From "Crime Cycle" to Value Reversion: Four Major Opportunities for the Crypto Market in 2026

Author: Poopman

Compiled by: TechFlow

Ansem declares the market top, and CT is calling this cycle “criminal.”

High FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) projects with no real utility have squeezed the last drop of money from crypto. Memecoin bundling has left the industry with a notorious reputation in the public eye.

Worse still, almost no capital is being reinvested into the ecosystem.

On the other hand, almost all airdrops have turned into “pump and dump” schemes. The sole purpose of Token Generation Events (TGEs) seems to be providing exit liquidity to early participants and teams.

Diamond hands and long-term holders are suffering, and most altcoins have never recovered.

The bubble is bursting, token prices are collapsing, and people are furious.

Does this mean it’s all over?

Tough times build strong people.

To be fair, 2025 wasn’t a bad year.

We witnessed the birth of many great projects. Projects like Hyperliquid, MetaDAO, Pump.fun, Pendle, and FomoApp have proven that there are still real builders pushing the space forward in the right way.

This is a necessary “purge” to clear out bad actors.

We are reflecting and will continue to improve.

Now, to attract more capital and users, we need to show more real-world applications, genuine business models, and revenue that brings real value back to tokens. I believe this is exactly where the industry should head in 2026.

2025: The Year of Stablecoins, PerpDex, and DAT

Stablecoins Mature Further

In July 2025, the “Genius Act” was officially signed, marking the birth of the first regulatory framework for payment stablecoins, requiring stablecoins to be backed 100% by cash or short-term government bonds.

Since then, TradFi’s interest in stablecoins has grown by the day, with net inflows exceeding $100 billion this year alone—a record in stablecoin history.

RWA.xyz

Institutions are favoring stablecoins, seeing their huge potential to replace traditional payment systems, due to:

• Lower costs and more efficient cross-border transactions
• Instant settlement
• Low transaction fees
• 24/7 availability
• Hedging local currency volatility
• On-chain transparency

We’ve seen major acquisitions by tech giants (e.g., Stripe acquiring Bridge and Privy), Circle’s IPO being oversubscribed, and multiple top banks expressing interest in launching their own stablecoins.

All this shows that stablecoins have indeed continued to mature over the past year.

Stablewatch

Aside from payments, another major use case for stablecoins is earning permissionless yield, known as Yield Bearing Stablecoins (YBS).

This year, the total supply of YBS actually doubled to $12.5 billion, mainly driven by yield providers like BlackRock BUIDL, Ethena, and sUSDs.

Despite the rapid growth, recent events like Stream Finance and the broader crypto downturn have dampened market sentiment and reduced yields for these products.

Nevertheless, stablecoins remain one of the few truly sustainable and growing businesses in crypto.

PerpDex (Perpetual Decentralized Exchanges):

PerpDex was another star of the year.

According to DeFiLlama, PerpDex open interest (OI) grew 3–4x on average, from $3 billion to $11 billion, peaking at $23 billion.

Perpetual trading volume also surged, skyrocketing 4x since the start of the year—from an impressive $80 billion weekly volume to over $300 billion weekly (in part driven by points mining), making it one of the fastest-growing sectors in crypto.

However, after the sharp market correction on October 10 and the subsequent downturn, both metrics have shown signs of slowing.

PerpDex Open Interest (OI), source: DeFiLlama

The explosive growth of PerpDex poses a real threat to the dominance of centralized exchanges (CEX).

Take Hyperliquid, for example—their perpetual trading volume has reached 10% of Binance’s and continues to rise. This isn’t surprising, as traders can find some advantages on PerpDex that CEX perps can’t offer:

• No KYC
• Good liquidity, sometimes on par with CEX
• Airdrop speculation opportunities

Valuation games are another key point.

Hyperliquid has shown that PerpDex can reach extremely high valuation ceilings, attracting a new wave of competitors.

Some new entrants are backed by major VCs or CEXs (such as Lighter, Aster), while others try to differentiate with native mobile apps or loss compensation mechanisms (like Egdex, Variational).

Retail traders have high expectations for these projects’ high FDVs at launch and are eager for airdrop rewards, fueling the current “Points War.”

While PerpDex can be highly profitable, Hyperliquid chose to use the “Assistance Fund” to buy back $HYPE, reinjecting profits into the token (the buyback has reached 3.6% of total supply).

This buyback model, by providing real value back, has become the main driver of the token’s success, and effectively started the “Buyback Meta”—prompting investors to demand stronger value anchoring instead of high-FDV, utility-less governance tokens.

DAT (Digital Asset Treasuries):

Thanks to Trump’s pro-crypto stance, we’ve seen a flood of institutional and Wall Street capital into crypto.

Inspired by MicroStrategy’s playbook, DAT has become a primary way for TradFi to get indirect exposure to crypto assets.

Over the past year, about 76 new DATs were created. Currently, DAT treasuries hold $137 billion worth of crypto assets. Over 82% is Bitcoin (BTC), about 13% is Ethereum (ETH), and the rest is spread across various altcoins.

See the chart below:

Bitmine (BMNR)

Launched by Tom Lee, Bitmine (BMNR) became a hallmark of the DAT boom and the largest ETH buyer among all DAT participants.

However, despite the early hype, most DAT stocks saw “pump and dump” action in the first 10 days. Since October 10, inflows to DATs have plunged 90% from July levels, and most DATs’ mNAV has fallen below 1, indicating the premium is gone and the DAT craze has basically ended.

What did we learn this cycle?

• Blockchains need more real-world applications.
• The main crypto use cases remain trading, yield, and payments.
• People now favor protocols with fee-generating potential over pure decentralization (Source: @EbisuEthan).
• Most tokens need stronger value anchors tied to protocol fundamentals to protect and reward long-term holders.
• More mature regulatory and legislative environments will give builders and talent greater confidence to enter the space.
• Information has become a tradable asset on the internet (Source: PM, Kaito).
• New Layer 1/Layer 2 projects without clear positioning or competitive advantages will be gradually phased out.

So, what’s next?

2026: The Year of Prediction Markets, More Stablecoins, More Mobile Apps, More Real Revenue

I believe crypto in 2026 will move in four main directions:

• Prediction Markets
• More stablecoin payment services
• More adoption of mobile DApps
• More real revenue

Still All About Prediction Markets

There’s no doubt that prediction markets have become one of the hottest tracks in crypto.

“Bet on anything”

“90% accuracy predicting real-world outcomes”

“Participants bear their own risks”

These headlines have drawn tons of attention, and the fundamentals of prediction markets are just as compelling.

As of writing, weekly prediction market volume has surpassed the election-period peak (even including wash trading back then).

Today, giants like Polymarket and Kalshi have completely dominated distribution and liquidity, leaving little room for competitors lacking significant differentiation (except for Opinion Lab).

Institutions are also moving in: Polymarket raised at an $8 billion valuation from ICE, with secondary market valuations hitting $12–15 billion. Kalshi completed a Series E at an $11 billion valuation.

The momentum is unstoppable.

And with the upcoming $POLY token, imminent IPOs, and mainstream distribution through platforms like Robinhood and Google Search, prediction markets are likely to become one of 2026’s main narratives.

That said, there’s still plenty of room for improvement: optimizing resolution and dispute mechanisms, developing ways to handle malicious activity, and sustaining user engagement over long feedback cycles all need further work.

Beyond the dominant players, we can also expect new, more personalized prediction markets to emerge, like @BentoDotFun.

Stablecoin Payments

With the “Genius Act” in place, increased institutional interest and activity in stablecoin payments are key drivers of wider adoption.

In the past year, monthly stablecoin transaction volume has climbed to nearly $3 trillion, with adoption accelerating rapidly. While this may not be a perfect metric, it clearly shows that stablecoin usage has grown significantly since the “Genius Act” and Europe’s MiCA framework took effect.

On the other hand, Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe are all actively embracing stablecoin payments—whether by enabling stablecoin spending via traditional networks or partnering with CEXs (e.g., Mastercard with OKX Pay). Merchants can now accept stablecoin payments without being limited by customer payment methods, demonstrating Web2 giants’ confidence and flexibility in this asset class.

Meanwhile, crypto neobanks like Etherfi and Argent (now rebranded as Ready) have started offering card products, allowing users to spend stablecoins directly.

Take Etherfi, for example: its daily spending volume has steadily grown to over $1 million, with no sign of slowing down.

Etherfi

Still, we can’t ignore the challenges crypto neobanks face, such as high customer acquisition costs (CAC) and difficulty profiting from deposits due to user self-custody.

Potential solutions include offering in-app token swaps or repackaging yield products as financial services for users.

With payment-focused chains like @tempo and @Plasma gearing up, I expect significant growth in payments—especially with Stripe and Paradigm’s distribution power and brand influence.

Proliferation of Mobile Apps

Smartphone adoption is rising globally, and younger generations are driving the shift to electronic payments.

As of now, nearly 10% of global daily transactions are completed via mobile devices. Southeast Asia leads this trend with its “mobile-first” culture.

Country Payment Method Rankings

This signals a fundamental behavioral shift in traditional payment networks, and I believe, with vastly improved mobile transaction infrastructure compared to a few years ago, this shift will naturally extend to crypto.

Remember Account Abstraction, unified interfaces, and mobile SDKs from tools like Privy?

Today’s mobile onboarding experience is much smoother than it was two years ago.

According to a16z Crypto research, the number of crypto mobile wallet users grew 23% year over year, and this trend shows no sign of slowing.

In addition to Gen Z’s changing spending habits, we saw more native mobile dApps emerge in 2025.

For example, Fomo App, a social trading app, attracted a large number of new users with its intuitive, unified UX, enabling anyone—regardless of prior knowledge—to easily participate in token trading.

Built in just six months, the app achieved an average daily trading volume of $3 million, peaking at $13 million in October.

With Fomo’s rise, major players like Aave and Polymarket have also started prioritizing mobile savings and betting experiences. Newcomers like @sproutfi_xyz are experimenting with mobile-first yield models.

As mobile behavior continues to grow, I expect mobile dApps to be one of the fastest-expanding sectors in 2026.

Give Me More Revenue

One of the main reasons people find it hard to believe in this cycle is simple:

Most tokens listed on major exchanges still generate little to no meaningful revenue. Even when they do, there’s a lack of value anchoring to the token or “shares.” Once the narrative fades, these tokens can’t attract sustainable buyers, and there’s only one direction left—down.

Clearly, crypto has been too reliant on speculation and not focused enough on real business fundamentals.

Most DeFi projects fell into the trap of designing “Ponzi schemes” to drive early adoption, but every time, after the TGE, the focus shifts to dumping the token rather than building a lasting product.

As of now, only 60 protocols generate over $1 million in 30-day revenue. By contrast, there are about 5,000–7,000 IT companies in Web2 with monthly revenue at that level.

Fortunately, thanks to Trump’s pro-crypto policies, a shift began in 2025. These policies made profit sharing possible and helped address the long-standing value anchor problem for tokens.

Projects like Hyperliquid, Pump, Uniswap, and Aave are proactively focusing on product and revenue growth. They recognize that crypto is an asset-holding ecosystem by nature and needs active value return.

That’s why buybacks became such a powerful value anchor in 2025—they’re one of the clearest signals of alignment between teams and investors.

So, which businesses generate the strongest revenue?

Crypto’s main use cases are still trading, yield, and payments.

However, due to fee compression at the blockchain infrastructure level, chain-level revenues are expected to fall about 40% this year. By contrast, DEXs, exchanges, wallets, trading terminals, and applications are the biggest winners, with 113% growth!

Bet more on applications and DEXs.

If you still don’t believe it, according to 1kx research, we are actually experiencing the highest value flow to token holders in crypto’s history. See the data below:

Conclusion

Crypto is not dead—it’s evolving. We are undergoing a necessary “purge” that will make the crypto ecosystem better than ever, maybe even 10x better.

Projects that survive, achieve real-world adoption, create real revenue, and build tokens with genuine utility or value return will ultimately be the biggest winners.

2026 will be a pivotal year.