Discovering the potential of cryptocurrencies: transforming finance and the internet by 2026

The world of finance is on the brink of a fundamental transformation. Data shows that the annual transaction volume of stablecoins has reached $46 trillion – a number that exceeds PayPal by over 20 times and Visa by nearly three times. This is not a coincidence but a symptom of deeper changes occurring in digital infrastructure. Forecasting the technological landscape shift, leading venture capital firms from Silicon Valley are observing a move of cryptocurrencies from the realm of financial speculation toward building real, operational infrastructure for the future of finance and the internet.

Rebuilding the Foundations: Stablecoins as Bridges Between Worlds

Today’s banking architecture is rooted in systems from decades ago – machines operating on COBOL and batch processing, rather than modern APIs. This stagnation blocks innovation. Stablecoins serve as a “patch” for this ancient ecosystem. They enable financial institutions to build new services without the need to overhaul entire legacy systems.

Practical applications are developing in two directions. First, a family of startups focused on “on/off ramps” connects stablecoins with existing payment channels and local currencies. Using cryptographic proofs and regional network integrations, they create a decentralized layer of wallets through which value can flow globally. Second, a phenomenon of “native on-chain issuance” is emerging – debts and assets issued directly on the blockchain, instead of tokenizing offline instruments.

The horizon of applications is expanding rapidly. International workers will receive salaries in real-time. Merchants will accept global dollars without needing a bank account. Cryptocurrency apps will be able to instantly settle value between users worldwide. Stablecoins are becoming the backbone of a new operational order.

Network of Agents: When Artificial Intelligence Needs Identity

The digital landscape is changing radically with the expansion of AI. In the financial services sector, the number of “non-human identities” already exceeds the number of human workers by a ratio of 96 to 1. But these digital entities remain ghosts – stateless agents without access to banking and trading systems.

New infrastructural challenges are emerging. The banking industry once knew the motto “know your customer”; now it must master “know your agent.” Agents need cryptographically signed credentials to conduct transactions that connect them with clients, restrictions, and accountability. The window to build this identity system is just a few months – not decades like traditional KYC.

AI capabilities are developing at an unknown pace. Models at the beginning of the year barely understood complex workflows; by the end of the year, they can perform abstract commands like doctoral students. They can independently solve problems from the Putnam Mathematical Competition – one of the most difficult math exams in the world. This progression heralds a new kind of “polymathic” research: AI capable of predicting connections between fields, drawing correct conclusions from speculative answers, and even using “model hallucinations” to discover new concepts.

The Internet as a Value Circulation System: From Data Transmission to Money Flows

The internet is transforming into a mechanism that circulates value itself. As AI agents proliferate massively, an increasing part of business occurs automatically in the background, and channels for money flows must be completely redesigned.

In an ecosystem based on “intentions” rather than sequential instructions, value transfer must be as natural and fast as today’s information transmission. New infrastructural components, such as the x402 protocol, will make settlements programmable and responsive. Agents will pay each other instantly and permissionlessly for data, GPU time, or API calls, completely bypassing traditional invoices, agreements, and batch processes. Code updates published by developers can include built-in payment rules, limits, and audit trails – without involving fiat currencies or banks.

Payment practices will cease to be a separate operational layer. They will become a natural network behavior.

Democratization of Asset Management Through Tokenization

Traditionally, personalized wealth management services were a privilege of wealthy high-net-worth clients. Why? Providing customized advice across multiple asset classes was expensive and complex.

Tokenization opens a new chapter. As more asset classes are represented digitally, cryptographic pathways enable instant and low-cost deployment and rebalancing of personalized AI-supported strategies. This is not mechanical robo-advisory – it’s active portfolio management accessible to every market participant.

By 2026, platforms centered around “wealth accumulation,” not just preservation, will emerge. Fintech companies like Revolut and Robinhood, as well as centralized exchanges like Coinbase, will slightly convert their technological advantage into a larger market share. Meanwhile, DeFi tools – such as Morpho Vaults – will automatically allocate assets across lending markets with optimal risk-to-return ratios. Holding excess liquidity in stablecoins instead of fiat currencies and investing in tokenized money market funds will further expand profit-generation possibilities.

Privacy, Security, and New Rules of the Game

For most blockchains, privacy was a secondary concern. Today, it becomes the most critical competitive moat for cryptocurrency networks. Why? Privacy creates the “blockchain lock-in effect” – when data is protected, migrating from one chain to another becomes difficult because crossing the boundary between private and public systems reveals metadata.

Simultaneously, decentralized communication protocols are flourishing. While major instant-messaging apps implement quantum encryption, they still rely on trust in single institutions and private servers. In open networks, no individual, company, or state can deprive people of communication – apps may disappear, but people always control their data and identity.

The evolution of DeFi security is shifting from “code as law” to “norms as law.” Recent attacks on mature DeFi protocols have shown that current security practices still rely on heuristics. Future approaches will focus on design properties with live monitoring and enforcement – encoding key security attributes directly as “assertions of execution time.”

Regulations are finally aligning with technological architecture. Over the past decade, the biggest obstacle to building blockchain networks in the US was legal uncertainty. Legislative initiatives like the CLARITY Act aim to establish clear frameworks for the digital asset market, ending the uncertainty that hampers innovation. This law is based on “maturity frameworks” grounded in control, allowing blockchain projects to bring digital goods to the public market without excessive regulatory burdens.

At the same time, crypto companies are shifting from trading to building. Almost all well-established firms have already entered or are entering the trading space. However, those that moved into trading too early may miss the chance to build a more resilient, long-term business. Founders focused on the “product” part of product-market fit may ultimately be bigger winners.

The Jolt zkVM technology drastically reduces the computational costs of zero-knowledge proofs. By the end of 2026, a single GPU could generate real-time execution proofs for CPUs. As AI agents begin to independently scan markets, trade, and make decisions, and value flows through the internet like information, the financial system will cease to be a mirror of the real world – it will become infrastructure woven into the very fabric of the Internet. Privacy, as experts point out, will become the key moat of cryptocurrencies – the moment when technology shifts from the fringe to the mainstream, from a speculative tool to a fundamental protocol.