Structural maturity will replace speculative cycles, driven by liquidity convergence, regulatory clarity, and infrastructure development.
Author: Eli5DeFi
Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow
As the crypto industry moves towards 2026, leading research institutions are gradually reaching a consensus:
“The era of pure speculative cycles is coming to an end.”
In its place is structural maturity driven by liquidity convergence, infrastructure development, and industry consolidation, rather than market volatility dominated by short-term narratives.
Here are the key insights from major crypto research institutions regarding the outlook for 2026 (saving you the time of reading hundreds of pages of reports):
Core Summary:
“The Death of Cycles”: Research institutions unanimously agree that the traditional 4-year halving speculative cycle is gradually fading. The future will be dominated by structural maturity, with value increasingly focused on “Ownership Coins” that have income-sharing models and projects with real-world applications, rather than short-term speculative narratives.
The Rise of Agentic Finance: Major institutions (such as Delphi Digital, a16z, Coinbase) predict that AI agents will become primary economic participants. This will drive the development of Know Your Agent (KYA) identity protocols and machine-native settlement layers, technologies that surpass human manual operations.
Integration of Super Apps: As U.S. regulations become clearer (research from Four Pillars, Messari, etc.), complex crypto experiences will be integrated into user-friendly “Super Apps” and privacy-supporting blockchains. These technologies will hide technical details, promoting mass adoption.
Delphi Digital's Perspective: Infrastructure, Applications, and Markets
Delphi Digital's macro hypothesis is based on “Global Convergence.” They predict that by 2026, the divergence in monetary policy among global central banks will end, shifting towards a unified cycle of interest rate cuts and liquidity injections. After the Federal Reserve ends quantitative tightening (QT), global liquidity improvements will benefit hard assets like gold and Bitcoin.
2026 Outlook:
- Agentic Finance
Significant expansion of infrastructure is reflected in the rise of “Agentic Finance.” AI agents will no longer be just chatbots but will actively manage capital, execute complex decentralized finance (DeFi) strategies, and optimize yields on-chain without human intervention.
- Social Trading and the “Pump” Economy
In consumer applications, Delphi emphasizes the stickiness of platforms like @Pumpfun and predicts the maturation of “Social Trading.” The trend will shift from simple meme coin speculation to more complex levels of copy trading, with strategy sharing becoming a tokenized product.
- Institutional Liquidity
Market structure will change due to the further popularization of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Traditional finance (TradFi) liquidity will enter the crypto market, no longer just as a hedging tool but becoming a standard portfolio allocation driven by macro liquidity easing.
Click to view the full report:
Messari: 2026 Crypto Industry Outlook — Market Structure and the Rise of Practicality
Messari's core argument is “The Separation of Practicality and Speculation.” They believe that the traditional “four-year cycle” model is gradually losing relevance, and the market is moving towards differentiation. They hypothesize that 2025 will be a year where institutional investors prevail and retail investors struggle, while 2026 will become the era of “System-Level Applications,” not just a speculative game of asset prices.
2026 Outlook:
- Privacy Shift ($ZEC)
Messari presents a counter-cyclical growth perspective: a revival in the privacy sector. They specifically mention assets like @Zcash (ZEC), not just as “privacy coins,” but as necessary hedges against increasing surveillance and corporate control, predicting that “privacy cryptocurrencies” will see a repricing opportunity.
- Ownership Coins
A new category of tokens — “Ownership Coins” — will emerge in 2026. These tokens combine economic, legal, and governance rights. Messari believes these tokens have the potential to address accountability crises in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and may give rise to the first projects with a market cap reaching a billion dollars.
- DePIN and AI Integration
The research also delves into the potential of DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks), predicting that these protocols will find market fit in the real world by meeting the enormous demand for computing and data in the AI sector.
Read the full report: 2026 Crypto Industry Report
Four Pillars: Regulatory Reconstruction and Super Apps
Four Pillars' 2026 outlook revolves around “Regulatory Reconstruction.” Their core hypothesis is that U.S. legislative actions (specifically mentioning the GENIUS and CLARITY bills) will serve as a blueprint for comprehensive market reform.
This regulatory clarity will act as a catalyst, transforming the market from a “Wild West” state into a formal economic sector.
Four Pillars' 2026 Outlook
- The Era of Super Apps
Four Pillars predicts that the current fragmented crypto application ecosystem will gradually integrate into “Super Apps.” These platforms will be driven by stablecoins, combining payment, investment, and lending functions, thoroughly simplifying the complexities of blockchain and enhancing user experience.
- Tokenization of RWA Assets
With market restructuring, the tokenization of stocks and traditional assets will become a trend, but the focus will be on actual practicality rather than experimental projects.
- Technological Maturity
On the technological front, the report emphasizes the importance of Zero-Knowledge Virtual Machines (ZKVM) and proof markets on Ethereum. They are seen as key technological infrastructures to address the scale of emerging regulatory agency traffic.
Read the full report: 2026 Outlook: Restructuring and a Century Perspective
Coinbase: 2026 Crypto Market Outlook — Markets, Regulation, and Adoption
Coinbase's report presents the view of “The Death of Cycles.” They clearly state that 2026 will mark the end of the traditional Bitcoin halving cycle theory. Future markets will be driven by structural factors: including macro demand for alternative value storage and the formalization of the crypto industry as a mid-sized alternative asset class.
2026 Outlook:
- Tokenomics 2.0
Shifting from “governance-only” tokens to “revenue-linked” models. Protocols will gradually introduce buy-and-burn or fee-sharing mechanisms (in line with new regulatory requirements) to better align the interests of token holders with the success of the platform.
- Digital Asset Trading 2.0
The crypto market will move towards more specialized trading models, particularly the procurement and trading of “sovereign block space.” Block space will be viewed as a vital resource in the digital economy.
- Intersection of AI and Crypto
Coinbase predicts that AI agents will heavily utilize crypto payment channels, driving demand for a “crypto-native settlement layer.” These settlement layers will support continuous microtransactions between machines, which traditional payment systems cannot accommodate.
Read the full report: 2026 Crypto Market Outlook
a16z Crypto: 2026 Outlook — The Future of Internet-Native Finance and AI
a16z Crypto's outlook is based on a core hypothesis: “The Internet has become the bank.” They believe that the flow of value will become as free as information. The current friction between the on-chain and off-chain worlds is the main bottleneck, and 2026 will be a year to eliminate this barrier through improved infrastructure.
a16z Crypto's 2026 Outlook
- KYA (Know Your Agent)
As AI agents become primary economic participants, identity verification will shift from traditional KYC (Know Your Customer) to KYA (Know Your Agent). AI agents will require cryptographic signatures as credentials for transactions, giving rise to a new layer of identity infrastructure.
- “Asset Origin” vs. “Asset Tokenization”
a16z predicts that the market will gradually shift from the tokenization of off-chain assets (such as purchasing government bonds and putting them on-chain) to directly generating debt and assets on-chain. This transition will not only reduce service costs but also greatly enhance transparency.
- Privacy as a Competitive Advantage
In a world where open-source code is prevalent, a16z emphasizes that privacy technology (especially the ability to maintain state privacy) will become the most important competitive advantage of blockchain. This will create strong network effects for privacy-supporting blockchains.
- Democratization of Wealth Management
The combination of artificial intelligence and crypto payment channels will democratize complex wealth management (such as asset rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting), allowing ordinary users to access services previously limited to high-net-worth individuals.
Read the full report: 2026 Crypto Industry Trends
Summary
The outlook for the crypto industry in 2026 shows that structural maturity will replace speculative cycles, driven by liquidity convergence, regulatory clarity, and infrastructure development.
Major research institutions agree that value will concentrate in settlement layers, aggregation platforms, and systems capable of attracting real users and capital.
Future opportunities will shift from chasing cycles to understanding the flow of funds. 2026 will reward those projects that quietly build infrastructure, distribution capabilities, and trust during scaling.
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