Institutions Bet on 2026: The Crypto Industry Moves from Bubble to "Real Deal"

Over 30 top global financial institutions unanimously point to the same conclusion: the cryptocurrency industry is experiencing a transition from the “speculative era” to the “industrial era.”

By the end of 2025, an interesting phenomenon has emerged—BlackRock, Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and other traditional financial giants that once held reservations about crypto suddenly sing the same tune in their 2026 outlooks.

From a16z, Coinbase, Messari to Galaxy Digital, from Standard Chartered to Grayscale, the collective papers of over 30 institutions converge on a core view: In 2026, the crypto industry will no longer be driven by the “four-year halving” myth, but by real growth fueled by regulatory clarity, institutional allocation needs, and technological practicality.

But interestingly, beneath this consensus lie fierce disagreements.

Halving Curse Fails, ETFs Rewrite the Game

For a long time, the crypto market has been like a heartbeat, beating in sync with Bitcoin’s four-year halving cycle. But this so-called sacred law may fail in 2026.

Grayscale’s report directly declares: the four-year cycle theory is dead. The reason is simple—spot ETFs are here, and the player structure has changed.

In the past, the market was dominated by retail sentiment and halving narratives, with peaks and troughs being exaggerated. Now? Institutional investors are bringing asset allocation models. Their capital flows in like scheduled, measured irrigation, not rushing out because of a single news event. This steady, emotionless capital flow is calming the market’s extreme volatility.

Bitcoin’s current price is $93.01K, down -2.35% in 24 hours, but this is far from the “big bang” market of the past.

Coinbase offers a clever analogy: it’s more like the internet in 1996, not the bubble of 1999. 1996 was when technology truly integrated into business, boosting productivity. Institutions are no longer short-term arbitrage mercenaries but see crypto as a long-term hedge against fiscal deficits and currency devaluation.

Galaxy Digital’s research chief Alex Thorn is more blunt: 2026 might be “a boring year” for Bitcoin. This sounds like a criticism, but actually it’s praise—more stable prices, lower downside risk, like mature assets such as gold.

Bitwise even predicts that Bitcoin’s volatility will be lower than Nvidia’s. This means that investment strategies relying on historical halving data to “predict the future” may completely fail in 2026.

Stablecoins and RWA: Opportunities for Certainty

If macro logic is attracting capital inflows, then infrastructure upgrades determine where that money flows.

Stablecoins will complete their transformation from “transaction medium” to “payment network” in 2026.

In 2025, stablecoin trading volume reached $9 trillion, matching Visa and PayPal. a16z defines stablecoins as the future “internet’s basic settlement layer”—integrated directly into local payment networks and merchant tools via QR codes, wallets, and cards.

Coinbase is more aggressive, using a stochastic model to estimate that by the end of 2028, the total market cap of stablecoins could reach $1.2 trillion. 2026 will be the steepest phase of this growth curve. New use cases like cross-border settlement, remittances, and payroll payments are opening up.

The Block also proposed the concept of “Stable Chain”—to meet the demand for ultra-high throughput and low latency in commercial payments, specialized blockchain networks optimized for stablecoin execution and settlement will emerge.

The growth potential of RWA (Real-World Assets) is even more staggering. Grayscale predicts that by the 2030s, tokenized assets could grow 1,000 times in scale.

But the real value lies in “atomic composability”—not just tokenizing government bonds, but enabling these tokenized assets to be used as collateral in DeFi for instant liquidity, with lending-to-value ratios far exceeding traditional finance margin frameworks.

Pantera Capital’s partner predicts that tokenized gold will rise as the dominant RWA asset in 2026. As investor concerns over the structural issues of the dollar intensify, on-chain gold—an asset with both physical attributes and digital liquidity—will experience explosive growth.

This also explains why the return of privacy technology has become a new trend. Grayscale specifically mentions Zcash (ZEC, currently priced at $374.39), which may see a revaluation due to renewed assessment of “decentralized privacy.” Institutions cannot expose trade secrets on fully transparent public chains, so privacy solutions based on zero-knowledge proofs will become essential.

When AI Agents Learn to Spend, Blockchain Becomes a Financial Track

In 2026, the integration of AI and blockchain will shift from “concept coin hype” to “infrastructure interoperability.”

The key question is: when AI agents start autonomous trading, ordering, and invoking on-chain services, how do they prove “who I am”?

a16z proposes a new standard called “Know Your Agent” (KYA), which could become a prerequisite for AI agents interacting with blockchains, similar to human KYC.

Pantera offers a more concrete prediction: commercial intelligence agents based on the x402 protocol will emerge, enabling AI to perform micro-payments and routine payments. They are optimistic about Solana, believing it will surpass Base chain in “cent-level” transaction volume and become the preferred settlement layer for AI agents.

Messari lists “Crypto x AI” as one of the seven core sectors of 2026, envisioning a future where decentralized infrastructure supports AI model training and execution—a market projected to reach $30 trillion by 2030.

Grayscale emphasizes a key point: as AI models become more powerful and controlled by a few giants, the demand for decentralized computing, data validation, and content authenticity proof will surge.

a16z’s concept of “Staking Media” is intriguing—facing the proliferation of AI-generated fake content, future content publishers (human or AI) may need to stake capital to back their claims. If content is proven false, the staked capital will be confiscated.

Underlying Currents: Three Major Disagreements Among Institutions

But beneath the consensus, there are divisions.

Disagreement One: Explosive Growth vs. Stability

Standard Chartered remains bullish, based on supply-demand tightening logic, targeting $150,000 for BTC in 2026, and $225,000 in 2027.

But Galaxy Digital and Bitwise depict a very different picture: a market with compressed volatility, even “boring.” Galaxy predicts BTC may fluctuate widely between $50,000 and $250,000. If they are correct, trading strategies that profit from high volatility will fail completely in 2026.

Disagreement Two: The Threat of Quantum Computing

Pantera raises the “quantum panic” destructive potential. Although quantum computers cracking BTC private keys still require years of engineering progress, breakthroughs in error-corrected qubits could trigger panic selling, forcing the BTC community to consider anti-quantum forks.

Coinbase disagrees entirely, believing this will be just noise in 2026 and won’t impact valuation.

Disagreement Three: The Battle for AI Payment Layer

Pantera bets on Solana surpassing Base, citing its low-cost micro-payment advantage. The Block and Coinbase are more optimistic about the overall rise of stable chains or Layer 2 ecosystems. This indicates a fierce competition in 2026 over the “AI-native monetary layer.”

Survival Rules for the Industrial Era

The crypto industry is reenacting the transformation of the internet from 1996 to 2000: from marginal ideological experiments to an integral “industrial component” of global finance and tech stacks.

First, focus on capital flows, not narratives. With the four-year cycle failing, relying solely on halving narratives is outdated. Tracking ETF capital flows, stablecoin issuance, and corporate balance sheet allocations is key. BlackRock points out the fragility of the US economy and over $38 trillion in federal debt, which will pressure investors to seek alternative stores of value.

Second, embrace compliance and innovation. The GENIUS Act is expected to be fully implemented in 2026, providing a federal framework for payment stablecoins. The emergence of the KYA standard signals the end of the “wild growth” era. But this is also the turning point Fidelity refers to—toward institutionalization, standardization, and professionalism.

Third, seek genuine utility. The winners in 2026 will be protocols capable of generating real revenue and cash flow, not just shell tokens with governance rights.

Delphi Digital defines 2026 as a turning point where global central bank policies shift from divergence to convergence. As the Fed ends quantitative tightening and lowers the federal funds rate below 3%, global liquidity will flood back. Bitcoin, as a liquidity-sensitive inflation hedge, will benefit directly.

Final Insights

Looking at 2026 from the end of 2025, what we see is not just cyclical volatility but a fundamental paradigm shift.

When Fidelity Digital Assets’ VP of Research suggests that more countries may include Bitcoin in their foreign exchange reserves in the future, it’s not just an economic decision but a geopolitical game. A country accumulating BTC as a reserve asset will face immense “FOMO” pressure, forcing others to follow suit to stay competitive.

In 2026, the crypto industry will no longer be “magical internet money,” but an integral part of the world.

Those projects and investors who can find real value in the wave of industrialization, commit to long-term allocation, and embrace compliance and innovation will be positioned at the starting point of the next decade.