2026: The year when the crypto industry truly restarts? The future seen by a16z may be closer than we think.

If 2024–2025 are the years for the crypto industry to 'lay the foundation', then a16z's annual outlook has basically clarified: 2026 will be a year of significant functional explosion for the entire industry. This explosion is largely unrelated to speculation; it is more about the beginning of the real-world financial, AI, and payment systems being 'deeply redone' by blockchain.

Here, I'll briefly talk about my understanding of this trend and why they are so crucial.

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01. Stablecoins: The global settlement layer is quietly changing tracks.

The most exaggerated set of numbers in the a16z report:
The annual transaction volume of stablecoins is $46 trillion, surpassing the total of PayPal and Visa.

This is no longer a 'growth story of the crypto industry,' but a migration of the global settlement system.

Why have stablecoins suddenly become so powerful?
• Cross-border transfers no longer require SWIFT
• Payments are naturally 7×24
• Low cost and high speed
• Merchants (especially in the Middle East and Southeast Asia) are rapidly adopting USDC/USDT

The focus in 2026 will be on: upgrading the stablecoin payment infrastructure.
Faster, cheaper, compliant, and embedded in Web2, this will allow stablecoins to truly become 'internet-native dollars.'

This can be understood as:

Visa is the payment system of the 1990s internet, while stablecoins are the global payment system of the AI era.

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02. RWA: From 'tokenization' to 'native on-chain issuance'

In the past two years, what we've heard the most is RWA (Real World Assets on-chain).
But most are just packaging traditional products into on-chain shares, with limited efficiency.

a16z's view is sharp:
True RWA is not 'tokenization,' but native issuance.

What does that mean?

It's not about issuing bonds on Wall Street and then moving them on-chain;
But rather directly creating financial assets on-chain, then automatically settling and clearing.

This will bring three huge changes:
• Issuance costs will plummet
• Global availability will increase
• Transparency will be nearly perfect

This is also why Robinhood, BlackRock, and various central banks have begun experimenting with on-chain issuance.

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03. AI Agent Economy: Needs on-chain identity + automatic payments

AI agents are one of the biggest trends in the coming years; they will help you book flights, buy games, negotiate contracts, and run businesses automatically.

But AI has a big problem:
It cannot own a bank account.

So what to do?
• The on-chain address is its identity (KYA, Know Your Agent)
• Stablecoins are its means of payment
• Smart contracts are its workflows

AI agents will become one of the largest sources of demand in the on-chain economy.
When AI needs cash flow to 'execute tasks,' the crypto industry will enter a whole new cycle.

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04. Privacy Chains: The next batch of 'winner-takes-all' infrastructure

In the past two years, the L1/L2 battles have been intense, but a16z's view is blunt:

The future winners will be 'default privacy chains.' Not anonymous, but privacy shared with permission.

Why?
• If institutions want to go on-chain, they must protect transaction details
• AI agents must protect user preferences and data
• If RWA is overly transparent, it may lead to market manipulation risks
• If payments are public, user experience will collapse

Privacy is no longer an 'optional feature' but a core of competition.

If a privacy chain can achieve:
Strong performance, privacy enabled by default, strong auditability
It could directly enter a 'final position.'

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05. On-chain Media and Prediction Markets: The next reconstruction of the information society

a16z mentioned two very interesting new directions:

Staked Media

In plain language:

You need to stake tokens to express opinions; if you say something wrong or misleading, the tokens will be confiscated.

This will change:
• Media incentive mechanisms
• Research logic
• Information quality filtering methods

In a sense, this is a hedge against the 'X/Twitter misinformation era.'

Prediction Markets

With regulatory easing and technological upgrades, 2026 may be the year when prediction markets truly explode.

Why is it important?

Because it will become:
• AI training data
• Social consensus measurement tools
• The infrastructure for the marketization of policies and economic predictions

If prediction markets really scale, they could reconstruct public opinion, politics, and investment systems.

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Conclusion: The crypto industry in 2026 is not a bull market, but a reset

What a16z wants to express is not that 'prices will rise,' but:

Crypto is transitioning from the stage of financial asset speculation to the infrastructure stage of the global digital economy.

What will emerge in 2026 is not a new narrative, but:
• Global payment systems on-chain
• Global asset issuance on-chain
• AI economy on-chain
• Information verification on-chain
• Privacy becoming standard

In other words, this is no longer the future of the crypto industry itself, but the future of the entire internet.

#RWA #稳定币 #Aİ