2026: Be Water
2025 was one to remember.
Donald Trump stepping into the Oval Office heralded a paradigm shift in crypto regulatory frameworks and macroeconomic policies but were we really surprised by World Liberty Financial working for their own bags, extreme protectionist measures resulting in global tariff wars and uncertainty on the Fed’s stance? The best thing that came out of Trump’s second term so far is no doubt the GENIUS act.
Across the world, the escalation of the ongoing Gaza conflict threatened a hot war which left global markets on edge. On the other hand, China does not seem too bothered by everything else, with Xi establishing trade agreements with Trump, while striving towards Made in China 2025. The rise of the “Six Little Dragons” of Hangzhou (the Silicon Valley of China) is also a huge testament to the depth of resources and talent in the Mainland.
The 10/10 liquidation event was definitely not on our bingo cards and that really took the wind out of our sails. I’m still not entirely sure what exactly went down to this day and I am sure the contagion is worse than what was reported. The majority were expecting the usual 4-year cycle as well but it seems like we have broken out of that. As crypto was trying to find its footing again, equities rallied relentlessly from their lows in April.
All things considered, my portfolio had underperformed (against $BTC) due to misplacing convictions, not taking profits aggressively and failing to pivot quickly to new narratives.
![r/QuotesPorn - Be like water.... - Bruce Lee [640 x 339]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7iuP!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F006af3b1-6730-42e0-8f56-658d02466e61_620x339.jpeg "r/QuotesPorn - Be like water.... - Bruce Lee [640 x 339]")
2026 is to be “water” - keep an open mind, read the signals, position early and pivot faster.
General Thesis
Institutional adoption has already started and 2026 is when the second-order effects become visible: deeper liquidity infrastructure, canonical issuance of tokenized assets and a cycle where capital allocators set the pace, not retail sentiment.
Narratives are short-lived - sectors that thrived on hype alone will get repriced as institutions demand revenue, compliance, and actual product-market fit. This cycle will be defined by convergence as traditional financial rails merge with on-chain infrastructure.
The winners are those positioned where institutional money actually wants to go.
Predictions
What I expect to play out:
$BTC Will Surpass $150K
I reckon $BTC will achieve new ATH and hit at least $150K within the year.
Focus Will Shift from Blockchain Infrastructure to Consumer Apps
Infrastructure is mature, backed by institutional confidence and trust. However, there are just too many L1/L2s out there, resulting in extreme liquidity fragmentation. Many existing chains have also been ghosted by retail after maximizing their airdrop allocations. If you have not watched The L1 Debate between Haseeb and Santiago, now is a good time.
I fully agree with Santiago. My key takeaways are:
We do not need more “purpose-intent” chains (AI, Robotics or even Privacy)
L1s should be valued on revenue (as do all other projects) and hence valuations will continue to compress
Difficult to come up with a price target but main bet here is that $SOL will outperform $ETH (just look at the P/F ratio)
Blockspace is fungible, liquidity isn't - users don't care which chain settles their transaction, they care about execution quality, available counterparties, and pricing/slippage
The real winners will be consumer apps that accrue value through liquidity and user relationships, while treating settlement as a cost-minimization decision. I expect to see more neobanks and superapps launching given their distribution, liquidity aggregation, user trust in a single interface. Currently, players that have the most strategic advantage are Base and Mantle (Coinbase and Bybit respectively).
Base has yet to launch but I am expecting it to sit between $50 and $100B FDV while Mantle should see a 5-10x growth.
Launchpads Will Slow Down Despite Innovations
We need fewer tokens, not more. Who am I kidding though? The casino never sleeps.
Based on the data above, I would like to believe that the industry is actually healing and we will eventually cease to have a cesspool of shitcoins. Feels like $PUMP still has legs to move back to its TGE FDV of $4B given how much obscene revenue it has generated and still generating.
ICM has lost momentum as well and despite new mechanisms (i.e. MetaDAO’s Ownership Coins), I do not think launchpads will outperform this year (fizzle out by 2H26).
Crypto Gambling and Sports Betting Will Return
Prediction Markets was one of the main themes of 2025 and it has evolved into a financial derivative used for hedging and even generating short-term beta.
Prediction Markets will definitely continue to grow exponentially throughout 2026, spearheaded by sporting events and I am extremely interested to see the second-order effects on platforms like Shuffle ($SHFL), Rollbit ($RLB), DraftKings ($DKNG) and FanDuel.
The FIFA World Cup will be taking place this year across Canada, Mexico and USA (where Kalshi and Polymarket are headquartered and licensed) - lifetime trading volume for Sports will definitely cross $100B on Kalshi, while wager volumes and GGRs on betting platforms will surely be through the roof. Personally, I am bullish on Sports as an entire vertical which I will cover in a separate piece.
Will monitor fantasy sports closely too (e.g. Sorare, Football.fun) - might just see a rally in NFTs as well, spurred by the on-chain TCG meta (thank you Pokemon and One Piece).
Also, why is Vitalik shilling Milady?
On-Chain Equities Will Be the Next Big Thing
Okay, we already have tokenized equities and they are already traded on-chain but just how big will they be? I did a quick back of the envelope market sizing of the on-chain equities market (US only, given it’s the largest equities market in the world) - kind of scrappy because I couldn’t get enough granular data on ADV and contracts notional value (published by CME every year).
In 2024, US cash equities’ ADTV was ~$607.7B. The main assumption here is that equities index futures is 3x of that (given crypto perps was ~3x of spot volume, as reported by CoinGecko). The Total Addressable Market (TAM) would be equivalent to the entire equities market (did not consider options in the above model), which would have churned ~$612.6T in 2024 (taking 252 trading days). The base case assumption is that DeFi can capture 2.5% of the total volume, resulting in a Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) of ~$15.3T a year (~$1.3T/month).
To put things into perspective, the xStocks’ recent DTV is merely ~$2M and Hyperliquid perps averaged ~$240B of monthly volume in 2025 - plenty of room to grow and an insane amount of potential revenue, even if it’s just a 1bps take-rate.
UX across brokerages like Interactive Brokers ($IBKR), Nasdaq ($NDAQ) and Charles Schwab ($SCHW) and many others is absolutely horrendous given how on/off-ramps are costly and have slow turnaround but we have started to see through the integration of stablecoins (i.e. Zero Hash x Interactive Brokers).
Thanks to perps, equities are now going to be 24/7 and traditional operators will have to go on-chain or be left in the dust - the real opportunity lies in monetizing the user funnels of these platforms, that are huge and non-leaky (vs crypto products that have a narrow top-of-funnel); there will be market inefficiencies present at the beginning (price dislocation due to thin order books, arbitrage between perps vs spot price resulting in extreme mean reversion) but that also means there’s money to be made for retail.
Stablecoin Wars: Circle will give Tether a run for their money
USDC’s velocity and on-chain activity have been trending up, getting an additional boost from the GENIUS Act and regulatory approval across key jurisdictions such as France, UK, Singapore, Japan and even Abu Dhabi. USDC market cap grew 72% in 2025 (~$43B to ~$73B), against USDT’s 32% growth; while Circle was the first global stablecoin issuer to achieve MiCA compliance, Tether was delisted from EU exchanges throughout the year. Circle’s IPO and having its reserves managed by BlackRock in a SEC-registered fund further cemented its institutional credibility.
The scenario underpriced by markets: Circle has built a global regulatory infrastructure that no competitor can quickly replicate and USDC becomes the dominant compliant stablecoin standard; supply of USDC will grow beyond $100B and achieve 35-40% of the combined USDT + USDC market, while $CRCL re-rates up to the $120 - $140 range.
Robotics Will Rally - Just Not On-Chain
State of the trenches is that most Robotics projects are pure vaporware. Major robotics companies like Figure AI, Boston Dynamics and Unitree operate entirely on traditional infrastructure, without requiring crypto for coordination, payments and/or data collection. Existing infrastructure projects are also looking for robots to tokenize, rather than having fleets of robots demanding to go on-chain.
Don’t get me wrong - Robotics is having their ChatGPT moment right now but the Robotics x Crypto thesis just feels like a “solution looking for a problem”. Not particularly bullish on Robotics tokens.
Make DePIN Great Again
The appeal of DePIN often hinges on their ability to generate real-world revenue, echoing traditional sectors like energy, communication services and utilities. However, revenue generation does not equate to being investable - DePIN projects face the same structural hurdles (e.g. high CapEx) that made early telecom and marketplace ventures lengthy and uncertain investments. The initial revenue often covers only a fraction of total CapEx, resulting in a long "harvesting" phase before net positive cash-flow.
DePIN is also notorious for its unsustainable tokenomics (i.e. high rewards emission with no utility) but if we find a workaround for stronger token designs, I do think interest will pick up again, focusing on winners that have been battle-tested through the market cycle and have built a defensible moat.
InfoFi Will Lose Attention (How Ironic)
They say “attention is the new currency” but most of it is worthless. Botted engagement, KOLs/investors larping and mercenary takes that are optimized for extraction - legitimate analysis gets crowded out, signal-to-noise ratio tanks. That explains why so many people have dropped out of CT.
Projects (that already struggle with funding and generating actual revenue) burn tons of capital on reach that doesn’t convert and retain. It will definitely be difficult for $KAITO to make a comeback as it continues to move towards its lows.
From VC Exit to PE Entry
As the industry continues to consolidate, along with greater clarity on regulations, Crypto M&A activity will continue to grow as roll-ups gain momentum - foresee a 2-3x growth in the number of transactions and dollar value of transactions. Reckon there will be more token-based M&A deals.
Value creation through PE will start to take shape too. VCs have dominated the space for the longest time through seed and early stage financing; as projects survive and mature, I am hoping to see more growth equity and buyout deals. Genuinely interested to see how Inversion executes their playbook.
Asset Allocation
Multi-Asset Approach
$BTC clearly underperformed equities and commodities last year. The earlier we recognize that TradFi have been able to offer asymmetric returns, the better (albeit not the 50-100x we can get in crypto). I do think equities/commodities will continue to rally but what goes up will always come down. Hoping for a better entry but also cognizant of not trying to catch falling knives. “Time in the market is better than timing the market” - as cliche as it sounds, it is still a proven fundamental.
I haven’t deep-dived into how am I going to position for this but will be looking to execute a multi-asset strategy. The good thing now is you are able to obtain on-chain exposure of equities and commodities through perps and tokenization platforms. Unfortunately, investment universe is still extremely limited.
Strategic Allocation
Blue-chips - $BTC and $SOL
Perp DEX - $HYPE will still emerge as the true leader, capturing majority of market share (including on-chain equities)
Crypto equities - Capture distribution moats
AI - Focus on public companies scaling their CapEx rather than tokens
Tactical Allocation
Real Assets (i.e. commodities and natural resources) - oil and gas stocks pumped after how Trump went on an all out assault on Venezuela; if this is the new norm for countries to compete and obtain natural resources, there will be more price volatility
Sports - FIFA World Cup Summer and the novelty of collectibles (e.g. player cards)
Opportunistic Shorts - InfoFi, Launchpads and Robotics
Closing Thoughts
Playbooks that worked in previous cycles won’t succeed in 2026.
Stay liquid, stay skeptical and take profits when the market gives them to you. The best investors I have come across aren’t the ones who called the top or bottom - they’re the ones who survived long enough to play the next hand.
Break a leg!
Disclaimer: The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author may hold positions in assets discussed and may transact at any time without notice. Readers are solely responsible for their own investment decisions and should seek independent professional counsel.