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CoinShares’ Outlook 2026: toward convergence and beyond
A year ago, the digital asset market was still proving that the 2024–2025 rebound was real. Today, that question feels less debated: Bitcoin pushed to new highs, but more importantly, it embedded itself deeper into institutional channels. Stablecoins grew into a global settlement infrastructure. Tokenisation moved from pilot projects to issuance at scale. And on-chain applications started to look less like speculative toys and more like lean, cash-generating businesses.
That shift frames this Outlook. 2026's core story is convergence: public blockchains, regulated capital, real-economy use cases, and maturing regulatory frameworks colliding into something we, CoinShares, have decided to call Hybrid Finance: a financial stack where traditional institutions and on-chain rails increasingly operate as one.
The macro environment matters, but it doesn’t monopolise the narrative. We expect a soft-landing-style expansion that is functional but fragile, with cautious Fed easing and inflation that cools unevenly. That backdrop should keep liquidity supportive without guaranteeing easy upside. In other words: a market that asks for fundamentals.
What’s for next year?
Bitcoin’s integration into traditional finance is advancing through spot ETFs, a deepening options market, and early signals of broader corporate and sovereign participation. Stablecoins are becoming the rails: transaction volumes now rival legacy payment networks, regulation is shifting from ambiguity to enablement, and large companies are moving from experiments toward real deployment. Tokenisation is having its breakout moment, led by private credit (repurchase agreements) and tokenised Treasuries, with major asset managers issuing on-chain products that trade faster, settle cheaper, and distribute globally. And crypto is entering a value-accrual era: applications such as Hyperliquid connect real revenue to tokenholder value via buybacks and burns, pushing tokens closer to equity-like fundamentals.
Meanwhile, the platform race is evolving. Ethereum is positioning itself as institutional infrastructure; Solana is proving the high-performance consumer and settlement layer; and the next wave of chains must demonstrate specialisation and product-market fit, not just theoretical throughput.
Finally, regulation is diverging globally rather than converging. Europe is leaning into clarity, the US is powering innovation through capital-market depth despite fragmented oversight, and Asia is building a prudential alignment of its own. The “geography of trust” is being redrawn by both rulebooks and liquidity.
Put simply, 2026 looks like a year where the industry’s centre of gravity moves from narrative to utility, cash flow, and integration. Every cycle still produces micro-bubbles; that won’t change. But the direction of travel is clearer than ever: digital assets are becoming part of mainstream finance, not a challenger to it.
Key takeaways for 2026
Crypto is normalising into the real economy.
Hybrid Finance is visible in stablecoins, tokenised funds, institutional pilots, and revenue-generating apps.
Bitcoin’s mainstreaming continues structurally ETFs and options have deepened liquidity and improved price discovery, while policy and accounting changes keep lowering friction for corporates and institutions. Traditional adoption is still early, but the direction is set.
Stablecoins are shifting from crypto liquidity to global payment rails.
Regulation is giving stablecoins a clearer green light, corporates are preparing real workflows, and the value redistribution across payments, banking, marketplaces, and cross-border settlement becomes a defining theme of 2026.
Tokenisation is scaling fast, led by yield-bearing RWAs.
Repurchase agreements (repos) and Treasuries remain the clearest growth vectors, with issuance spreading across multiple chains and traditional asset managers moving from experiments to durable product lines.
Markets are rewarding fundamentals again.
On-chain applications with explicit value accrual (buybacks, burns, fee sharing) are turning tokens into cash-flow-linked instruments. This is reshaping how investors price “alt” risk.
