The five certainties of the crypto market in 2026: From stablecoins to privacy protection industry upgrade pathways

2025年已经落幕，市场叙事明显衰退。但当我们把目光投向2026年，产业发展却呈现出高度一致的预期。通过分析Galaxy、a16z、Delphi Digital、Bitwise等主流研究机构和资深从业者的观点，可以梳理出五个最具共识的产业方向。

Stablecoins: Upgrading from Crypto Tools to Mainstream Financial Infrastructure

The transformation of stablecoins is the most certain trend. Last year, the trading volume of stablecoins reached $46 trillion—equivalent to 20 times PayPal’s annual transaction volume, nearly 3 times Visa’s, and approaching the scale of the US ACH payment network.

But the focus is not whether demand for stablecoins exists, but how to truly connect them to everyday financial scenarios. a16z’s research points out that key areas include deposits and withdrawals, payments, settlement, and consumption—four complex and challenging sectors. A new wave of startups is breaking through one by one: some use cryptographic proofs to enable users to convert local account balances to digital dollars without exposing privacy; some directly integrate local banking networks, QR codes, and real-time payment channels; others are building global wallets and card issuance platforms to enable stablecoins to be used at everyday merchants.

When these deposit and withdrawal channels mature, digital dollars will directly connect to local payment systems and business tools, meaning cross-border salaries paid in real-time, global collections without bank accounts, and instant settlement between applications and users—stablecoins will evolve from niche financial tools into the foundational layer of internet settlement.

From a technical perspective, existing banking system architectures are too outdated. Core ledgers still run on mainframes, using COBOL language, batch file interfaces rather than APIs. While such systems are stable and trustworthy, they are almost impossible to iterate quickly. Adding real-time payment features could take months or even years, compounded by accumulated technical debt. Stablecoins happen to fill this gap.

Galaxy Research boldly predicts that by the end of 2026, 30% of international payments will be settled via stablecoins. Bitwise predicts that stablecoins will double in market cap, with the key variable being the implementation of the GENIUS Act in early 2026—opening new growth opportunities for existing issuers and attracting new players.

AI Agent Economy: The Essential Infrastructure for Real-Time Interaction and Micro-Payments

The second consensus is that AI Agents will become major participants in on-chain economies. Recent AI trading competitions on various platforms have confirmed this potential.

The logic is clear: as AI Agents automatically execute tasks, make decisions, and interact at high frequency, they need a fast, inexpensive, permissionless value transfer method—precisely the opposite of traditional payment systems. Traditional financial infrastructure is designed for humans, with accounts, identity verification, and settlement cycles—all friction points for Agents.

Cryptocurrencies, especially stablecoins combined with payment protocols like x402, are almost tailor-made for this scenario: instant settlement, support for micro-payments, programmability, permissionless. 2026 is likely to be the year when Agent payment infrastructure shifts from experimental to real-scale deployment.

a16z researchers note that the current bottleneck in the AI Agent economy has shifted from “not smart enough” to “lacking identity recognition.” In financial systems, “non-human identities” now outnumber human employees at a ratio of 96:1, but most of these identities are “ghosts without bank accounts.” The industry urgently needs KYA (Know Your Agent)—similar to KYC—an identity verification system for Agents, which would require digital certificates to prove the agent’s identity, constraints, and responsible parties. This process could take only a few months, far faster than the decades-long development of KYC systems.

The x402 protocol will become the standard for Agent economy payments. Galaxy Research’s specific forecast is that by 2026, x402 payments will account for 30% of Base daily transaction volume and 5% of Solana’s non-voting transactions, marking the arrival of large-scale on-chain interactions among Agents. Base, driven by Coinbase, will benefit from the x402 standard, while Solana, with its large developer and user community, will be another major hub. Emerging payment chains like Tempo and Arc will also grow rapidly in this process.

High-quality real data (DePAI) will become a key asset, exemplified by projects like BitRobot, PrismaX, Shaga, Chakra, which embody this direction.

RWA: From “Tokenizing Everything” to Substantive Integration

Contrasting with the previous enthusiasm for “everything tokenizable,” RWA (Real-World Assets) has become more rational. Research institutions no longer discuss theoretical market sizes but focus on practical feasibility.

a16z analysts point out that while banks, fintech firms, and asset managers show strong interest in tokenizing US stocks, commodities, and indices, most current “tokenization” is essentially physical replication. These assets are merely given a new technological shell, with trading logic and risk structures still following traditional asset understanding, rather than truly leveraging the native features of crypto systems.

The breakthrough lies in collateral— a core aspect of traditional finance. Galaxy Research predicts that next year, we will see for the first time large banks or brokerages officially accept tokenized stocks as mainstream collateral. This is not just a product development but a symbolic breakthrough—tokenized stocks moving from DeFi experiments or private chain pilots by big banks to genuine integration with mainstream financial systems.

The institution notes that traditional financial infrastructure providers are accelerating their transition to blockchain systems, and regulators are also clarifying support. They expect to see the first official recognition by major financial institutions that on-chain tokenized stocks are equivalent to traditional securities.

Hashdex is the most aggressive, predicting that the scale of physical asset tokenization will grow tenfold, driven by regulatory clarity, institutional participation, and technological maturity.

Prediction Markets: Evolving from Gambling to Information Aggregation Tools

Prediction markets are widely expected to grow in 2026, but surprisingly, the reasons for optimism have gone beyond “decentralized gambling.”

a16z economists observe that prediction markets are crossing the threshold of “mainstreaming.” As they deepen integration with crypto and AI, these markets will become larger, broader, and smarter. But this expansion also comes with costs: higher trading frequency, faster information feedback, and more automated participants—amplifying value but also creating new challenges for builders, such as how to fairly adjudicate results without disputes.

Galaxy Research quantifies this change: Polymarket’s weekly trading volume will continue to surpass $1.5 billion in 2026. Supporting factors include new capital deepening market liquidity, AI-driven high-frequency instructions increasing trading activity, and Polymarket’s improving distribution capabilities attracting more funds.

Bitwise boldly predicts that the open interest of Polymarket contracts will surpass the historic high during the 2024 US presidential election. The three driving forces are: the influx of new US users, approximately $2 billion of new capital, and market categories expanding from politics to economics, sports, and pop culture.

KOL Tomasz Tunguz estimates that by 2026, the proportion of US prediction market users will rise from the current 5% to 35%—approaching the 56% usage rate of sports betting in the US, indicating a transition from niche financial tools to mainstream information consumption and entertainment products.

But Galaxy also issues a warning: the probability of federal investigations into prediction markets is high. As regulation opens, trading volume and open interest surge, “gray events” are emerging—scandals involving insider trading or manipulation of sports results. Because on-chain prediction markets allow anonymous trading and lax KYC, the incentives for abuse of insider information are greater. Investigations may no longer stem from anomalies in traditional betting systems but directly from suspicious fluctuations in on-chain prediction market prices.

Privacy Coins: From “Dark Horse” to Infrastructure Upgrade

As more capital, data, and automation decisions go on-chain, the cost of information leakage becomes unbearable. Privacy-focused assets have shown a dark horse performance in 2025, with gains even surpassing Bitcoin and mainstream coins.

Galaxy Research makes a startling prediction: the total market cap of privacy coins will surpass $100 billion by the end of 2026. The institution notes that by the end of 2025, as investors transfer more capital onto the chain, on-chain privacy becomes a top priority. Among them, Zcash increased by about 800%, Railgun by approximately 204%, and Monero by a modest 53%.

Interestingly, Bitcoin’s original developers, including Satoshi Nakamoto, studied and explored privacy technologies. Early Bitcoin design discussions indeed considered making transactions more private or even fully anonymous, but practical technologies like zero-knowledge proofs were far out of reach at the time.

Today, the situation has changed dramatically. Zero-knowledge proof technology has become feasible, on-chain value has exploded, and more users—especially institutions—are seriously considering a stark reality: do they really want all asset balances, transaction paths, and capital structures to be permanently public to anyone?

The privacy demand has thus upgraded from an “ideal aspiration” to an “actual institutional concern.”

Mysten Labs co-founder adds a different dimension to this logic, analyzing deeper data dependencies—not from asset value or user behavior, but from the reliance on data itself. Every model, every Agent, every automation system depends on one thing: data. But most current data pipelines—whether for model inputs or outputs—are opaque, tamperable, and non-auditable. This may be acceptable in consumer applications but is nearly insurmountable in finance and healthcare. When Agent systems begin to crawl the web, trade, and make decisions autonomously, the problems will magnify.

Based on this, he proposes the concept of “Secrets as a Service”: in the future, instead of patching privacy at the application layer, a programmable native data access infrastructure will be built, including executable data access rules, client-side encryption mechanisms, and decentralized key management systems to define who can decrypt what data, under what conditions, and for how long. These rules should be enforced on-chain, independent of internal processes or manual constraints. Coupled with verifiable data systems, privacy can evolve from an application feature into a foundational internet infrastructure, not just an add-on product.

Industry Observation Supplement: The Big Shift of Value to the Application Layer

In addition to the five major consensus points, many institutions also point out an emerging phenomenon that is not yet fully agreed upon but warrants attention: the flow of value toward the application layer. Increasing predictions suggest that the “Application Layer Fatty Theory” is replacing the “Protocol Layer Fatty Theory.” Value is no longer primarily accumulated in the underlying chains and general protocols but is gradually concentrating at the application layer—not because the underlying layer is insignificant, but because the applications are what directly interact with users, data, and capital flows.

This has sparked a major debate: under the trend of “application layer fatty,” how will the value of Ethereum, as the “protocol layer fatty” aiming to become the world’s computer, change? Some believe Ethereum will continue to benefit from tokenization and its role as a financial infrastructure; others think it may gradually become a “boring but necessary network,” with most value absorbed by upper-layer applications.

Regarding Bitcoin, the mainstream market remains optimistic about its performance in 2026, with institutional ETFs and digital asset trusts continuing to grow, solidifying its status as a macro asset and “digital gold.” But the threat of quantum computing remains.

As these trends evolve in 2026, the entire crypto industry will undergo profound restructuring.