This article does not constitute investment advice. Readers are advised to strictly comply with local laws and regulations.
CoinShares has released its annual digital asset outlook report, and here are several key points worth noting from the "Conclusion: Emerging Trends and New Frontiers" section:
Strong Recovery in Crypto VC Financing: In 2025, crypto VC financing has surpassed last year, confirming that crypto investment is a "high beta" performance of macro liquidity. With an expected easing macro environment, capital inflows will continue, supporting growth in 2026.
VC Investment Focus on "Large Deals" and Utility: Investment style is shifting from diversification to "large deal concentration," with capital leaning towards a few leading projects and placing greater emphasis on the actual utility and cash flow of projects, rather than vague concept hype or meme coins.
Four Major Investment Tracks for 2026: Looking ahead to next year, VCs are focusing on RWA (with stablecoins at the core), consumer applications combining AI and crypto, on-chain investment platforms aimed at retail investors, and infrastructure that enhances Bitcoin's utility.
Prediction Markets Elevated to Information Tools: Prediction markets, represented by Polymarket, have moved beyond niche stages to become mainstream information infrastructure. Their trading activity remains high post-election, and their market odds have been proven to have high accuracy.
Institutionalization of Prediction Markets: Prediction markets are accelerating their institutionalization, with strategic investment from ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, being a key signal. This indicates that traditional financial institutions recognize their value, and prediction markets are expected to continue expanding their influence through competition and consolidation, creating new trading records.
Mining Companies Accelerating Transition to HPC (High-Performance Computing): Bitcoin mining companies are undergoing a fundamental shift in their business models, moving towards more profitable HPC/AI data centers. By the end of 2026, the proportion of mining revenue for transitioning companies is expected to drop below 20%, driven by HPC profit margins being about three times that of mining.
Short-Term Hashrate Growth Lagging: Despite the strategic shift to HPC, the overall network hashrate remains in a strong growth phase due to large orders concentrated in 2024 being delivered in 2025. This is a short-term phenomenon, with companies like Bitdeer and IREN being the main growth points.
Future Mining Models Diversifying: Traditional industrial-grade mining will be replaced, and future mining will diversify into four models: self-mining by ASIC manufacturers, modular (temporary) mining, intermittent (grid balancing) mining, and sovereign nation mining. In the long term, hashrate will be dominated by sovereign nations and ASIC manufacturers.
Crypto VC Financing: Where is the Money Flowing?
Jérémy Le Bescont — Chief Content Manager
Overall, 2025 marks the return of crypto assets to the logic of VC investment, ending a nearly two-year period of stagnation or even decline.
In 2023, the total financing in the crypto space was $11.53 billion, a significant drop from the previous year's $34.9 billion; in 2024, while the digital asset industry showed signs of recovery, the financing scale was still only $16.54 billion. As of November 11, 2025, the total financing for the year has reached $18.8 billion, surpassing that of 2024.
"This is the year with the highest number of transactions in the past three years," said Marguerite de Tavernost, a VC investor at Ledger Cathay.
This growth also confirms the overall recovery of the trading environment — by the third quarter of 2025, the global trading volume had reached $250.2 billion, exceeding the levels of 2022 to 2024.
Concentration on Mega Transactions
The most notable feature this year is the concentration of funds on mega transactions. The prediction market Polymarket reached a $2 billion strategic investment deal with ICE, followed by Stripe's $500 million investment in the Layer-1 project Tempo, and a $300 million investment in the prediction market Kalshi.
These landmark financing rounds reflect a high concentration of capital in single projects. A similar trend is also seen in other areas, especially AI.
"In the past, we typically entered with smaller amounts and then gradually increased our positions in subsequent rounds," Marguerite de Tavernost continued — the €100 million fund has invested in projects like Flowdesk, Ether.fi, Crypto, and Midas. "Now, we are putting in larger amounts at earlier stages."
The main capital providers remain familiar names: Coinbase Ventures, Pantera, and Paradigm are particularly active in strategic rounds related to stablecoins, prediction markets, network layers, and DeFi applications.
In contrast, meme coins (excluding standout Pump.fun) and NFTs have almost disappeared this year, indicating market fatigue towards these themes and the overall maturation of the industry.
Another noteworthy trend is in the privacy sector: Canton Network completed a $135 million Series E financing, followed by Mesh ($92 million) and Zama ($57 million Series B), becoming the most eye-catching cases in this investment logic.
If the U.S. government continues to implement policies favorable to crypto innovation, this theme is expected to continue, especially after Zcash (one of the earliest privacy coins) gained a publicly traded treasury company controlled by the Winklevoss brothers.
Macroeconomic Context: The Connection to Liquidity
Before discussing 2026, it is crucial to understand the macro context shaping the recovery in 2025. Crypto VC financing is highly correlated with changes in the global liquidity environment, primarily driven by central banks.
While there is not always a one-to-one correspondence, our data consistently shows that crypto VC is a manifestation of "high beta" in the macro liquidity cycle.
During tightening phases, especially from 2022 to 2023, higher policy rates, rising real yields, and quantitative tightening significantly suppressed market risk appetite. Venture capital, which relies on long-term capital and often lacks short-term cash flow, was particularly affected.
Crypto VC activity fell from a peak of over $5 billion per month in 2021-2022 to well below $1 billion for the entire year of 2023.
As the financial environment began to ease at the end of 2023, risk sentiment gradually improved. The Federal Reserve paused interest rate hikes, inflation receded, and the market began to price in expectations for rate cuts. These changes have driven a gradual recovery in global liquidity, echoing the recovery of crypto VC financing in 2024-2025.
Although liquidity remains the core driving factor, Bitcoin price trends, regulatory developments, and new themes such as RWA, infrastructure based on the Lightning Network, and stablecoin settlement layers will also influence short-term dynamics. However, the overall pattern is very clear:
When liquidity expands, crypto VC financing accelerates; when liquidity tightens, financing declines. This highlights the characteristic of crypto VC as one of the purest reflections of the global monetary environment.
Therefore, liquidity is unlikely to become a bottleneck in 2026, and the favorable macro conditions supporting the recovery in 2025 seem likely to continue.
Additionally, unlike traditional funds, crypto funds can typically provide DPI to LPs earlier, thanks to the high liquidity and rapid monetization capabilities of tokens. If the Federal Reserve continues to maintain an accommodative stance and the global liquidity environment remains friendly, 2026 is expected to see even more impressive fundraising performance based on 2025.
"Overall, in the context of the Trump administration promoting pro-crypto policies, market sentiment in the U.S. is very positive," confirmed an investor at Ledger Cathay.
Even in a scenario where liquidity tightens again, investment strategies may not necessarily be affected. Jonathan King, a senior manager at Coinbase Ventures, added, "We invest across all market cycles. When market sentiment is more optimistic, the number of projects increases significantly; however, some of our best investments were actually made during market slowdowns when things became quiet. Depending on the cycle, financing rounds may take longer to finalize, but overall, our doors are always open."
Four Key Trends to Watch in 2026
After clarifying the macro context mentioned above, there are four areas particularly worth continuous observation in 2026: the combination of AI and crypto, RWA (real-world assets), Bitcoin infrastructure, and retail-focused investment platforms.
RWA (Real-World Assets)
First, the tokenization track will undoubtedly continue to expand next year. Republic's investment in Centrifuge, the $50 million Series A financing of stablecoin startup Agora (led by Paradigm and Dragonfly), and the particularly noteworthy Securitize SPAC listing-related announcements have attracted market attention and confirmed the strong interest of well-capitalized investors (including banks like JPMorgan, Clearstream, UBS, and Société Générale) in digitizing real-world assets.
In this vertical, stablecoins again emerge as the most dominant sector:
"If you look at stablecoins, their market capitalization has grown by 50% year-on-year. Predictions suggest it will become a $2 trillion asset in the coming years.
We have done a lot of work at the infrastructure level, from B2B cross-border payments, localized stablecoins (like India's p2p.me), to stablecoin networks like Sphere (used for cross-border payment channels).
"This further extends to on-chain credit and new forms of financing. Stablecoins will continue to be a flagship focus in the strategy of Coinbase Ventures and Coinbase as a whole," Jonathan King explained.
It is worth noting that this area may intensify competition between different jurisdictions. MiCAR gives Europe a first-mover advantage in the tokenization space, with relevant rules officially in effect across the European Economic Area (EEA); while the U.S. GENIUS Act, although recently passed, is still in the implementation phase.
AI Connected to Crypto
In the past two years, public chains and applications connecting crypto and AI have emerged, covering areas such as pricing and monetization of resource consumption, payment automation, user identity verification, and autonomous operation of AI agents. According to VCs, this trend is clearly accelerating.
"Previously, we mainly focused on the underlying infrastructure connecting crypto and AI. Next year, we hope to see more consumer-level AI applications built on crypto tracks. For example, new DeFi interfaces that integrate natural language trading and operations, as well as intelligent agents that gradually possess asset management capabilities, similar to wealth management advisors," Jonathan King explained.
Marguerite de Tavernost also added, "This is an area we originally did not plan to focus on for investment, but ultimately we did make two investments related to AI and blockchain."
Retail-Focused Investment Platforms
One factor that may impact VC activity next year is the rise of native crypto consumer investment applications, most notably Echo and Legion.
Founded by well-known crypto figure Jordan "Cobie" Fish, Echo was acquired by Coinbase for $375 million in October 2025, attracting widespread attention. The platform's core lies in decentralized angel investing: through a whitelist curator mechanism, it opens up equity financing and ICOs to users, essentially functioning as a "native on-chain VC fund."
In notable cases, the Layer-2 projects MegaEth and Plasma raised $10 million and $50 million, respectively, last year.
Its competitor, Legion, has partnered with the crypto exchange Kraken to launch a new platform for public issuance. Meanwhile, MetaDAO (backed by 6MV, Paradigm, and Variant) has launched a financing platform on Solana with an on-chain governance mechanism to prevent default issues, having completed eight oversubscribed ICOs to date.
After several years of liquidity depletion, such platforms are naturally welcomed as new financing channels and are beginning to compete directly with early-stage VCs.
Bitcoin Infrastructure
Finally, VC interest in Bitcoin-related fields is heating up. This is somewhat ironic, as Bitcoin, the most important digital asset, has long been overlooked.
Due to the inability to issue tokens "out of thin air," the Bitcoin ecosystem has traditionally not been a preferred direction for LPs, aside from the mining industry, although mining continues to attract significant funding (e.g., Auradine completed a $153 million Series C financing in April 2025).
With the early financing successes of Bitcoin Layer-2 projects, including Arch Labs (which raised $13 million led by Pantera), BoB (Build on Bitcoin, a joint investment project by Coinbase Ventures and Ledger Cathay), and BitcoinOS (which completed $10 million in financing in October 2025), market attention seems to be shifting towards investment logic that has more tangible significance and directly enhances Bitcoin's utility, rather than issuing new tokens on top of it.
This is quite similar to the case of Lightspark:
"Two years ago, the market's attention on Bitcoin L2 was very high. Now, we see a renewed focus on expanding Bitcoin's utility, especially its security attributes, and building new markets on top of it," Jonathan King pointed out.
Transition from High Speculation to High Utility Investment Logic
Changes over the past few months and outlooks for next year indicate that funds are increasingly seeking projects that can impact existing financial infrastructure and provide "building blocks" for new systems, gradually moving away from tokens and public chains that are merely conceptual and lack grounded value.
Ethereum Layer-2 is no longer the market's focal point, and general-purpose Layer-1 is also cooling down, with the frequency of terms like "Web3" and "NFT" continuing to decline.
Of course, every cycle comes with some micro-bubbles, and the number of stablecoin companies that ultimately survive this round remains to be seen. But overall, an era prioritizing cash flow and/or real utility is clearly more promising.
The Rise of Polymarket
Luke Nolan — Senior Research Assistant
Although the concept of prediction markets has been around for nearly five years, its actual usage and popularity have primarily occurred in the past two years, with the 2024 U.S. elections serving as the strongest catalyst.
Platforms like Polymarket have grown from niche products in the crypto space to mainstream sources of real-time sentiment and even "facts," attracting a large number of users who are not concerned with crypto itself but seek cleaner signals than news media or social platforms.
About 18 months ago, we wrote about Polymarket. At that time, we judged it might remain at the enthusiast product level, with stable but limited usage. This judgment proved too conservative. Since then, Polymarket's liquidity and cultural influence have reached nearly unprecedented heights.
During the 2024 U.S. election cycle, markets related to the presidential and congressional elections often saw weekly trading volumes exceeding $800 million, remaining stable and frequently surpassing traditional betting platforms, even outpacing some polling aggregation platforms in public attention.
Continued Activity Post-U.S. Elections
Some observers believe that after the elections, as public attention shifts, the activity of prediction markets may quickly decline. However, this is not the case.
Trading volume remains strong, and open positions are maintained at levels far above those before the elections, indicating that prediction markets may have crossed a certain "threshold," no longer just a one-time surge but entering a phase of long-term existence.
More important than activity is accuracy. The essence of prediction markets is to aggregate dispersed information into a single probability, and financial incentives compel participants to get as close to the true outcome as possible. The charts in the article show the comparison of Polymarket's odds at different points in time with actual results.
The interpretation is not complex. For example, events priced in the 60% range ultimately have about a 60% chance of ending in "yes"; events priced in the 80% range, depending on the remaining hours before the cutoff, have about a 77%-82% chance of ultimately occurring.
In other words, Polymarket's performance resembles a well-calibrated prediction system; when the market gives an 80% probability of occurrence, it usually does happen. This is precisely the performance expected from a system where "mistakes come at a monetary cost."
Prediction Markets Begin to Be Adopted by Institutions
This accuracy and liquidity have not gone unnoticed. In October 2025, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), made a strategic investment in Polymarket (up to $2 billion), representing a vote of confidence from one of the most traditional and core institutions in the global financial system.
Meanwhile, Polymarket's compliant competitor in the U.S., Kalshi, is also expanding its influence through integration with brokerage platforms, media partners, and data providers, forming a competitive landscape that drives the entire sector forward.
These integrations reveal a very important fact — prediction markets are not just trading venues for speculators to make a little pocket money; they are integrating into a broader information infrastructure. Many who never place trades still check Polymarket because the probabilities it provides are "cleaner" than news headlines.
For traders, the appeal is equally clear. There is no house edge; the platform only charges a small fee on profitable trades, meaning that statistically, long-term profitability is possible. In traditional sportsbooks, the odds design itself ensures that the platform will profit.
All these factors point to a simple conclusion — prediction markets are likely to continue growing because they simultaneously meet the needs of multiple groups:
Traders gain an efficient market, bystanders receive "real signals," and institutions obtain almost free sociological or economic research data (presented in probability form), while the platform itself becomes stronger as it scales; the deeper the liquidity, the more accurate the predictions.
The trajectory of the past two years indicates that Polymarket is gradually becoming a way for people to understand the world. With the launch of builder code, we expect Polymarket's weekly trading volume to reach new highs in 2026, potentially even surpassing $2 billion in a single week.
Mining After HPC: What’s Next?
Alexandre Schmidt — Index Fund Manager
For a long time, Bitcoin mining companies have been one of the core channels for gaining exposure to blockchain and crypto assets through publicly listed stocks. After a phase of investment and expansion, reaching industrial-scale mining, this market is undergoing another shift.
In 2024, several mining companies announced plans to transition into AI and HPC (High-Performance Computing); by 2025, most mining companies are fully advancing the construction of their HPC data centers.
This article attempts to answer two questions: Why is this transition occurring? And in the context of no longer building large-scale industrial mining facilities, where will the mining industry head next?
2025: Expansion Across the Industry
In 2025, Bitcoin mining companies are showing strong growth momentum. In the nine months up to September, the total hashrate of publicly listed mining companies grew by approximately 110 EH/s, compared to about 70 EH/s in the same period of 2024.
Although these figures seem to contradict the statement that mining companies are "downgrading mining and turning to build HPC facilities," the reason lies in the fact that these companies actually placed multiple large orders with ASIC manufacturers in 2024, and the related equipment was delivered in 2025.
Half of this year's hashrate growth comes from three companies: Bitdeer (+26.3 EH/s), HIVE Digital (+16 EH/s), and Iris Energy (IREN) (+15 EH/s).
HPC Transition Begins to Materialize
In addition to significant hashrate growth, the transition to HPC is finally reflected in actual contracts and revenue this year.
For Bitcoin mining companies, building and retrofitting facilities to accommodate HPC loads is highly attractive: it not only diversifies their business and provides a more stable, predictable revenue source with profit margins about three times higher per megawatt (MW), but also allows mining companies to participate in multi-billion dollar deals announced by hyperscalers and semiconductor companies.
As of the end of October 2025, mining companies have announced contracts totaling approximately $65 billion with hyperscalers and new cloud service providers (neoclouds).
These announcements have significantly boosted the stock prices of the relevant companies. The aforementioned contracts will fundamentally change the business structure of these companies: on one hand, alleviating the pressure from the continuous growth of Bitcoin's overall hashrate, and on the other hand, significantly enhancing the profit margins of the enterprises (most companies expect these contracts to bring 80%-90% operating profit margins).
Therefore, among the six companies that have announced HPC contracts, we expect the proportion of Bitcoin mining revenue in total revenue to drop from about 85% at the beginning of 2025 to below 20% by the end of next year.
Outlook for 2026
First, it is important to clarify — mining companies are still mining companies.
Most of the companies that have transitioned to HPC still derive the majority of their revenue and cash flow from Bitcoin mining operations.
In the foreseeable future, HPC will serve more as an incremental supplement to existing operations rather than a direct replacement for Bitcoin mining capacity. However, with the signing of new contracts and the increasing demand for power capacity, we do expect these companies to gradually and slowly withdraw from some mining operations.
By 2026, there may still be a few mining companies that continue to increase their mining hashrate. According to communications with management, CleanSpark indicated that its mining operations still have the option to increase by approximately 10 EH/s; meanwhile, Canaan recently announced a deal for 50,000 mining machines, suggesting that other mining companies may also be significantly expanding their mining scale.
From a longer-term perspective, the form of Bitcoin mining is likely to differ significantly from the current operational model, potentially including the following forms:
ASIC Manufacturers: ASIC manufacturers are most likely to continue maintaining or reaching industrial-scale mining. To retain their capacity quotas at foundries (especially TSMC), manufacturers must place minimum order quantities. If these mining machines are not sold, they are likely to be deployed in the manufacturers' own mining farms.
Additionally, ASIC manufacturers can design and produce specifically for their own use, significantly lowering costs and thus supporting larger-scale mining operations.
Modular Mining: Some companies are proposing a model that introduces temporary, movable mining modules into sites being developed for other purposes. Once the power infrastructure is in place, these modules can connect and begin mining, continuing to operate until the power shell construction is completed and the site is officially leased out.
Intermittent Mining: This is an alternative model that can coexist with HPC: mining facilities are built in parallel with HPC but only operate when electricity prices are close to zero, helping to balance grid load. In this case, mining companies are more likely to use fully depreciated old equipment, as their load rates are typically very low.
Sovereign Entities (Nations): We believe that sovereign nations have already occupied a significant amount of non-public mining hashrate. The motivations for state participation in mining are diverse, including acquiring foreign exchange, monetizing power resources, and directly accessing the Bitcoin network. Given the advantages sovereign nations have in terms of financial strength and resource acquisition, we believe that state-level mining will continue to maintain industrial-scale operations in the foreseeable future.
Which of the above models ultimately dominates will depend on the incentive mechanisms of the Bitcoin network itself and the sensitivity of various participants to the economics of mining.
Our judgment is that, in the medium term, sovereign nations and ASIC manufacturers will dominate the distribution of hashrate; while from a longer-term perspective, mining may return to a smaller, more decentralized form, relying on cheap "stranded power," likely primarily sourced from renewable energy.
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