When retail investors are still struggling with the short-term ups and downs of Bitcoin, the institutional forces of Wall Street have quietly completed their role transition from 'bystander' to 'co-builder'. The 'DAT 2.0' narrative proposed by Coinbase Institutional in the (2026 Crypto Market Outlook) is becoming the core force reshaping the underlying logic of the crypto market, signaling that 2026 will be a key turning point for the crypto industry to say goodbye to speculation-driven practices and enter a phase of deep institutional participation. This new narrative not only rewrites the interaction rules between institutions and the crypto market but also holds the potential to give birth to the next major breakthrough in the crypto industry through the deep integration of technology and capital.
Tracing the development of the encrypted market, institutional participation had long remained in the 'DAT 1.0' stage, where only mainstream encrypted assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum were allocated as alternative assets in small amounts, with the core demand being risk diversification. However, the approval of the Bitcoin spot ETF in the U.S. in 2025, the lifting of restrictions on retirement plans, and a series of policy breakthroughs have completely dismantled the structural barriers for institutional entry. Entering 2026, the 'DAT 2.0' model is fully implemented, with institutions no longer being passive asset holders, but active network participants and rule co-creators, deeply involved in the encrypted ecology through three main paths: deploying capital, refined trading, and competing for block space.
The innovation in capital deployment methods is the core feature of DAT 2.0. Institutional funds are no longer limited to purchasing tokens but directly participate in blockchain network construction through staking, liquidity mining, and node operations. Data shows that the Bitcoin holdings of listed companies surged from 266,000 to 1,048,000 in 2025, and this trend will extend to on-chain ecological co-construction in 2026, with institutions like Goldman Sachs and BlackRock already planning Ethereum staking operations, and JPMorgan launching JPMD tokenized deposits on the Base chain, achieving efficient capital flow through on-chain tools. This 'co-construction' participation not only brings stable staking returns to institutions but also drives the upgrade of the encrypted network from a 'decentralized experiment' to a 'high-efficiency value network'.
The integration of privacy technology and AI provides crucial technical support for DAT 2.0, becoming a core track that could trigger significant breakthroughs. As institutional funds flow into DeFi on a large scale, the contradiction between compliance transparency and commercial confidentiality becomes increasingly prominent. The maturity of Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) and Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) technology perfectly addresses this pain point—ZK technology allows institutions to prove 'sufficient collateral' without disclosing specific positions, while FHE permits direct credit assessments and other operations on encrypted data. Coinbase predicts that in 2026, the first 'privacy DeFi protocol' aimed at institutions will emerge, supporting the coexistence of private order flow, anonymous lending, and compliance audits, which is expected to completely break down the last barrier for institutional funds to enter DeFi.
The large-scale application of AI Agents will further lower the barriers to institutional participation, becoming a key engine for enhancing capital efficiency. These 'digital employees' can automatically monitor on-chain abnormal transactions, dynamically adjust cross-chain asset allocations, and even represent institutions in DAO voting. AI+Web3 projects such as Fetch.ai and Bittensor have become focal points for institutional layout, with their core value lying in solving the complexity of on-chain operations for institutions through automation tools, driving the encrypted market from 'human-driven' to 'intelligent-driven'. It is estimated that AI-driven on-chain automation can increase institutional capital efficiency by over 30%, bringing trillions in capital increment to the encrypted ecology.
The realization of the DAT 2.0 narrative is essentially a change in the dominant forces of the encrypted market, shifting from retail sentiment-driven to institution capital-driven. This change will not only weaken the traditional narrative of the 'four-year cycle' but will also promote the transformation of encrypted assets from 'alternative assets' to 'mainstream allocated assets'. In 2026, as the four major brokerages open Bitcoin ETF allocations and 401(k) plans include encrypted assets, institutional funds will flow into the market at a 'slow but steady' pace, while the collaborative development of privacy technology, AI, and RWA (Real World Asset tokenization) will build a bridge between traditional finance and the encrypted ecology, giving rise to the next major breakthrough in the encrypted industry.
