12 Big Crypto Predictions for 2026

Bangla Nation is the night before Christmas instead of doing our weekly roll [music] up. It is right. Yeah, it's Christmas Eve. That's right. We are recording this the Christmas Eve Eve and it will be distributed to your podcast player Christmas Eve. Happy Christmas Eve. Thank you guys for spending it with us. Yeah, that's right. Uh, I guess you think you think are you picturing families all around uh the world just gathering around and listening to the Bankless Podcast and Christmas fireplace stockings. Uh, people are opening their stocking presents and then there Ryan and David talking about the 2026 predictions for crypto. All right, so here's what we're doing. Instead of our weekly rollup, we wouldn't leave you without a weekly rollup of some form. This is the adopted version because there wasn't a lot to cover in the week and we're recording this a little bit early. So, we'll get a weekly rollup out uh next week, but this week we're going to do something. We'll do the weekly roll up for this week because it's very, very quiet. Here, there are two [laughter] things. A DAO versus a Labs currently in a civil war. And Nick Carter is riing up all the Bitcoiners talking about quantum computing and how it's a threat. That was that was everything that happened this week. There you go. So, with that done, we thought we would zoom out and focus on 2026. In fact, David, you've brought us some juicy content to this episode. you did a metaanalysis of all of the different predictions. So rather than give you just our predictions, what we thought we would do is we would look at all of the predictions that people have made for crypto in 2026 and draw some analysis from them. Like I'm kind of yeah seeing where they overlap, seeing where they diverge and any interesting tidbits that I can find. Uh and so let's see how many did I do. Bitwise, Coinbase Institutional, Galaxy, Gayscale, Coin Shares, Fidelity, the A16 Z newsletter, and then a Panta article in Coindesk. These are the sources that I aggregated and then tried to find the where predictions were congruent, maybe where they were not perfectly congruent, but directionally similar, and then also where there were divergences. And so that is the three categories of the different types of predictions from all of these sources that I have aggregated for us on the show today. At least we're doing that so we don't have to read all these predictions, right? So this is like a best of the predictions. Uhhuh.

Ryan: All right. Now, before we get into these predictions, we know next year is going to be a big year for stable coins. Regardless, one of the predictions, [laughter] I don't care what anyone says. The prediction I'm making and we should thank our friends is a stable coin maker over at M0. What are they up to?

David: M0 is a pretty unique onchain stable coin architecture design if you will. Uh it they separate people from issuing the money from people validating the reserves. So there's like the one meta architecture of M0 and then there are all the uh brands issuers issuing uh stable coins. Uh the current system of stable coins is fragmented just you know USC is siloed from UST which is siloed from the next stable coin and M0 has come up with a simple solution. So if if the general predictions that everyone agrees with in this episode that M that stable coins are going to just continue to expand, M0 should be pretty well positioned. If you want to learn more about M0, bankless.cc/m0 is the place to go. Let a thousand stable coin experiments bloom. I think that's what M0 is up to.

Ryan: Um all right, predictions. David, give us the you said highly congruous predictions. Are are these the predictions $10 word right there? That's a $10 word. All right. So, these are the predictions that sound really similar across all of across your meta analysis of all of the predictions. Consensus predictions. Correct. All right. What are these? Give us the first.

David: Stable coins shift from just basic crypto plumbing to real payment rails. I think we started to see the beginnings of this in crypto and maybe think people think well that was what happened this year and I wouldn't say that's what happened this year. They are not yet real payment rails. We are still building out the infra infrastructure for real payment rails. The broad strokes of everyone's predictions is that the real payment rails comes in 2026. Uh and so here are some quotes from four of the different um uh predictors. Uh Galaxy stable coins will overtake AC in transaction volume. Wow. Oh wow. Yeah. Large. Coinbase institutional. We expect to see growth in crossborder transaction settlement remittances and pay payroll platforms. Pretty broad. A6Z stable coins will fundamentally shift to the foundational settlement layer of the internet. Very A6Z of them probably was written by Chris Dixon. Uh and then lastly, Bitwise, perhaps the most specific and interesting prediction, stable coins will be blamed for destabilizing an emerging market currency, at least one is what they are predicting. Uh which is a certainly just a byproduct of the growth of the growth of the dollar payment rails on the internet. stable coins being a killer app.

Ryan: And it seems to me on the consumer front, I'm not sure that many consumers will actually notice what's under the covers here in all of these predictions. Yeah. Yeah. I I guess if you're in a regime that's being disrupted, uh that's being destabilized. You'll certainly notice that, but in the developed world, you may not know you're even using stable coins. It'll be fused into the experiences that we have with our crypto wallets. I mean, an example of this is just the Coinbased wallet, right? Um, you could send money to anybody under the covers. It's USDC. It's a stable coin, but it feels just like Venmo. I mean, Venmo adopting stable coins, too. I I guess it's all the same and you won't really feel the difference except transactions go faster, lower fees. Maybe we start to like pay for things in stable coins as well and bypass Visa altogether. All of that seems to be poised on the horizon for 2026 and beyond. Yeah. Yeah, for the average consumer who just still will not interface with stable coins, they can still be benefited by stable coins by platforms that use stable coins in the back end and they just show you, you know, the normal integers on the website, but it's stable coins in the back end.

But like not everyone's going to adopt this. Like Ryan, do you think Wells Fargo is going to because I whenever I try and send money when my Wells Fargo, it's either zel or a wire. And a wire cost me $25, which is an insane fee to charge me to send $25. Do you think you will be able to integrate stable coin payments in Wells Fargo?

Ryan: I don't think so. No. I I think they'll just be disrupt disrupted by disrupted by by literally anyone else who's a little bit more innovative. And they can use stable coins to transfer payments, but it's just a send money button that actually works in that app. One thing I like about stable coins, too, is you for the person, the skeptic, who is always like, "Well, crypto hasn't done anything. Crypto has no use cases." You're always just like stable coins. It's a congressional bill. Like it's going to trillions of dollars. It powers everything. That's going to be the future. All right. What's the second.

David: Second tokenization goes from just experimental pilots to totally scaled issuance and collateral. U I wouldn't call Black Rockck Biddles fund a pilot. That's a real product. But I think everything else is still kind of in pilot mode in 2025 and in 2026. The broadstroke of everyone's predictions is that tokenization is going to be a breakout year. That's a literal quote from Coin Shares. Galaxy says, "A major bank or broker will accept tokenized equities as collateral." Gayscale says asset tokenization is at an inflection point and they expect rapid growth facilitated by regulatory clarity. And then Coinbase says 2026 might be the year that tokenization makes a similar jump into the mainstream as stable coins did. nearly 20 billion dollars already tokenized could balloon to nearly $400 billion dollar is the prediction uh from Coinbase and so everyone else other than Black Rockck I'll say is still kind of in a pilot program still kind of experimenting still trying to figure out what to do about it. Uh but the broadstrokes is everyone's predictions like these become real products that aren't just like inert tokens that you own in your wallet but become actual like collateral utility across different lenders or borrowers or apps.

Ryan: What's the benefit for the crypto native, do you think? Or like how will people feel this change? I guess equities go 24/7. I guess maybe there's a world where we start to be able to use these tokens inside of decentralized finance. I don't know that that's 2026. It seems like there's still some fusion of Trafi and DeFi that are necessary to to make that happen. I guess you can start to bring your own assets to your wallet and you're not kind of locked into the siloed garden of your your brokerage which is a really nice feature of DeFi. It's sort of just bring your assets to the interface that you want and the interface loads them up. We've enjoyed that in DeFi from the beginning. Those are some of the benefits maybe. Are there others that you think average crypto users will feel?

David: I think the average crypto user and also DeFi will be probably one of the most slow parts of this sector. Uh I think the DeFi plus tokenized assets, security tokens integration will take the most amount of time because it's the most complex and we might need more uh white glove like specific uh verticalized DeFi apps in order to make that work because like can you really put a tokenized security inside of a like maybe the bidden then you start to need to uh account for more legal complexities. Yeah. Uh, and so like I think it's still going to be pretty white glove and pretty narrow at first, but then maybe 2027 is that is the year of security tokens in DeFi. A lot of these predictions that I'm reading, it feels like it's a best of fusion between sort of the best of DeFi and the best of like one thing I'll give Tradfi fantastic credit for is you you mentioned the A debate is they got their uh investor rights down, right? Like that's a huge benefit of securities. like I know what I'm buying and I know the management team behind what I'm buying has a fiduciary responsibility and legal responsibility to return their uh upside to the equity to the asset that I'm purchasing. We don't have that in DeFi yet. So, we get kind of a best of of that. But DeFi has all of these features that Trafi doesn't and hopefully that starts to come together in 2026 around tokenization.

Ryan: All right, what else we got? Number three, ETFs. Uh, Bitwise predicts more than 100 crypto linked ETFs to launch in the United States this year. Galaxy said more than 50 spot altcoin ETFs plus another 50 crypto ETFs. What they mean by that is like non-S single coins. So like um basket ETFs, basket of crypto assets launched in the in the United States. So pretty congruous between Bitwise and Galaxy just the explosion of ETFs. Uh, Galaxy predicts US spot crypto ETF net inflows exceed 50 billion in 2026 and a major asset allocation platform adds Bitcoin to standard model portfolios which effectively means that like Bitcoin ETFs get embedded into model portfolios at strategic weights like half a percent 1% 5% hopefully 5%. Uh, and then coin shares four big US warehouses open solicited Bitcoin ETF allocations in discretionary portfolios. So that's like Morgan Stanley, Merryill, UBS, Wells Fargo actually puts pushes Bitcoin in uh certain portfolios. And then also one major 401k provider allows Bitcoin all allocations via ETFs. That's like people like Fidelity or Vanguard or Principal or M. Are they not doing that yet? You can't get a Bitcoin ETF inside of your Fidelity 401k. Huh? I don't know. I don't know. All right. [laughter] I don't know. I don't pay attention to my 401k too much. All right. So, more ETFs and more saturation of crypto ETFs into mainstream. Yes. Yes. Uh, is any of this a surprise to you, Ryan? So far, we got stable coins, tokenization, and ETFs. Not at all. That's more of the same. Okay. But, but a continuation, right? Of of course. How about number four? Is that going to surprise me?

David: Uh, market structure legislation is plausible. Plausible and the base case for 2026. So, coin shares, this is really about the Clarity Act or market a market structure bill. Yeah, I've heard controversy around this, more controversy than what this meta analysis of predictions says. Coin Shares just straight up predicts is that uh Clarity Act will pass. Well, it's just it's just going to pass. Uh Grayscale didn't name the Clarity Act, but they expect bipartisan market structure legislation to become law in 2026 Sure. Uh, Coinbase institutional says clear regulation is a core reason 2026 could become transformative and changes how institutions handle uh strate strategy risk and compliance around crypto. And then but Bitwise then specifically ties upside scenarios for Ether and Sal ether and Salana to clarity act passing and doesn't actually give uh a statement about if they think it will.

Ryan: I'm 50/50. This is a political prediction. I'm still 50/50 on it and I I think that it would make sense to pass it. I'm wondering if we have used crypto in general and Trump, the Trump administration and anyone pro crypto has used its political capital for the genius bill and has um I guess levered up its political capital in the form of like memecoins and Trump crypto businesses to an extent that it becomes a by like a a partisan issue and Democrats really push back on it. They don't want crypto legislation or particularly they say fine you can have your Clarity Act legislation but you know uh politicians Trump can't continue his crypto businesses and if that's a deal killer that's like this is why I'm 50/50. It would make sense for it to pass but I'm not sure the politics of the moment will allow for that in 2026. It's a it's an election year. How much are we really banking on the fact that Trump has to agree to not start any more crypto businesses? Like what to what degree does clarity reside just on that nuance? I mean this this is a whole political calculation midterm year, right? The these things and and uh Trump is definitely losing momentum, right? Republicans feel like they they lost us in the the key elections in 2025. Uh so they're maybe vulnerable. We'll have to see. That's why this is 50/50 to me. Mhm.

David: All right, next one. Prediction markets. Pretty similar predictions here. Basically, everyone predicted billion dollar plus weekly volumes on Poly Market throughout 2026. Not every single week obviously, but like over 1 point uh who Galaxy says 1.5 billion in weekly trading volumes on Poly Market. Uh Bitwise and Coinbase institutional say both expect billion dollar plus weekly volumes on Poly Market in prediction markets. Uh, and so that poly market is just the poster child here, but I think everyone's just saying that like prediction markets are just going to continue to like become a staple of uh, institutional actual um, uh, usage is is one of the nuances there. It's more interesting if these same firms predicted that like four years ago or 3 years ago or even two years ago than it is now. This definitely feels like an extrapolation. A trend are safe predictions this year. It's all safe predictions. Is that what you found in your research?

Ryan: Well, okay. So, what we're doing is we're seeing where everyone agrees. Oh, this is the congruous category. This is everyone agrees. Yes, there there's a little bit there's some debate further down. So, maybe this is the boring section. We started with the boring section. [laughter] Let's get to the next. This is this is actually interesting uh in the congruous section. Quantum, this says a growing risk but not a threat in 2026. So, what are the predictors saying?

David: Yeah. So, this is Grayscale, Black Rockck, and a couple others basically all saying that quantum is going to become a growing subject, but it's not a risk in 2026. We know it's not a risk in 2026. That's also very safe. Very safe prediction. But but a growing threat, what does that mean? Like a perception type of uh threat like you talked earlier in this episode, if we were going to do a rollup, it would have been the Nick Carter article on this and sort of raising the attention and he's he's very concerned about it. I mean, some have called him an alarmist in kind of a negative way. Um, what's the sense, do you think, from the predictors around the quantum concern? Are do they all agree that it's a real concern, just not in 2026?

Ryan: I think Nick Carter would say and many other he would say about the uh people that he is fighting on Twitter that they are saying that it's flatout not a concern. Like the concern just does not exist. That makes me more concerned. How about you? Yes. Whether that's true or not, like maybe maybe they they are on the side of not a threat in 2026. And so Nick Carter is like pulling the fire alarm like right now saying, "Hey, we need to deal with this." And everyone else that he's debating with is like this is not real. This not a real concern. Maybe it's just a difference on time frames because Nick Carter part of his assumption is that you know Bitcoin moves so slow that is turning a gigantic. It moves so slow and also this is a pretty big upgrade. Like this is the biggest upgrade Bitcoin has ever done and will ever do. Yes. And it is at the most most calcified and decentralized point in Bitcoin's history with the most amount at stake. And so it's just just such a monumental task. And so Nick Carter is like, "We need to deal with this today. We need to start dealing with this today because it's going to take five plus years for Bitcoin to have consensus. And if we get to 2030, then the amount of risk is very different than it is in 2026." So like it could be like a a difference of time frame opinions, but like people are calling Nick Carter like an alarmist who's trying to sell it bags.

David: I think I I'm interested in your take on this, right? just like here because I think it is a big freaking deal. Like it's a really big deal particularly if um Bitcoin developers don't come up with solutions for this now and don't admit that it's a uh something that they need to navigate because there is this myth that Bitcoin they've started to almost like believe their own narrative a little too much which is like Bitcoin literally is gold. Okay, gold is this element, this base element. It's not software at all. I guess software that the universe created, right? Which it has no changes. There is no social layer. There is no Bitcoin core. There is no quantum threat against gold. Like there's no developer who can go tweak it and change it. Bitcoin is not that. It is a social consensus technology like gold. But at the end of the day, it is software and it is vulnerable to something like quantum on the horizon and there is a path towards fixing that if they take it or partially fixing it. Um but they have to take it and I think there has been a movement within Bitcoin for a long time to sort of say gaslight people but just to propagate this myth that Bitcoin is completely oified. It doesn't need any changes into the future. Bitcoin is bestowed upon humans by God and therefore it is perfect and doesn't need to be punished in any way. Yeah. Uh anyway, I think that could come to bite them. It's been a strength from a store value narrative propagation uh perspective, right? And that's why Bitcoiners are so hardcore and that's why it feels so like pure and it it propagates so easily. But it's also a weakness when it comes to to quantum. I think it's a serious serious uh threat and it also is like if you start undermining the store value nature of Bitcoin, how does that propagate through the rest of crypto, the good and the bad? It's a major subject and I don't know if 2026 is going to be the time we fully discuss it or if it'll be put back on the the back burner for another year or two. Interesting. But I guess we'll see. Yeah, I think there's enough momentum uh to have at least like if you want to be a specialist in this subject, you'll be con consistently supplied with information to talk about over the next year about quantum. Like it's worth noting, I think it's both your and my opinions that like if Bitcoin does nothing, then it divides by zero when quantum eventually comes. Like if it truly just sticks its head in the sand and it makes zero changes, eventually quantum will come and it will like ultimately end Bitcoin. like you won't find it in the top 10 market cap assets because quantum actually destroys Bitcoin wholly and completely if Bitcoin does nothing. Uh and so it has to do something uh and it can't wait too long like it needs to do something sooner than a decade. Yeah, I completely agree with that. All right, so that's the consensus type takes. Mhm.

Ryan: What's uh the next category? broad strokes, broad themes, not things that are like specifically in agreement with each other, but things that are are like, you know, directionally correct. There's three here. Uh, Coin Shares coined this concept of hybrid finance. We also have to talk about privacy and also sex to DEX transitions, the bankless transition. We're going to talk about all these and more, but first, we're going to talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Mantle has launched a global hackathon until the end of 2025. The focus is on building the future of realworld assets. From now until December 31st, Mantle is inviting developers, founders, and innovators around the world to design and launch new real world asset and DeFi products on Mantle. The reason to build here is simple. Mantle is not just another blockchain. It is an ecosystem built for builders who want real distribution and real users. Projects on Mantle have access to tap directly into Bybit, one of the largest exchanges globally, giving teams exposure to more than 70 million verified users and potential listings through Bybit Launchpad and Launchpool. The Mantle ecosystem is backed by a 4 billion dollar treasury that supports growth with grants, liquidity, and venture investment. And all of it runs on a modular Ethereum layer 2 stack that delivers high performance, low fees, and full EVM compatibility. The hackathon features $150,000 in prizes, plus grants, incubation, and direct access to top VCs across six tracks, including real world assets, DeFi, AI, ZK, infrastructure, and gaming. If you're ready to build where realworld finance meets onchain innovation, join the Mantle Global Hackathon at manteletwork.io/hackathon or click the link in the show notes for more information. Token launches are making a comeback, but things have changed since the 2017 ICO era. Now we have 8 years of research on how to fairly distribute tokens to the market. All that progress culminates [music] in the unis swap continuous clearing auction. No sniping, no timing games, no whale advantages, just fair, transparent onchain price discovery. Here's how it works. A project sets aside an aotment of tokens. The continuous clearing auction sells them continuously block byblock over a customizable window, typically a few days. Supply is fixed across the auction, and as demand [music] comes in, the clearing price adjusts. If new bids arrive, the price moves up. [music] If they don't, it holds steady. Since bids are filled gradually over the entire window, early participants often end up with a lower average price [music] while still giving everyone time to place orders. When the auction ends, the proceeds concede a UNIS swap V4 pool, giving you day one liquidity without exchange fees or market maker contracts. But while the unis swap continuous clearing [music] auction is perfect for launching new tokens, it's also an extremely flexible protocol and can be leveraged for price discovery, bootstrapping, [music] and auctioning of existing low liquidity assets as well. If you're launching a token and want an onchain transparent sale [music] that gets tokens into the hands of real believers, the unis swap continuous clearing auction is the way to do it. Check it out at cca.uniswap.org. Introducing FRAUSD, the genius aligned digital dollar from FRA. It's secure, stable, and fully backed by institutional-grade realworld assets. Custodied by Black Rockck, Superstate, and Fidelity. It's always redeemable one:1, transparently audited, and built for payments, DeFi, and banking. The best of all worlds. At the core is FRANET, an onchain fintech [music] platform built to align with emerging US regulatory frameworks where you can mint, redeem, and use FRAUSD with just a few clicks. Deposit USDC, send a bank wire or tokenized treasuries, and receive programmable digital dollars straight to your wallet. FraNet users benefits from the underlying return of US treasuries and earn just by using the system. Whether you're bridging, minting, or holding, your FRAUSD works for you. Fra isn't just a protocol. It's a digital nation powered by the FRA token and governed by its global communities. Join that community and help shape Frack Nation's future by going to fra.com/r/bankless. Fra, designed for the future of compliant digital finance.

David: Hybrid finance. This is pretty congruous with with everyone. Hybrid finance is a a concept coined by coin shares coined by coin shares. Uh which uh I think maybe we'll see it stick. I don't know how similar this is to the DeFi mullet. It's not perfectly similar but they kind of call it just an intersection of crypto ecosystems, public blockchains, you know, smart contracts, apps, etc. and tradi infrastructure. So, uh tokenized markets, stable coins, tokenized funds, custody, uh basically putting conventional trady services on blockchains. And I would say that was the broad strokes of everything above uh that we talked about stable coins, tokenization, basically these uh blockchains, public blockchains and smart contract tools become Trefy infrastructure to do what they want to do. So if I would actually summarize the whole of everything about all these predictions, this idea of hybrid finance of like Wall Street learning to do business logic on chain is like the net sum of it. Yeah. You've got this line uh the public chains become the settlement, composability layer while Trafi supplies the regulation, scale, distribution, custody, and product wrappers. Right.

Ryan: To summary, I was thinking about this a little bit in the context of um preparing for our conversation with the founder of the the Canton network, which remember we discussed that in the roll up. This is blockchain. I don't really know what to do with, but the DTCC is like tokenizing securities on it in in kind of a pilot type way. And what's interesting to me is like there are some things that are just in crypto that are incompatible with securities or with the way nation states want to like run things. And one of those is you can't really have securities that are bare assets. Correct. You cannot you cannot like this is a challenge and it just like run through the scenario where Apple shares are bare assets. They get hacked by North Korea. North Korea now has 5% of Apple would never be allowed. And then Tim Cook's like, "Oh [ __ ] we gota like we got uh North Korea on the um on our governance board, right? It's like that's not going to have governance and bare assets at the same time. Those two things don't work." And so that is kind of the the Tradfi layer. They're going to use smart contracts, but those smart contracts will be a bit more like stable coins in that they'll be some sort of logic that has reversibility or the ability to do something. It it puts governance essentially in the hands of some entity that is not like a bare asset. Okay. But the contention of crypto is you can build centralized things on top of decentralization, decentralized settlement layer, but the opposite is not true. You can't build something decentralized on top of something that's centralized, right?

So at at the root of it, this is the way you know physical objects work as well. The root of it is bearer assets that are settled by something, right? In the case of the real world, it's ultimately it's like settled by the nation state, but we've abstracted that. It's used to be settled by violence. I'm stronger than you, so I can go take your stuff, right? Well, now we have not for you, [laughter] right? Anyway, so that's an example of how these things are going to work together, but also it's pretty bullish for crypto in that you have to have the most decentralized thing at the bottom, particularly when you have two parties that don't trust one another and they're trying to engage in some sort of interaction, right? You know, where's the place where China's uh securities can exchange with the United States's securities and their geopolitical adversaries? Well, the only place to do that something decentralized essentially, right? Yeah. So that's an example of how these things come together, I suppose. Next one, privacy.

David: Privacy was a pretty broad strokes theme that like everyone kind of agrees that we need it without too much similarity in how or what it that looks like. Uh Coinbase says with institutional adoption, rising users want greater control and confidentiality. We expect to see continued buildout of technologies like ZK proofs fully homoic encryption as well as a meaningful surge in onchain privacy usage which aligned with Gayscale's line of the rising of adoption of confidential transactions on Ethereum and Salana. Uh and then Galaxy predicted something kind of different. The combined market cap of privacy tokens will exceed 100 billion by the end of 2026 as investors park more money on chain. Wow. Different different prediction of privacy. 100 billion in in privacy tokens. I can name Ryan. I can name two privacy tokens. Aztec. It's not Aztec. Uh Zcash and Monero. Okay. And yeah. What do you look what's up? 7 billion right now, which is incredible. Like up a significant amount. From the beginning of this year, it was a billion. So it's, you know, No, actually. Yeah. Just as um the beginning of this year, it was Yeah. under a billion dollars. Monero. Oh god. I don't you know I want to XMR Monero is uh wow 8.2 8.2 too. Wow. They is also doing a very strong price performance. Yeah. Yeah. I can't name a single privacy coin beyond those. And like Monero is the Well, as infrastructure, it's still a privacy coin, I think. Totally. What are these? Is is ASC a store of value? Cuz like Zcash and Monero I consider to be store of value privacy coins. They are, but like why do you need a store of value? Do you know what I mean? Like why why like remember that it means solaniquip which is just basically I shouldn't have to invest in your Ponzi scheme. your store of value in order to like get privacy, right? And so if you look at the I mean I agree with that, but like nonetheless, people are doing that with Zcash. And there is something to the effect that like well if you have a privacy app chain, which Zcash and Monero are, you have better privacy in that scenario than you do if it was like but that's that's what Aztec is, which which is sort of what I mean like does something is is privacy a feature? Does it need its own app chain? Right? So like a use case of Zcash right now is if I have Salana on soul, right? I can use like near intense and convert my soul or any asset on Salana to Zcash like through Zcash and the other side and get my privacy and then come back out. I don't have to keep my asset parked in Zcash. I'm just using the Zcash blockchain for some utility and temporary basis. And you can use Azac that same way. But if you can have your store of value be Bitcoin or Ether or some other crypto asset, do you really need to park in the local app chain store of value asset? Yeah. Yeah. Is it a feature or is it like you like I don't know that you need store of value in that case? The only people that I really think would really use that use the value of that is like North Korea or people like them like pariah states that want to park park value inside of privacy for an ongoing basis. Sure. So, I don't know. It could be a niche use case. Anyway, that but but this prediction, the Galaxy prediction specifically says that's going to get to hundred billion dollars, which is I mean, we're learn what they mean by privacy tokens. Like, do they are they narrow to like privacy store value tokens or are they including things like Zama and andclude all that? You think so? Privacy. But even so, that's a even so that's a huge increase in privacy. Yeah. Mhm. Next year in a in a bare market. I don't know. That's that's that's a surprising in a bare market. What do you mean in a bare market? [laughter] Is that a prediction? I I hope you have some predictions on on whether we're in a bare market in 2026. But let's get to the next one. So that's privacy. What else?

Ryan: Uh wait, one more privacy quote that I thought was pretty interesting uh is from A16Z that is pretty nuanced. Privacy it will be the most important moat in crypto critical for worlds finance to move onchain on and almost every blockchain lacks it. uh they argue that privacy creates chain lock in and network effects because bridging secrets is hard and then they broaden privacy beyond payments into data and key management secrets as a service to and making privacy more core infrastructure. So I think they're calling for like yo whichever chain can solve privacy acquires a huge technological moat which I I can see that that argument that makes sense to me. Interesting. I also think there's degrees of privacy in in the same way that there's degrees of security like do you need privacy that's nation state like resistant privacy or do you just want it to not be public if you are you fine with it being confidential to some trusted entities you and your yeah your service provider exactly and so that that all depends that's also on a and your accountant because you have like a reveal key what are those called like a re reveal key yeah where's there's on some privacy things you can share a key with someone so they can view transactions so they can do your accounting for you. That's Zcash has this. Monero does not have this. Yeah, that's right. Okay. Nuance conversation there. We'll have to see how that evolves, but picking up privacy as a theme certainly. What's this next one?

David: Sextoex transitions. Galaxy says today's dexes account for roughly 15 to 17% of spot volume. They say that by the end of 2026, Dexes will capture more than 25% of combined combined spot trading