Crypto 2026: Stablecoins to $1.2T, RWA On-Chain, Growth in Perps and Prediction Markets, DAT 2.0

Crypto 2026: Stablecoins to $1.2T, RWA on-chain, growth in perps and prediction markets, DAT 2.0, and other trends shared by Coinbase. All of this is fueled by an overall impressive figure: crypto market cap peaked at US$4.2T in 2025 before falling to $3.0T. This is exactly why segments stand out faster where growth rests on repeat usage and execution infrastructure: payment rails, derivatives with collateral integration, on-chain RWA, and institutional formats for position management.

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Regulatory Progress and Institutional Infrastructure

First of all, the market saw an unprecedented regulatory shift, moving from fragmented approaches to a set of concrete decisions and standards:

• End of SAB-121;
• OCC authorizes banks to custody crypto;
• GENIUS Act signed into law;
• SEC launches Project Crypto;
• SEC introduces new spot ETF standards;
• CFTC says spot crypto can trade on registered futures exchanges.

In this environment, new spot crypto ETFs and digital asset treasuries (DATs) stop being one-off products - a layer of custody standards, venue requirements, and compliance procedures forms around them. In 2026, institutional teams will likely shift more attention to operational details - where to custody, how to execute, how to measure risk, and how to demonstrate compliance during the process rather than after the fact.

Institutional Adoption: DAT 2.0 and Block Space as a Commodity

DATs expanded the buyer base in 2025, after which the market experienced valuation-driven consolidation. In 2026, DAT 2.0 emerges, moving away from simple accumulation toward specialization around professional trading, storage, and acquisition of sovereign block space, with block space defined directly as a vital commodity for the digital economy. This changes management practice: a portfolio begins to rely on access to an infrastructure resource, its cost and availability, not just on the direction of the base asset's price. The role of block space acquisition and control procedures also strengthens this, because without them, some strategies stop scaling.

Composability of Crypto Derivatives: On-Chain Perps and Collateral Framework

Perpetual futures move from isolated leverage to core DeFi primitives and integrate into lending and hedging via collateral. Weekly perpetual futures DEX volumes reach scales up to $350B with distribution across Hyperliquid, Lighter, Aster, edgeX, and Other. And even if this is an incredibly promising trend that will likely unfold even more in the coming year, it again raises requirements for the risk engine and for collateral: the market starts to evaluate how a venue and an ecosystem work with collateral, margin regimes, and liquidations in a continuous 24/7 market where hedging and lending operate within one shared framework.

Prediction markets: notional growth and the fight for the interface layer

Tax changes in the U.S. may expand demand for derivative-anchored markets in 2026 and increase volumes. Fragmentation creates a direct risk, while aggregators take on the role of a dominant interface layer and may consolidate billions of dollars in weekly volume. Notional volume on prediction markets has surged, and the distribution across Polymarket, Kalshi, Limitless, Myriad, and Opinion shows venue competition inside a shared liquidity flow. Here, the market's attention shifts to flow routing and UX standardization, because the aggregator controls entry and directs user flow.

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Stablecoins and Payments: the $1.2T Target by 2028 and Payment Use Cases

Stablecoins become established as the number one use case, and the target range centered around $1.2T by the end of 2028 sets the scale for settlement infrastructure. Cross-border transaction settlement, remittances, and payroll platforms introduce stablecoins into scenarios with high transaction frequencies and strict requirements for settlement reliability. This demand profile intensifies competition at the on-off ramp level, in compliance procedures, integration quality, and the operational resilience of payment chains.

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Tokenization: the RWA On-chain Structure and the Capital Efficiency Logic

RWA on-chain distribution runs through debt and commodity segments:

• US Treasury Debt $8.8B;
• Commodities $3.1B;
• Institutional Alternative Funds $2.4B;
• Private Credit $1.9B;
• Non-US Government Debt $638M;
• Public Equity $630M;
• Private Equity $429M;
• Other $121M.

Tokenized equities represent a nascent segment, so the main on-chain RWA volume goes into instruments closer to money markets and credit. Atomic composability and the thesis that DeFi-style loan-to-value ratios (LTVs) materially exceed traditional margin frameworks in many cases frame tokenization in terms of capital efficiency: market participants evaluate how on-chain structures expand the range of collateral and credit strategies with a comparable level of risk control.

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Tokenomics 2.0: Link Between Usage and Value Capture

Tokenomics 2.0 puts value capture at the center via fee-sharing, buybacks, buy-and-burn, and ties this set to policy clarity that allows linking tokenholder economics to platform usage. Here, the bar gets higher: token economics rests on measurable usage rather than narrative beta, and the market more often compares models by the durability of revenue-linked models.

Technological Transformations: Privacy, AI x Crypto, Application-Specific Chains

Demand for privacy goes alongside growth in institutional adoption and continued buildout of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), with growth in on-chain privacy usage and shielded activity dynamics (ZEC).

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AI x crypto brings agentic systems to the forefront, which need open, programmable payments; protocols like x402 support high-frequency microtransaction settlement and provide a foundation for agents that launch, govern, and secure on-chain services. Application-specific chains intensify infrastructure competition through the proliferation of specialized networks, with a target network-of-networks architecture and an emphasis on native interoperability and shared security.

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Conclusion

As you can see, the 2026 potential rests on product quality, regulatory compliance, and user-centric design. All of this prioritizes Web3 products with infrastructure and applied value, which I also pay the most attention to, including stablecoins as a payments layer, on-chain perps as collateral infrastructure, prediction markets as an interface market, DAT 2.0 as an institutional operating overlay, tokenization as the on-chain structure of RWA, and, of course, the mutual integration of AI and crypto. Stay informed, gain more insights from our guides for beginners and professionals, and stay tuned for the latest updates and opportunities in the new economy, crypto industry, and blockchain developments!