generated a massive influx of new participants, about $2 billion in fresh capital, and the market scope expanded beyond politics into economics, sports, and pop culture.

Tomasz Tunguz estimates that the adoption rate of predictive markets in the US will rise from the current 5% to 35% by 2026. By comparison, US gambling adoption is around 56%, suggesting that predictive markets are evolving from niche financial tools to mainstream entertainment and informational products.

However, Galaxy issues a critical warning: federal investigations into predictive markets could emerge during the year. As US regulators authorize on-chain predictive markets, volumes and open interest are rapidly increasing, and controversial events are emerging, including insiders exploiting non-public information or manipulating sporting events. Since predictive markets allow pseudonymous participation rather than strict KYC, incentives for insider abuse are amplified. Galaxy believes that triggers for future federal scrutiny will come directly from suspicious price movements in on-chain predictive markets rather than anomalies in regulated betting systems.

Privacy coins: the emergence of a structural necessity

With increasing capital volumes, data, and automated decisions migrating on-chain, transparent exposure becomes an unacceptable cost. This dynamic was already evident in 2025, when the privacy sector recorded appreciations even higher than Bitcoin and major crypto assets. Widespread consensus among institutions, researchers, and operators foresees a robust expansion of the privacy sector in 2026.

Christopher Rosa of Galaxy Research provides a high-impact forecast: the total market capitalization of privacy coins will reach $100 billion by the end of 2026. In the last quarter of 2025, privacy coins attracted significant attention; as investors deposit funds on-chain, privacy becomes a priority. Among the three main privacy coins, Zcash grew by 800% in that quarter, Railgun by 204%, and Monero by 53%.

Rosa highlights a relevant historical context: early Bitcoin developers, including Satoshi Nakamoto, explored privacy technologies. In initial Bitcoin design debates, the possibility of making transactions more private or fully shielded was already considered. However, at that time, zero-knowledge proof technologies available and implementable were far from engineering maturity. Today, the situation has changed. With zero-knowledge proofs now practically feasible and on-chain value surging, more and more users, especially institutional, are seriously considering a previously taken-for-granted question: are we truly willing to make all our crypto asset balances, transaction paths, and fund structures eternally public?

Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder of Mysten Labs, complements this logic from an additional perspective: the problem fundamentally resides in data. Every model, every agent, every automated system relies on data. But currently, most data channels—both input to models and output—remain opaque, variable, and non-auditable. For consumer applications, this may be tolerable, but in sectors like finance or healthcare, it presents an almost insurmountable obstacle. As agent systems begin to navigate, trade, and decide autonomously, the problem is further amplified.

Abiodun proposes the concept of “secrets-as-a-service”: native infrastructures for programmable data access with executable access rules, client-side cryptography mechanisms, and decentralized key management systems, defining who can decrypt which data, under what conditions, and for how long. All these rules must operate on-chain, not rely on internal processes. By combining verifiable data systems, privacy itself can become part of the public internet infrastructure.

Additional considerations: transferring value to the application layer

Beyond the five main trends, almost all institutions have highlighted additional interesting observations, though not universally shared. The most significant concerns the shift of value capture from the base layer to the application layer. The “fat protocols” theory is giving way to the “thick application” theory: value is no longer primarily concentrated in base layers and general protocols but is progressively migrating toward the application layer where direct contact with users, data, and cash flows occurs.

This raises crucial questions for Ethereum, the aspiring world computer and representative of the “fat protocols” theory. How will its value evolve with the transition to “thick applications”? Some believe it will continue to benefit as a fundamental layer for tokenization and financial infrastructure; others foresee an evolution toward a “necessary but monotonous base network,” with most value absorbed by the overlaying application layers.

For Bitcoin, the consensus foresees strong performance in 2026, with increasing institutional demand via ETFs and DApps, consolidating its role as a macro-strategic asset and “digital gold,” although the computational threat of quantum computing remains a concrete risk.