6 crypto themes to watch in 2026
There’s never a dull moment on the blockchain. Here’s what you need to know this week:
Bitcoin slipped under $85K. Also, the latest crypto ETF action, and all the new products Coinbase announced at Wednesday’s System Update event.
6 crypto storylines to watch in 2026. What market observers are predicting will make headlines next year.
The percent of young traders who say they own crypto. Plus, more key stats from around the cryptoverse.
MARKET BYTES
Just months after new all-time high, BTC might be headed to fourth-ever down year
With less than two weeks left to go in 2025, one of the most dramatic years in crypto history appears to be headed toward a quiet finish.
Just a couple of months ago, in early October, bitcoin was celebrating a new all-time high north of $126,000. Traders were celebrating a number of victories: a landmark bipartisan stablecoin law, the most pro-crypto government in U.S. history, cooling inflation, and interest-rate cuts from the Federal Reserve.
But in the weeks since, markets have struggled to reclaim that optimism, and now BTC risks ending the year lower than it started for only the fourth time ever. Markets have also seen an uptick in volatility, with BTC swinging from as low as $85,000 to as high as $90,000 in the last few days. That said, prices remain high by historic standards, and many key market watchers remain optimistic about 2026.
What shook markets again this week, and what might happen next? Here’s what you need to know…
What impacted markets this week?
Crypto prices have been struggling since October, when a cascading event triggered more than $19 billion worth of liquidations across leveraged crypto market positions almost overnight in the largest liquidation in crypto history.
This week saw another $584 million in liquidations of mostly long positions. “The liquidation event unfolded without a major headline catalyst, reinforcing a broader theme that has defined recent market action: low conviction rallies built on leverage rather than spot demand are proving increasingly fragile,” CoinDesk noted.
For weeks now, prices have been rising and falling against a complex economic backdrop. Last week, prices briefly rose following the Federal Reserve’s latest rate cut. This week, prices dipped again as new jobs data showed the highest U.S. unemployment rate since 2021.
Let’s get volatile... BTC and ETH ETFs also saw around $582 million in net outflows on Monday. But by Wednesday, the dynamic had flipped, and BTC ETFs tallied net inflows of $457 million as traders prepared for Thursday’s U.S. inflation data and interest rate cuts in the U.K.
Coinbase announces predictions market, stock trading, and other major updates
On Wednesday, in an event livestreamed on X, Coinbase launched a slew of new products, including the rollout of stock trading and prediction markets on the main Coinbase app; a simple interface to trade futures and perps; the ability to trade all Solana assets as soon as they’re created; primary token sales; and the global launch of the Base App as an onchain “everything app.”
Coinbase users in the United States will soon be able to buy, sell, and manage stocks and ETFs alongside their crypto portfolios, using U.S. dollars or USDC.
U.S. users will also soon be able to trade on the outcomes of real-world events like elections, sports, collectibles, and economic indicators, with prices of the event contracts determined by the collective trading activity of market participants. All market flow will come from Kalshi at launch.
Everything exchange… The announcement also included Coinbase Advisor (AI-powered financial planning), expanded payments products, Solana DEX trading, and much more. “Coinbase is no longer a place to just trade crypto,” said CEO Brian Armstrong. “It’s a place where you can trade everything.”
NEXT UP
6 crypto storylines to watch in 2026
In 2025, crypto took another big step toward establishing itself as part of the mainstream financial ecosystem. Financial institutions became major crypto adopters, the U.S. passed a landmark stablecoin law, and bitcoin set multiple all-time highs, despite a bearish tail-end to the year.
What could be on the horizon in 2026? We gathered takes from analysts, venture capital firms, crypto executives, and more, to identify six key storylines to keep an eye on in the new year.
Is crypto’s “four-year cycle” a thing of the past?
As crypto heads into 2026 with bearish momentum, many people are asking: Is the four-year cycle repeating itself?
The four-year cycle refers to a historical pattern in bitcoin’s price action that sees the asset’s price peak within 12-18 months after a halving event, which occurs every four years (most recently: April, 2024) and slows the rate at which Bitcoin’s supply is mined. After peaking, BTC has historically seen drawdowns of around 70%. This cycle has defined bull and bear markets in crypto for more than a decade.
But analysts are increasingly declaring it “dead.”
Coinbase’s Global Head of Research, David Duong, wrote in a recent report that the four-year cycle is “less relevant for understanding bitcoin’s performance due to a confluence of factors that have fundamentally reshaped its demand and market dynamics.” Since rising institutional adoption from asset managers, hedge funds, banks, and public corporations means the market is less dependent on retail investor sentiment, Duong argues that historical frameworks like the four-year cycle are “less effective in predicting future price performance.”
21Shares also noted that with nearly 94% of Bitcoin’s supply already mined, the supply effect of halvings is now marginal. While Bernstein, in a recent report, emphasized that institutional capital is altering the dynamics of the four-year cycle.
“In view of recent market correction, we believe the Bitcoin cycle has broken the 4-year pattern (cycle peaking every 4 years) and is now in an elongated bull-cycle, with more sticky institutional buying offsetting any retail panic selling,” Bernstein analysts said.
Will crypto ETFs continue to drive capital into markets?
Despite a potentially rocky finish to the year, crypto ETFs have been a persistent bright spot, attracting more than $47 billion in net inflows so far in 2025. While retail investors have largely driven that activity, it could be institutional investors who carry the momentum into 2026, especially as new crypto ETF products hit the market and more institutions like Bank of America start recommending crypto ETFs to their clients.
“We believe the wave of institutional capital that began entering the space with the approval of spot bitcoin ETFs in 2024 will accelerate in 2026, as platforms like Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and Merrill Lynch begin allocating,” wrote Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise, in the firm’s predictions for 2026.
With at least 124 new ETFs awaiting approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the wave of new products could unlock new sources of demand for a range of crypto assets.
“The ETF moment is absolutely not overhyped,” said Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse at a recent panel discussion. “Institutions that sat on the sidelines — due to regulatory uncertainty — are now engaging.”
Prediction markets will expand
Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, which allow users to wager on the outcomes of real-world events related to geopolitics, sports, or even the weather, had a banner year in 2025.
Such prediction markets saw more than $3 billion in weekly volume for all of November, after hovering around the $500 million in weekly volume for most of 2025.
Next year could see a deepening of the link between these platforms and the crypto space (including on Coinbase), since prediction markets utilizing blockchains offer benefits like decentralized dispute resolution and automatic settlements based on outcomes.
One area to watch, says Coinbase’s Duong, is prediction market aggregators. Currently, multiple platforms means fragmented event odds and liquidity. But aggregators that connect with prediction market platforms using smart contracts could consolidate trading volume and give users a unified view of event odds across platforms.
“Going forward, we anticipate a transformative period for prediction markets in the years to come, where they are poised to achieve greater scale and liquidity, potentially elevating their utility from niche speculative tools to valuable markets that offer insight into future events,” Duong wrote.
The U.S. will likely continue its pro-crypto policy march
2025 was the start of a major shift in U.S. federal policy toward crypto that saw a landmark stablecoin law, a flurry of new crypto ETFs, and a pro-crypto posture from new leadership at the SEC. Expect the policy push to continue in 2026, especially as institutions continue to move quickly toward crypto adoption.
The biggest policy initiative right now is the CLARITY ACT, a market structure bill that is currently making its way through Congress. If passed, the bill, among other things, would designate the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as the main regulator of crypto markets and create regulatory clarity for DeFi companies. Negotiations are expected to ramp up in January, according to reports.
Beyond the market structure bill, the CFTC and the SEC should also be major venues for policy shifts. The CFTC recently moved to allow institutions it has jurisdiction over to engage in spot crypto trading. And SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, describing the agency’s crypto agenda, said “You ain't seen nothing yet.”
Atkins’ agency plans to establish an “innovation exemption” for crypto companies that could help foster experimentation and limit compliance costs, and will also move forward with “Project Crypto,” which aims to modernize securities laws to help them align with an onchain economy.
“As far as next year, all the seeds that we've planted will be able to start seeding and sprouting,” said Atkins. “Then we'll be able to harvest the fruit.”
Stablecoins will continue to drive crypto adoption
Stablecoins were the most important sector in crypto in 2025. Buoyed by the passage of the GENIUS Act, and growing stablecoin adoption from banks, payment processors, and other financial institutions, they’ve surpassed a $305 billion market cap and saw more than $47 trillion in transaction volume (more than double 2024).
Traditional financial firms and businesses are increasingly turning to stablecoins for their utility for cross-border payments and instant transaction settlement. Visa launched an “advisory practice” aimed at helping financial institutions implement stablecoin strategies; the world’s biggest banks are exploring launching a joint stablecoin; and the world’s largest payment processors including Stripe and PayPal are investing in stablecoin initiatives.
According to a recent report from a16z, the next wave of activity in 2026 could come from startups focused on connecting stablecoins to everyday financial transactions — from bank-to-bank stablecoin payments and stablecoin-powered credit cards, to swapping local currencies for stablecoins and enabling stablecoins to be used more directly for mainstream payments.
“Workers can be paid in real time across borders. Merchants can accept global dollars without bank accounts. Apps can settle value instantly with users anywhere,” wrote Jeremy Zhang, of a16z crypto’s engineering team. “Stablecoins will fundamentally shift from a niche financial tool to the foundational settlement layer for the internet.”
Tokenization could be the buzzword of next year
If 2025 was the year of the stablecoin, then 2026 might be the year that tokenization makes a similar jump into the mainstream.
Tokenization is the process of creating digital blockchain-based tokens to represent pretty much any real-world asset: cash, stocks, bonds, real estate, royalties, art, and much more. Financial institutions are excited about tokenization’s potential to enable instant transaction settlement, 24/7 trading, and more accessibility to different asset classes.
Nearly $20 billion worth of assets are already tokenized on public blockchains, including tokenized U.S. treasuries, gold, stocks, private credit, and real estate. By the end of next year, according to a report by Hashdex, that could balloon to nearly $400 billion, thanks to the “flywheel effect” that is building in the sector.
As major tokenization efforts from institutions like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and JPMorgan continue to ramp up, each layer of tokenized collateral will help deepen liquidity and attract new asset issuers and investors, said the Hashdex report.
Meanwhile, countries like Pakistan are exploring tokenizing sovereign bonds, commodity reserves, and treasuries. And consumer focused companies are also making big tokenization pushes that should carry into 2026, including Kalshi, which has tokenized thousands of markets offered on its platform, and Coinbase, which plans to offer tokenized equities trading on its platform.
NUMBERS TO KNOW
$3.5 billion
Visa’s annualized stablecoin settlement volume as of Nov. 30, per Bloomberg. On Tuesday, the payments giant said it would enable U.S. institutions to settle transactions on Visa’s payment network using USDC over the Solana blockchain. Bloomberg projects stablecoins could power “more than $50 trillion in annual payment flows by 2030.”
$100 million
Size of JPMorgan’s first-ever tokenized money market fund, which launched on Ethereum on Tuesday. Initially seeded with $100 million, qualified investors will be able to subscribe or redeem the fund using the USDC stablecoin. “There is a massive amount of interest from clients around tokenization,” JPMorgan‘s head of liquidity told the Wall Street Journal.
45%
Percent of Gen Z and Millennials who say they currently own crypto, according to Coinbase’s latest State of Crypto report, which surveyed 4,350 U.S. adults about what role crypto plays in their market strategies: “Younger investors … are more likely to see crypto as a core part of their financial future than any generation before them.”
TOKEN TRIVIA
What percent of recently polled Gen Z shoppers said they wanted crypto for the holidays?
A
20%
B
45%
C
60%
D
75%
Find the answer below.
Trivia Answer
B
45%
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