Summary

For this special year-end report, we have curated the top events and developments of 2025, followed by our outlook on key trends in 2026.

Looking back, 2025 marked a year of maturation and broader adoption for cryptocurrencies. The year witnessed a decisive shift from pure retail speculation towards institutional integration and regulatory clarity. While volatility remains a hallmark, the underlying market structure is maturing, driven by key developments in both finance and policy. With the slow down of the global macro economy, we saw a few signs of resilience, while challenges like geopolitical risks and macro uncertainty across regions persisted.

The cryptocurrency industry witnessed multiple impressive milestones. The total crypto market cap crossed US$4 trillion for the first time. We applauded Bitcoin’s new breakthrough to an all-time high above $126,000, the establishment of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile in the US, and Ethereum’s successful Pectra and Fusaka upgrades, as well as celebrated the 737-million milestone in crypto retail adoption. 

The year has seen a remarkably strong move towards real-world utility. Ethereum's ecosystem has continued to scale, making DeFi applications and other Web3 use cases faster and more cost-effective for a wider user base. Tokenisation gained rapid traction, emerging as a major unlock for capital efficiency and accessibility, attracting serious institutional attention, and laying the groundwork for transforming financial operations. Builders have been hard at work as usual growing Layer-1 (L1) and Layer-2 (L2) ecosystems, introducing new use cases in blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI), creating efficient ways to trade in prediction and perpetual markets, and much more.

Looking ahead to 2026, we are optimistic that crypto adoption — both retail and institutional — will continue growing at a steady pace. We are excited about new crypto-friendly policies, the growing adoption of prediction markets, and the further development of AI and its synergies with Web3. We remain bullish on Web3 and look forward to seeing more innovations around various ecosystems.

Last but not least: we are very grateful to our community for reading our publications and sharing valuable feedback, and look forward to bringing more quality research and insights in the coming year.

1.  2025 Year Review

1.1 Market Review

The global macroeconomic landscape in 2025 was characterised by a broad-based slowdown, rising policy uncertainty, and persistent inflationary pressures. Growth was projected to be the weakest since the pandemic, with global GDP expected to expand at around 3.2%, down from 3.3% in 2024, as higher tariffs and geopolitical tensions weighed on trade and investment.​ Inflation remained above pre-pandemic levels, averaging about 4.2% globally in 2025, with services inflation elevated due to tight labour markets and trade-related cost increases.

The US Federal Reserve cut rates three times in 2025, lowering the federal funds rate to a range of 3.5%–3.75% by year-end. The European Central Bank (ECB) cut rates five times, bringing the deposit facility rate down to 2.00% by the end of September 2025.

Crypto assets, particularly BTC and ETH, led the growth among asset classes for five months between January and November 2025, followed by gold for 4 months within the same period.

Against this backdrop, the total cryptocurrency market cap recorded a notable 29% growth from Q1 to Q3 and reached a milestone of over $4 trillion in October. However, crypto fluctuated in Q4, resulting in a -4% decline year-on-year, coinciding with the economy’s macro dynamics including a broad-based slowdown, rising uncertainty, and a complex mix of policy-driven risks and regional divergences.

One of the key milestones in 2025 was the US’s establishment of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile in March, elevating the status of bitcoin and digital assets within the US financial system, and signalling a shift towards treating them as legitimate reserve assets, similar to gold. Following the US’s move, institutional interest in digital assets evolved, leading to the emergence of Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) companies. At the time of writing, the cumulative inflows into digital asset treasuries reached around $92 billion in 2025, doubling from 2024 levels.

1.2 Bitcoin and Its Ecosystem

Bitcoin in 2025 has shifted from an explosive post-halving rally to a broad adoption with clear trends of sovereign and corporate balance sheet 'bitcoinisation' continuing.

The US officially announced the establishment of its Strategic Bitcoin Reserve on 6 March 2025, through an executive order signed by President Donald Trump. The move strengthens bitcoin’s position within the US financial system, marking a shift towards recognising digital assets as legitimate reserve holdings, akin to gold or foreign currency. This marks a significant policy shift, making bitcoin a formally recognised part of the national reserve architecture and setting a precedent for other countries to consider similar steps.

Public companies and listed funds now hold a non‑trivial share of circulating BTC, with over 200 entities collectively controlling a meaningful 5.1% of the total BTC supply, according to our research dashboard. However, following BTC’s price correction in Q4, digital treasury companies faced challenges in raising additional funds to acquire more digital assets, as their market-cap to net asset value (mNAV) multiples shifted from premium to discount, adding further price pressure on their token reserves. Given that the main objective of DAT companies is to increase the token per share, selling off their BTC holdings could be anticipated under certain circumstances. However, the behaviour of these DATs is fundamentally different from companies that hold BTC as a treasury asset.

Beyond single‑name treasuries, spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and listed investment products have become major custodial hubs, effectively warehousing BTC on behalf of institutions and retail investors. This has reinforced the perception of bitcoin as a macro and portfolio asset rather than a mere speculative token. US spot BTC ETFs recorded net inflows in seven months of 2025, strongly accumulating over $22.4 billion in inflows between January and November.

1.3 Ethereum and Its Ecosystem

It was a significant year for Ethereum, marked by several notable developments, including the Pectra and Fusaka upgrades and growing institutional adoption.

The Pectra upgrade is designed to enhance user experience through new features such as account abstraction, and to improve Ethereum's mainnet efficiency by raising the validator staking limit from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. Additionally, the upgrade doubled blob capacity per block, from three to six, making L2 rollups more efficient and cost-effective.

The Fusaka upgrade aims to scale L2s, boost L1 execution efficiency, and improve both user and developer experience. It increased L1 throughput by raising the block gas limit to 60 million, implementing a per-transaction gas cap, and optimising the network protocol. For L2 scaling and fee reduction, it utilises Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS) to support larger blobs with lower validator load, and Blob Parameter Only (BPO) hard forks for predictable blob throughput increases. The median transaction cost for some L2s has yet to reflect a significant change following the Fusaka upgrade. Further observation is required to assess the full impact on cost reduction.

1.4 AI x Blockchain

DeFAI, the fusion of DeFi and AI, gained traction in early 2025. DeFAI leverages agentic AI to automate complex DeFi tasks such as trade execution, wallet management, and token sniping. However, the DeFAI hype has cooled as only a few applications could meaningfully help manage crypto wallets and execute transactions on behalf of customers. In the latter part of the year, the main development of AI in the crypto space centred on the x402 protocol, a decentralised, blockchain-based payment standard designed specifically for autonomous AI agents and machine-to-machine transactions. It was quickly adopted by technology giants like Google Cloud, AWS, and Anthropic. x402 enables real-time, low-cost micropayments for services such as API access, data, and computational resources, making it ideal for the emerging agentic economy.

The x402 protocol is an open, internet-native payment standard that enables instant, automated stablecoin payments directly over HTTP. It revives the long-unused HTTP 402 'Payment Required' status code, allowing web servers to request and receive payments in stablecoins (such as USDC) for digital resources, APIs, or services without requiring traditional accounts, sessions, or complex authentication.

How x402 Works

• When a client (such as a user, AI agent, or app) requests a protected resource, the server responds with an HTTP 402 status code and payment instructions in the headers.​
• The client constructs a signed payment payload and retries the request, including the payment details in a standard HTTP header (e.g., X-PAYMENT).​
• A payment facilitator (like Cronos’s x402 Facilitator) verifies and settles the payment on-chain. Once confirmed, the server delivers the requested resource.​
• The protocol is designed to be blockchain-agnostic, supporting multiple networks and cryptocurrencies, and integrates seamlessly into existing web infrastructure.

The Cronos x402 Facilitator is a third-party service that enables sellers to accept blockchain payments without managing blockchain infrastructure, handling verification and settlement of gas-efficient stablecoin transactions.

Read the full reports: DeFAI: DeFi x AI and Cronos x402 Facilitator

1.5 Meme Coins

Meme coins maintained momentum in this first quarter of 2025, highlighted by the launch of US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania’s own meme coins — TRUMP and MELANIA — which witnessed exponential price surges shortly after listing. Meme coins have become an important part of the cryptocurrency space.

Meme coins are widely considered a prime example of hyperfinancialisation, a process in which financial markets, financial institutions, and financial motives increasingly dominate the operations of the economy, taking the principles of speculative, detached, and short-term financial activity to a technological and cultural extreme. They symbolise the financialisation of attention, humour, and digital communities themselves. However, meme coins still play an important role in the crypto space as vehicles for community engagement. The meme coin market dropped in 2025, potentially as people sought out competing speculation avenues such as prediction markets.

1.6 RWAs

Real-world asset (RWA) tokenisation is fundamentally reshaping traditional finance, driven by institutions seeking enhanced operational efficiency, superior yield, and global accessibility. The process involves representing asset ownership (from real estate to bonds) as digital tokens on a blockchain, addressing pain points in legacy finance. Institutions are drawn to blockchain's immutable records, fractional ownership, and 24/7 liquidity, which eliminate intermediaries, cut settlement times, and reduce costs. RWA tokenisation also unlocks previously illiquid assets, broadening the capital pool and creating novel yield mechanisms. For investors, this enables portfolio diversification and easier access to private markets with lower investment thresholds. This combination of efficiency, yield, and global accessibility cements RWA tokenisation as a cornerstone of future finance, with institutional adoption as the primary catalyst.

Over the past 12 months, the overall RWA market grew by 106%, reaching $19.2 billion. Tokenised private credit and tokenised treasuries represent the two largest asset classes within the RWA realm, with market caps of $12.2 billion and $5.2 billion, respectively.

Tokenisation of treasuries has gained traction, as financial institutions (e.g., Franklin Templeton, BlackRock) have entered the sector. This uptrend was led by tokenised US treasury debt, which increased 239% year-to-date and contributed to 19% of total RWA value. Tokenised private credit saw a 46% increase year-to-date, contributing to the largest share at 70% of total RWA value.

Tokenised private credit (116% year-on-year growth; 54% of RWA value) and tokenised US Treasuries (211% year-on-year growth; 24% of RWA value), like BlackRock’s BUIDL and Franklin Templeton’s FOBXX, dominated the RWA market in 2025. This trend demonstrates the growing ability of blockchain to unlock liquidity, enhance transparency, and facilitate faster cross-border transactions for traditionally illiquid assets. Crypto.com Exchange accepts BlackRock's BUIDL tokenised fund as trading collateral for qualified institutional clients and advanced traders. This integration represents a significant step in the tokenisation of traditional financial assets and their utility in cryptocurrency markets.

Read the full report: Wall Street On-Chain Part 2 – RWA Tokenisation

1.7 Stablecoins

The total market value of the stablecoin market reached around $300 billion, and the adjusted monthly transaction volume exceeded $3.4 trillion in November 2025, surpassing Visa’s $1.3 trillion and just after Automated Clearing House (ACH)’s $7.3 trillion in the same period. The development of stablecoins has been driven by global regulatory clarity, improvements in transparency, faster payments, and their potential role in financial stability.

The stablecoin landscape is rapidly evolving, driven by a multi-front contest between traditional finance, regulated fintechs, and crypto-native infrastructures. The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act) in the US and Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) in the EU are providing regulatory clarity, positioning stablecoins as a core component of global financial infrastructure. For banks, stablecoins are becoming a strategic necessity, offering enhanced efficiency, new revenue streams, and expanded market reach, while also presenting challenges related to systemic risk, deposit disintermediation, and intense distribution competition. The market is also seeing the rise of specialised blockchains and partnerships, with competition shifting from issuance size to control over the rails and distribution channels that connect stablecoins to users and institutions. As the market matures, stablecoin adoption will likely fragment across multiple issuers and networks, with distribution capabilities and robust compliance becoming key determinants of success.

1.8 Institutional Crypto Adoption

2025 was a pivotal year for institutional adoption of digital assets, marked by increased regulatory certainty, the acceleration of RWA tokenisation, and the expansion of institutional-grade investment products like exchange-traded products (ETPs), as well as the growing use of crypto as a treasury and cash management tool. These developments reflect a transition from crypto as an exotic, alternative investment to a recognised and integrated asset class within traditional finance.

In 2025, more regions recognised crypto assets as an important part of their financial systems, with a series of crypto-specific laws introduced to clearly differentiate crypto assets from other asset classes. Some key development areas include:

Additionally, multiple spot crypto ETPs were launched in the US, including spot SOL and XRP ETFs in late 2025,  backed by clearer regulatory frameworks and more streamlined approval processes. These ETFs allowed institutions to gain regulated exposure to large altcoins, demonstrating how growing regulatory clarity continues to pave the way for broader on-chain financial products and deeper integration of digital assets into mainstream investment portfolios.

As mentioned, RWA tokenisation saw unprecedented growth, expanding by more than 170% year-to-date (excluding stablecoins). More institutions and regions have started exploring asset tokenisation, particularly in tokenised private credit and tokenised US Treasuries.

DAT companies emerged as another key driver of institutional involvement in 2025, providing a way for TradFi participants to access crypto assets using traditional rails. DAT companies offered both a store-of-value function and a more dynamic approach to capital deployment, enabling firms to leverage token holdings through DeFi strategies. The DAT model faced criticism, as some crypto venture capital (VC) firms have used DAT companies to convert their private, illiquid, and locked tokens into publicly tradeable equity, often at attractive valuations that provide an easy exit. This typically involves a VC transferring a large amount of illiquid tokens to a DAT company's balance sheet in exchange for newly issued public stock, often via a private investment in public equity (PIPE). Critics argue that this can be an engineered way for VCs to offload tokens and risk onto the public market, potentially at inflated prices, to the detriment of retail investors buying the DAT company's stock.

At the time of writing, there are 209 public companies holding more than 1 million BTC ($99 billion), led by Strategy (MSTR). Altcoin treasuries also gained popularity, with 6.5 million ETH ($20 billion) and 16 million SOL ($2 billion) held in DAT companies.

Strategy is one of the most notable DAT companies and traded mostly at a premium to net asset value (NAV) in 2025, with a peak of 2.1 times in May — although the multiple retraced to 0.86 (discount to NAV) at the time of writing, coinciding with the broader risk-off sentiment. Altcoin treasuries generally traded higher, with BitMine Immersion (the largest ETH DAT) trading north of 8.7 premium to NAV when they announced their DAT strategy, although this ratio has compressed significantly since then. The drop in NAV and general market headwinds led to the significant decline in DAT inflows, with data indicating that inflows dropped by 82.6% in November from July’s peak.

Read the full report: Digital Asset Treasury Strategy

1.9 Prediction Markets

In 2025, prediction markets are structurally transforming into real-time event-driven data infrastructures, with probabilities reflecting quantified crowd sentiment and collective intelligence distilled into tradeable data. They leverage incentives to encourage information efficiency, using event contracts to represent market-implied probabilities. This structure also provides hedging capabilities for managing risk.

Crypto.com | Derivatives North America (CDNA) is a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)-regulated platform that provides prediction market users and adopters with many advantages over other regulated and unregulated alternatives:

• CDNA provides legal clarity and institutional trust through full regulatory approvals.
• Tax advantages may exist for loss deductions under the federal derivatives framework for CFTC-designated prediction contracts offered on Crypto.com | Predictions.
• Deep, reliable liquidity is ensured through collaboration with leading institutional market makers, a model Web3 struggles with. Robust risk management and dispute resolution leverage trusted external data and oversight, addressing Web3's decentralised oracle issues.
• CDNA sets technical benchmarks for scalability and user experience through efficient trading architectures and proprietary infrastructure, such as its central limit order books (CLOB).

Crypto.com | Predictions exemplifies a forward-looking, industry-leading approach that is ahead of both regulated and unregulated offerings. By operating its Prediction Trading platform as a fully CFTC-regulated derivatives product through CDNA, it establishes Crypto.com’s legal compliance and user protection through rigorous oversight, while also offering potential favourable tax treatment — advantages that unregulated platforms currently lack.

Read the full report: Prediction Markets: The Rise of Event-Driven Finance

1.10 Derivatives

2025 was a remarkable year for decentralised perpetual platforms. The latest data showed that trading volume on decentralised platforms reached $6.9 trillion from January to November, surging by 3.1 times year-over-year. The ratio of trading volume on decentralised exchanges (DEXs) versus centralised exchanges (CEXs) reached over 19% in October.

Additionally, the market share of decentralised platforms also shifted. Hyperliquid dominated trading volumes prior to September 2025. The most notable development of Hyperliquid was the successful mainnet launch of its HIP-3 upgrade in October, which enabled the permissionless creation of perpetual futures markets. This allowed deployers that met on-chain requirements — including staking 500,000 HYPE tokens as collateral, equivalent to around $15 million at time of writing — to launch decentralised perpetual markets, marking a major step towards decentralisation and broader market participation.

Other platforms like Moonlander and Lighter came into the spotlight inQ3 and Q4. Moonlander is a leading perpetual DEX on Cronos, known for its shared liquidity pool (MLP) that boosts capital efficiency and reduces slippage. It was among the first to offer perpetual equities and predictions, expanding beyond crypto assets by using real-time price feeds. Moonlander supports up to 1,000x leverage for crypto and 50x for equities, leveraging Cronos’s scalable dual-chain architecture. This innovation helped position Cronos as a major hub for advanced DeFi derivatives.

The market landscape can shift quickly in the cryptocurrency space. Nevertheless, innovation and user experience remain key factors of successful DEXs.

1.11 Capital Investment and Incubation

For crypto venture capital, 2025 can be characterised by a fundamental shift towards consolidation, institutional alignment, and regulatory clarity. While the total number of deals has continued to trend down, the sheer volume of capital raised in mega-rounds has surged, signalling a market that is maturing and rewarding scale over seed-stage proliferation. The total fundraising amount in the crypto industry reached $54.5 billion year-to-date (January to November), a 124% increase compared to  the full-year total for 2024.

In terms of sector trends, the CeFi category accumulated the most capital with over $15.8 billion raised, accounting for 29% of the total funds, supported by accelerated institutional adoption over the year. This was followed by DeFi and Blockchain Infrastructure, which attracted $9.7 billion and $8.6 billion, respectively.

1.12 Security and Compliance

Security is a core focus for any blockchain network. Throughout 2025, however, the industry continued to experience hacks and exploits, with the total amount of money lost in cryptocurrency hacks exceeding $3 billion over the year.

Within the blockchain and digital asset industry in particular, it is critical to protect users by implementing robust security and compliance measures. For example, Crypto.com is built on a solid foundation of security, privacy, and compliance, and is the first cryptocurrency company in the world to have ISO 22301:2019, ISO/IEC 27701:2019, ISO/IEC 27001:2022, and PCI DSS v4.0 Level 1 Service Provider compliance, and independently assessed at Tier 4, the highest level for both the NIST Cybersecurity and Privacy Framework, as well as Service Organisation Control (SOC) 2 Type II compliance. Crypto.com has also engaged globally recognised security consulting and auditing firms like Kudelski Security to stress test and audit our core blockchain systems.

Moreover, Crypto.com actively collaborates with regulators to responsibly advance the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry, with compliance remaining of paramount importance to the company. In 2025, it secured licences in multiple jurisdictions worldwide as part of its ongoing commitment to regulatory compliance.

These achievements in security and compliance have helped safeguard Crypto.com’s users and further establish its leadership position within the industry.

2. 2026 Year Ahead

In this section, we cover several topics that will potentially drive future industry developments.

2.1 Hybrid Finance

Hybrid finance is an evolving concept that represents the convergence and integration of TradFi and DeFi. It aims to combine the stability, security, and regulatory compliance of the traditional banking system with the efficiency, transparency, and innovation of blockchain technology. 2026 will be a critical transition year as the sector moves from the foundational building of 2025 to commercial scaling and deep institutional integration. Key developments in hybrid finance will revolve around asset tokenisation, stablecoin adoption, and the emergence of institutional-grade blockchain infrastructures.

Tokenisation is expected to see ‘order of magnitude growth’, initially dominated by the tokenisation of US Treasuries (e.g., via money market funds) due to global demand for yield and crypto rail efficiency. The market is set to expand beyond Treasuries into private credit and experimental tokenised equities. Institutional adoption, led by major asset managers like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, will help solidify tokenisation as a competitive necessity in traditional finance by enabling better distribution and lower costs.

Stablecoins are shifting from a crypto trading tool to operational settlement rails for a digital, international economy. 2026 marks the true execution phase for corporate stablecoin adoption in banking, e-commerce, and global supply chains, driven by faster, cheaper cross-border payments and improved treasury management. Despite expected growth in supply, issuers face a monetisation challenge: they need an estimated supply increase of around $88.7 billion in 2026 just to maintain interest-based revenue as Federal Fund rates are forecasted to fall. Regulatory clarity from the US GENIUS Act and the EU's MiCA framework, along with US political motivation to support its bond market, provide the necessary green light for growth.

Public blockchains, especially Ethereum, will transition from experimental 'sandboxes' to credible institutional infrastructure. Ethereum's established financial primitives and strong security model make it the preferred settlement layer. Pilots like JPMorgan's tokenised deposits (JPMD) are a key step, expected to integrate into institutional DeFi venues. Cronos, an EVM-compatible chain, is strategically positioned as a key environment for institutionally-aligned on-chain activity. This is due to its strong connection with the Crypto.com ecosystem and dedicated focus on DeFi and AI, making it a significant proving ground for EVM and L2 specialisation.

Hybrid finance will normalise digital assets by integrating crypto into the financial industry rather than treating it as an exception. This shift is fuelled by:

• Value Accrual Models: Protocols like Uniswap and Lido are moving towards fundamentals-driven, revenue-sharing models (e.g., token buybacks) that accrue direct value to token holders, making them resemble traditional equity assets.
• Prediction Markets: Platforms such as Crypto.com | Predictions will further integrate into the wider information economy, serving as reliable real-time sentiment signals.

2.2 Prediction Markets

Prediction markets in 2026 are likely to be defined by a race toward regulatory legitimacy and mainstream adoption, with increased AI-driven participation and a broader range of events, including sports, macro data, corporate developments, and real-world activities. The combination of retail interest and growing institutional participation is expected to drive further innovation and liquidity in prediction markets.​ There are likely to be more institutions integrating prediction market data to improve risk evaluation. Additionally, the convergence between Web2 and Web3 platforms is set to continue:

• Regulatory Compliance: Regulated exchanges such as Crypto.com | Predictions are consolidating US‑centric volumes thanks to CFTC‑style supervision and easier fiat and tax handling, attracting both retail users and institutions seeking prediction exposure.
• Off-Chain Execution: Web3 and Web2 platforms are adopting the central limit order book (CLOB) model to facilitate trades. They rely on institutional market makers or internal liquidity to lower trading costs and slippage, thereby improving user experience.
• On-Chain Transparency: Although centralised infrastructure is more suitable for prediction markets, Web2 platforms are exploring ways to integrate blockchain for innovative use cases to attract internet capital.

As regulatory frameworks evolve, prediction markets are likely to see clearer guidelines, facilitating broader adoption and deeper integration with traditional finance.

2.3 RWAs and Stablecoins

The year 2026 is poised to be pivotal for both stablecoins and RWAs, driven primarily by a surge in institutional adoption and the crystallisation of global regulatory frameworks. The trend is clearly shifting from ‘experimental’ to ‘compliant financial infrastructure’.

RWAs

Tokenised fixed income products (e.g., tokenised US treasuries and money market funds) are becoming the foundational RWA. In 2026, they will cement their position as the primary, low-risk anchor for the on-chain financial ecosystem. Institutions are using these tokenised instruments to earn regulated yield directly on-chain, effectively bridging TradFi and DeFi in a compliant manner.

Tokenised RWAs are projected for exponential growth, potentially hitting $16.1 trillion by 2030 — a figure representing 10% of global GDP, according to Boston Consulting Group. This anticipated growth is driven significantly by the adoption and demand from traditional financial institutions and governments, alongside existing crypto owners, signalling strong conviction from traditional finance in the RWA tokenisation trend. This enthusiasm is expected to create a positive tokenisation flywheel effect, in which capital migrating on-chain expands the range of tokenised investment avenues, thereby attracting more institutional capital. Ultimately, RWA tokenisation is set to be a revolutionary force, with traditional finance acting as a key catalyst.

Stablecoins

In 2026, the focus for stablecoins is expected  to remain on transparency and stability, clearer regulatory guidelines for yield-bearing stablecoins (YBS), and the broader usage of deposit tokens. YBS will continue to mature as an essential on-chain product for institutional and retail users seeking sustainable, permissionless yield.

Deposit tokens are seen as the most compliant and least disruptive way for banks to engage with blockchain technology, and are expected to move from the pilot phase into a crucial, high-impact component of financial infrastructure. This development is being driven almost entirely by major commercial banks and central banking authorities worldwide:

Replacing Legacy Settlement: The primary use case in 2026 will be the use of deposit tokens for instantaneous interbank settlement in wholesale financial markets. This allows for delivery versus payment (DvP) and payment versus payment (PvP) to occur simultaneously and operate on a 24/7 basis, reducing counterparty risk and cutting settlement times from days to seconds.

JPM Coin Model Goes Multi-Bank: Following the lead of pioneers like JPMorgan's JPM Coin (which functions as a deposit token for B2B payments on a permissioned chain), other large global banks are expected to launch their own proprietary deposit tokens. The focus will then shift to interoperability, allowing different banks' deposit tokens to transact seamlessly with one another.

Integration with RWAs: Deposit tokens will serve as a cash layer for the expansion of RWA tokenisation. When an institution trades a tokenised treasury or a tokenised private equity stake, a deposit token can act as the compliant, on-chain instrument used to settle the payment instantly.

2.4 AI x Web3

AI Agents & Decentralised Trust

The biggest trend is the rise of agentic AI — autonomous systems that can reason, plan, and act independently — and their reliance on Web3 infrastructure for trust and verification.

Agent-to-Agent (A2A) Commerce: AI agents will increasingly transact and collaborate with other agents and systems automatically. Web3 will provide the necessary infrastructure for this, including decentralised identifiers (DIDs) for agent identity, smart contracts for automated settlement, and payment protocols (like x402) for autonomous payments and service fees.

Blockchain as AI's Trust Network: As autonomous AI agents proliferate and handle complex workflows (e.g., executing trades, managing supply chains, or making DAO governance decisions), the need for accountability becomes critical. Blockchain will serve as a non-negotiable trust layer for AI, with significant actions, decisions, and data inputs from AI agents logged immutably on distributed ledgers to ensure transparency, auditability, and compliance.

Data Integrity and Privacy

AI models thrive on data, while Web3 is built on user sovereignty and privacy. Their intersection of these two paradigms will drive new approaches to data verification and protection:

Verifiable and Authentic Content: With the flood of AI-generated content (e.g., deepfakes, 'junk content'), the market will place a premium on content with a verifiable origin. This is likely to lead to widespread adoption of blockchain notarisation and authenticity labels on media, establishing clear, on-chain proof that content or data is human-generated, sourced from a verified entity, or has not been tampered with.

Privacy-Preserving AI: There will be increased use of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) like zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and federated learning, to allow AI models to be trained and run on decentralised, masked data without revealing the underlying information.

2.5 DeFi

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is set to formalise a 'pro-innovation' framework — the 'Innovation Exemption' — for the US crypto and blockchain industry, moving from an 'enforcement-first' approach. This major regulatory shift aims to provide a compliant path for growth while protecting investors. Areas likely to see development include uncollateralised lending, fundraising, and proprietary automated market makers (AMMs).

Perpetuals Trading on Equities

The intersection of traditional equities and crypto-native derivatives has created a new frontier: Stock Perpetuals. As we move into 2026, this sector is shifting from a niche DeFi experiment to a primary focus for major institutional players and retail-focused exchanges. 

Unlike traditional tokenized stocks, which require 1:1 backing and custody, Stock Perps are synthetic. This allows for 24/7 trading, higher leverage (up to 50x–100x), and deeper liquidity without the friction of securing underlying shares.

However, perpetual trading involves risks such as funding rate volatility and oracle reliability. Since stock perpetual contracts rely on a ‘funding rate’ to keep the price anchored to the spot market, periods of extreme one-sided demand (e.g., a tech rally) can make holding long positions prohibitively expensive. Furthermore, any latency or 'fat-finger' error from a price oracle can trigger massive and unnecessary liquidations, as accurate, real-time pricing is the lifeblood of these contracts.

Uncollateralised Lending

DeFi and crypto credit markets currently face limitations in creating scalable, permissionless systems for unsecured credit lines, hindering broader capital access without reliance on overcollateralisation or restrictive off-chain/private arrangements. Solutions that target fragmented and inefficient DeFi lending, deliver comprehensive underwriting, and improve default and solvency management could gain traction.

Proprietary AMMs

AMMs on the Solana network have shifted. HumidiFi is a Solana-based DEX that uses proprietary ‘prop AMM’ dark-pool style execution to limit spread and slippage while enabling private order execution. This approach has helped it rapidly become the second-largest DEX by volume on Solana since launching in mid‑2025.​ A ‘dark-pool’ style DEX routes trades to vault-based, privately managed liquidity rather than to open public AMM pools, favouring execution quality and privacy for larger flows. This model targets minimal information leakage and reduced MEV and front‑running risk compared to public AMMs. HumidiFi integrated with Solana’s major aggregator Jupiter, allowing order flow to find HumidiFi quotes seamlessly, which amplified its early liquidity capture and utilisation by high-volume traders and bots.

The proprietary approach employed by HumidiFi is poised to significantly enhance market structure innovation, and could outpace chain-level improvements.

Fundraising

The re-emergence of public initial coin offerings (ICOs) is set to reshape the crypto fundraising landscape, positioning them as the next frontier for internet-native capital formation. This transformation is underpinned by more mature regulatory frameworks and a broader institutional understanding of blockchain technology's potential.

The provision of public token sale services for retail users by regulated platforms marks a major, calculated strategic shift, driven by perceived improvements in regulatory clarity under the Trump administration. The core implication is the democratisation of early-stage crypto investment for retail users, though it introduces the challenge of managing regulatory compliance and investor protection in a high-growth sector. This represents a significant advancement over typical meme coin launchpads by prioritising credibility, compliance, and sustainability over the speed and speculative frenzy characteristic of the meme coin world.

2.6 Ethereum

The next major Ethereum upgrade, Glamsterdam, represents a major step in Ethereum's roadmap that shifts the focus back towards L1 stability, censorship resistance, and efficiency. Glamsterdam’s core focus revolves around two headliner Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs):

Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) (EIP-7732): ePBS addresses the current reliance on external relayers and block builders for block creation, which concentrates power and raises censorship concerns. 

• Focus: ePBS embeds the separation between the Proposer (validator creating the block) and the Builder (entity constructing the block contents) directly into the Ethereum protocol.
• Benefits: This aims to increase censorship resistance by requiring the Proposer to accept the most profitable payload, reduce trust in external MEV-Boost relays, and decentralise power by allowing more builders to compete for block space, thereby democratising MEV extraction.

Block-Level Access Lists (BALs) (EIP-7928): This proposal aims to improve the Ethereum execution layer (EL) by making every block include a detailed list of all accounts and storage slots it touches, plus their final values.

• Focus: Transaction execution today cannot be parallelised because nodes do not know in advance which addresses and storage slots will be accessed; BALs solve this by making state access explicit at the block level.
• Benefits:
• • Better Efficiency: Node software loads data faster, dramatically increasing block processing speed.
  • Future Scaling: Lays groundwork for parallel execution by identifying non-conflicting transactions.
  • Lower Gas Costs: Expected to reduce gas costs for state-heavy applications by optimising state access.

2.7 Infrastructure

The core narrative for 2026 will be one of convergence, particularly between blockchain, AI, and real-world systems, driven by a maturing regulatory environment and an intense focus on scalability.

Privacy

Privacy remains a structural tension in Web3, given that blockchains are transparent by design. In 2026, privacy will transition from an optional feature to a critical infrastructure component for widespread enterprise and institutional adoption.

With growing institutional and retail adoption, Ethereum is also sharpening its focus on privacy, as it is fundamental to user security and the broader adoption of decentralised applications (dapps) on its network. Privacy helps protect users from surveillance, censorship, front-running, and data leakage, all of which can undermine trust and participation in Ethereum’s network, which aims to be the world's settlement layer.

DePIN

Blockchain can help the AI bottleneck by addressing the huge demand for GPU and CPU resources:

• Networks like Akash Network and Render Network aggregate idle or underutilised compute resources (GPUs and CPUs) from data centres, miners, and individuals globally. They offer a market-driven, lower-cost alternative to centralised cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud, directly addressing the cost and supply constraints.
• While training large foundational models will likely remain centralised, the majority of future AI computational demand is expected to come from inference — running models to generate results). Inference demands are highly distributed, closer to the edge, and more cost-sensitive. DePIN networks are inherently decentralised, making them well suited for the distributed, low-latency, and cost-effective edge inference that will drive the market in 2026 and beyond.

2.8 Crypto Market Size

Despite challenging macro conditions, cryptocurrency adoption remained strong in 2025. As of November 2025, the number of crypto owners had reached 737 million, with an monthly average adoption growth rate of 0.8% during the year. Depending on market conditions, the number of global crypto owners is expected to reach 800–900 million in 2026.

In 2026, more merchants are expected to accept crypto as a payment method, supported by expanding institutional infrastructure and clearer regulation in key markets. This should align with increasing adoption under US President Trump’s proactive policy stance on crypto.

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Authors

Crypto.com Research and Insights team

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