Our 2026 Crypto Predictions

I think Ripple has a higher probability than pretty much any other crypto network in the top 10 to reach that all-time high. Whereas I'm very bearish Ethereum going back to its all-time high. Wow. All right. I think Santi just really wants to be on that first clip in the beginning. Like that's what's happening here. Santi like wrote on a whiteboard then the community is on Twitter. He's like how can I troll each and every one of these? Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is forformational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of Blockworks. Our hosts, guests, and the Blockworks team may hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed. Playing music maybe next time, you know, like we all kind of run into this new music. Yeah, bring your ukulele. Okay, Rob. Rob does strike you as a ukulele guy. Big ukulele guy. Big ukulele guy. Actually, like I was actually more like a banjo guy growing up. I don't know if you knew this, but you know, from Don't tell people that. Don't tell people that. Got it. Got it. Well, anyways, uh this is the the episode we've been waiting for. We are going to spend the time doing uh about maybe I don't know 10 15 20 minutes at the top talking about 2025 review some of our predictions and then spend the majority of the time talking about where we think things are going our 2026 predictions. Um but quickly before we do that quick uh congratulations is in order Rob. I saw you join the uh digital assets market subcommittee of the CFTC. That's pretty cool. So congrats.

Rob: I appreciate that. Yeah, I'm excited to um you know, just be able to be a part of kind of shaping the new era of regulation for the space.

Host: Yeah, I was I was laughing seeing that because I know how much you like to shill your port codes and how much you are a defender of the port co. So, I'm picturing you in like some meeting and you're like just every sentence is some dragonfly port.

Rob: Well, I am sure that prediction markets will be a topic of conversation uh going forward. Unbiased takes only on who should win that. Awesome. Well, no. I mean, no, but but in all seriousness, right, like this is about furthering the industry and furthering and bringing, you know, common sense regulation and rules to um a space that is, you know, innovating very quickly and like reinventing financial rails. And so, uh, everybody wins when we do that. And so, yeah, I'll definitely not be shilling any port codes or, you know, trying to be biased around who would actually win. I would just be biased around making sure that we, you know, continue to push forward innovation.

Host: Yep. Nice. Nice diplomatic way to put that. I like it. All right, let's get into 2025 review. Rob, you were not with us when you made these. You probably got wiser, smarter, better looking since creating these, obviously, as with your, you know, involved empire episode, but let's look at some of your 2025 predictions. Do you want to walk us So, you had 15 of these. Um, do you want to walk us through maybe some of the highlights of these, what you got right and what you got wrong?

Rob: Yeah. All right. Uh, so I actually I tweeted out that I gave myself like a B or B+ on this. Um, I probably got like, you know, call like 10 of them at least like partially right. But the ones that I were really really bad at, I'll start there actually because I think you like started on the bad ones. Yeah. Were uh one that the total crypto market cap would hit 7.5 trillion. Uh so that is um a big miss. uh I think for all of us honestly that was that was number 15 and uh also the the one right before that that uh the the dollar would actually continue to stay strong. So US stable coins did proliferate but um and they continue to be used even as part of really as part of like national security and continuing to be part of the monetary policy.

But that said, um everything else that the Trump administration has done has been uh you know, weakening the dollar and so it's been a been a really really bad year for for the dollar. Um that said, probably the thing that was most right on was prediction markets. So I think in in number seven, I said that um we see significant growth from prediction markets uh this year. And I think there's a lot of people that are still pretty dubious about that because they said oh like you know Poly Market grew into the election but then you know it's only election product and you know we were obviously um you know very uh very bullish on prediction markets having put a bunch of money into Poly Market and that turned out to be right um and you know there's a lot of stuff on here specifically around call it decentralized finance continuing to gain market share which was it did gain market share it wasn't quite as um I think quite as big as I I thought it was. Spot did hit about 20% of total uh spot volume indexes versus sexes. Derivatives hit 20% as well, but they didn't stay there. And so um that's one where I think you know direction of travel has been right.

Host: You had two um you had two interesting stable coin ones. So number eight was Coinbase buys Circle just before or within 12 months of the IPO and M&A picks up otherwise but mostly in smaller aqua hire type situations as tradfire acquireers remain cautious. Your other interesting stable coin one was Tether market share drops to 50% or lower fueled by continued USDC resurgence and explosive growth of optimized use case specific stable coins. Uh you got both these wrong.

Rob: Well, you know, I'm going to give myself a little bit on eight, right? So, Coinbase obviously hasn't bought Circle yet. I still have uh like six months. So, you know, don't don't count me out yet. I said within 12 months after IPO. Uh the that said, I mean, considering how well circle's performed in the public markets, like you know, I think that's less likely today. Um, however, on the M&A side, like it I'm pretty much right that it picked up, but it mostly only picked up with cryptonative acquirers, right? So, all of the big acquisitions this year have been done by Coinbase, they've been done by Kraken. Um, there really hasn't been M&A yet by big, at least like Splashy M&A by traditional buyers. There's been some rumored stuff. You know, obviously the Mastercard Zero hash has been rumored, but, you know, let's see what happens there. It's been a long time. So that, you know, doesn't, you know, imply anything good. And then there's been a lot of acquireers. So I think I was I was relatively right to be more bearish on the M&A market than I think you were, for instance, and then I think a lot of other people were. Yeah. To start the year.

Uh the Tether thing, it's also the direction of travel. So the Tether has lost market share this year. They've gone down to about 60%. Not 50%. It's been slower than expected. But also the thing I was probably most surprising to be or it was most surprising to me that I was wrong about this year was that like stable coins continued to do well and it took more market share in terms of crossber payments but it didn't grow nearly as quick as I thought they would in terms of issuance in terms of like real volume. I I think that is just um I think I'm wrong based on timing but not in terms of like the direction of travel but um that has been uh one that I've been been a little bit surprised on and I do believe as you know stable coin usage and we'll talk about a little bit about that today in 2026 predictions continues to pick up I do think Tether will continue to lose market share they'll still do an incredible job obviously and be the largest but continue.

Host: You you uh you nailed the regulatory predictions you said stablecoin legislation and a strategic Bitcoin reserve legislation oh you I mean you didn't get the Bitcoin reserve thing right but no no I was I was right about this okay so um you got right no no no so so yeah so I got that right right so what ended up happening I I would get myself right about this so I said stable coin legislation would get passed the CRA SAB121 would be repealed both those things happened um first half of the year and then uh I thought we would get a strategic bitcoin reserve legislation but we basically did right because the um what what ended up happening while we get a its own bill. Right. What we did end up uh getting was that we got a writer that said that we wouldn't sell Bitcoin in uh the Genius Act. That's right. And you were right about this.

Rob: The But you said the strategic Bitcoin reserve would be mostly toothless and just for headlines. So, and you also nailed this. You nailed that. Market structure would get pushed to 2026 and ultimately after the.

Host: Oh, you think market structure Oh, I'm curious if you still believe this that market structure gets pushed to after the next midterm elections, but we can hold that until the 2026 predictions. Um, but yeah, I thought this this was good. Anything else in your 15 predictions that you think uh you had a nice call with embedded wallets? You said embell embedded wallets, shout out privy start to take significant market share from general purpose browser wallets. Um it's very tough to actually measure the market share of wallets I've found but uh you know embedded wallets obviously and pre specifically obviously had a massive year. So I think that was a nice prediction and then you had a nice prediction on ICOs and launchpads.

Rob: Yeah, I mean the ICO launch pads I gave myself like kind of mostly right here because what I said was that they would be come back to relevance. Uh but you know there would be a lot of like anti-VC conversation but that we would become kind of a wash in a lot of scams and rugs. I don't think that actually happened. We didn't come with washing skins and rugs, but that I expected that founders would continue to basically do this hybrid financing strategy where most of the financing actually comes from VCs, but they do this as, you know, maybe a way to align incentives and bring people, you know, people around the table and that has mostly been right. There's been a lot more people using launchpads, but it's not in any way replacing VCs or VC capital. And I think that was a lot of the conversation this time last year. Yeah. Yeah.

Host: The last two and then we'll I want to move on to Santiago's are um you said a trady institution will launch a purpose-built ETH L2. You also said uh a large US bank will launch its own stable coin. I had very similar 2025 predictions on that front. Um yeah, large bank didn't launch its own stable coin. You did however get, you know, Brian Moyahan saying BFA was exploring it. You had JP Morgan um you know rolled out USD deposit token, right? So it's we give I think deposit tokens I'm going to like I gave myself this to be honest like deposit tokens stable coins I think it's close enough oh this tells a lot about the standard that we hold ourselves to I didn't give myself this one I should have given myself this you should let me grade you this is Harvard grading okay and it's not a trady institution did not launch an L2 but you know people like Robin Hood did so yeah so awesome we got a cur here Jensen well I'll answer that after I see how your predictions did Santi let's uh let's Let's get into yours. Santi, you um if I remember correctly, I mean, we we we had a great episode at the beginning of the year, but yours were a little more of just like thesis on what the year will look like. Maybe you want to walk us through like some highlights and what you got right and what you got wrong here.

Santi: Yeah. And look, I I published 2025 cheating a little bit, which was under the assumption that I'm never going to it's so hard to predict what would happen in a year, but it was more Trump had just gotten elected and you had a visibility into the regulatory environment changing. And so I was like thinking more about what are the big tectonic shifts over the next kind of two to three four years. Um however I will grade myself on what happened this year versus what I thought would you know happen in four years. And I I just published a piece around really more you know 2026 but it's very much focusing on what happened in 25. Um so the first point was look return to Spursion um is going to continue to be a thing in crypto. I I just continue to believe that as the industry would mature, you would have big disparities whereas before it was so tightly correlated. I would I think that very much happened this year. You have clear outperformance of Bitcoin and hype and and a few other protocols and the vast majority of other protocols just kind of it wasn't like other cycles where you could have just punted a thematic and it you would have done super well. I think it it shows up in the unrealized losses and a lot of the kind of the pain that you're seeing in crypto markets. So, I I would say that I was largely correct there.

Host: Um I I agree with that. I think that was a I think that was a good take. Yeah, I think before the episode, one of my biggest predictions, I didn't post it here, but was that, you know, Nvidia would be more important than Jerome Powell. Uh, I think that was just a reflection of the AI trade and and how it was so, you know, important. And I think I actually think that was your take of the year. Correct. I think I wouldn't underplay. I think that was your take of the year because at the time it, you know, it's funny looking back at these predictions because they feel the ones you get right feel obvious. It's like, oh, of course he said that stable coins would be big, but at the time, you know, I think we, the three of us pushed to make nonobvious predictions. And the one about, you know, everyone was talking about interest rates so much. Interest rates, interest rates, interest rates. And I remember when you said, you know, the market would hinge on Nvidia earnings more than it would hinge on Jerome Pal's interest rate talks. And that was not an obvious thing then, but it's so clearly obvious today.

Santi: Yeah. Here's one where um in investing it, you could be right about the thesis, but wrong in the expression of it or the timing of it. And so I was very um kind of bearish on I was I was my point was there's going to be a very clear divide between the have and the have nots like chains like incredibly scale and that was at the time where like Salana was really having a lot of kind of coming off of a lot of memecoin activity. Um I I would have thought that there would be again more disparity. It would have been like way like the divide would have been much more apparent in the crypto asset prices. But I would say like now that prices have come down, everything just gets chopped pretty mercenarily. And so I think um even the deployment of certain chains like Robin Hood launching as an L2, but you have then Tempo launching as an L1 with a muscle of of paradigm. So I I I think I was I would give myself like I was I was wrong there. I think I was too optimistic around what I was seeing that like a network like Salana has been able to process so many different so much more transaction in the value capture versus like Ethereum L1. But a big part of this is like I probably overintellectualize that where it's like how do these things trade and I think they just continue to trade based on you know good brand and mimetics and Tom Lee going on TV telling retail that Ethereum is going to go to 62,000 or something like that. You know it's it's very much not like price to revenue you know insert vest Patagonia vest meme.

Host: Yeah. I like I like looking at these predictions for for you because you know I think you and Hib have had these great conversations around valuations and it became kind of like a yeah like you said kind of a meme of you talking about these valuations but you've been talking about this since January right where you said most of the current valuations are rich and predicated on some future state. This isn't something that you just started talking about in the last 30 days.

Santi: Yeah, exactly. And that was I'm glad you bring that up because a lot of people are saying, "Wait a minute, you've invested on the venture side a lot of these projects." Uh like why are you so skeptical overnight about valuations? And I mean I I think there's a record here of you know I I was coming into the year thinking we got to we got to put numbers on the dashboard because you know we have a very clear regulatory 180 and once protocols like like once you have a protocol like really showing you what mainstream adoption looks like then I think it just exposes some of the others that have not been able to scale have not been able to acquire customers. And I don't know how much of that like played out this year candidly cuz you know look I mean Ethereum has been kind of stuck in this range for the last four years. It hasn't like Ethereum like ETH um and Salana but but you know Salana also came down a lot of transaction fees have come down. So, I don't know. I I think I could have been better at just inspecting like and when I went back and looked at is like what percentage of revenue of these chains is tied to like certain types of activities and I would say that like I think the market is sufficiently smart in understanding that mo most of these a large part of the revenue and generation is happening from uh just speculation and memecoin activity. Yeah. Yeah.

Host: Anything else that was a highlight here? I mean, one one that I might highlight maybe that you got wrong was you said every major app that hits scale will launch their own chain. I had something similar. Um, the app chain thesis did not really play out this year. I think a lot of people went into the year uh probably overweight what hyper the hyperlquid strategy of being an app that launched a chain and this didn't really play out.

Santi: Yeah, I agree with you. Other than Robin Hood launching their own L2 and Stripe launching their own L1, I would say I would have perhaps maybe we're a bit too early on this. Maybe you're going to see Poly Market for instance, and I have no knowledge of this, launch their own. Um, so that was that was a miss. Um, I think some of these are are probably though like for something like that like I don't know we should talk about this more in the going in the in the future, but it does still seem like that's a topic of uh that might just be a timing issue or.

Host: Yeah. One thing that's interesting here is you said stable coins are the you said Deepen and stable coins are the killer combo to scale and onboard the next mass wave of users on chain and retain them. You got half of it right with stable coins. Deep um yeah, Deep Deepen I feel like didn't have a good year. I'm, you know, it's actually part of my 2026 prediction, so we'll punt on talking about Deepen into too much detail, but I don't think Deepen had the massive year that some people thought it would have. Certainly not on the token price.

Santi: Yeah, I would say on the adoption front, yes. Like you you have Helium posting pretty impressive numbers in terms of number of uh users growth and the on the MVNO side. Hivemapper continues to make progress. But again, I don't think the market's dumb. The biggest problem that I think we're going to talk about in into next year predictions is this equity token disconnect um value acrruel disconnect. You're seeing it at a you're seeing it with Helium. You're seeing it with a lot of these projects that had to design tokconomics in a very different regulatory environment. They're they have that overhang that needs to be cleaned up or they will really struggle and it opens up an opportunity for a new player to attack the same opportunity with better tokconomics and value acrruel and and so that was yeah I definitely was very hyped up and and I still am on deep end as a as a use case but the if you were if you look at that and said none of this financial advice and you said oh I'm going to go buy a basket of deep in a basket of deep in was probably one of the worst performers other than GameFi. It it was it got I mean it did not perform well at all. In fact, I can't think of a single deepend project that did well. Yeah. From a token price perspective. I agree.

Host: You know, one thing one thing that not none of us had was anything around RWAs and tokenization, right? We had like the market cap of RWA's tripled, right? Hit like 17 billion or 18 or 19 billion. And you've got like Black Rockck's Bidd is the reserve asset behind a lot of, you know, onchain cash products. We It's interesting that none none of us mentioned that. You know, yeah. But again, I mean, the thing with the RWAS though, right, and and this is still true, is that the by far the largest product there is continues to be figures helock product, right? And you know with Figurelock product that's you know it's it's almost yeah it's a tokenized product but like it's within their like closed loop ecosystem and like you know their um it's not something that like necessarily has call it like I think like broad use cases in crypto and DeFi, right? And so I think like that's been part of it. I think this is also what's happening with like a lot of the conversation around like Canton, right? which is that you know there's a lot of people talking about Canton and like oh it's really interesting they do all of this repo volume and they're using all of these real world use cases but um again there's like it doesn't have any kind of movement uh or interoperability with not not even other Canton networks let alone anybody outside of Canton right and so I think there's a a little bit of um a wait and see about how tokenized assets go from like these like basically you know closed loop distributed databases to like you know something that you know affects like the that is more open source. Yeah, I think that's a good point.

Santi: Santi, anything else on your predictions before I want to get into my 25 review and then we can get into 26. I'll be quick here. Uh I came into the year thinking that um crypto projects with big treasuries should be very strategic in using them to acquire and grow into the valuations. I think I was probably one of the first ones to really really be very vocal about that. I think the only really project that did that was Ripple. And and then I had another one which was wrong which was I said you know um narratives will matter less and it's going to be harder to sustain that but then you had the company that has been probably the best in the space to paint the narrative also go out and use their treasury and I think that's coming into 2026 I I think it will be interesting to reunderite a thesis on something like Ripple which a lot of people the crypton natives have and mocking them, but they've they've done some really interesting acquisitions that we've talked about here during the year that as I look to next year, I'm actually more optimistic about Ripple and their beating muscle than any other probably any other project in the space other than of course inver they all Yeah, exactly. Second. Yeah, exactly.

Host: Wait, can can you say that again? You are more bullish on Ripple's BD effort than any other project in.

Santi: 100% 100%. Do you own XRP? I do not. because it is it is hard for me to underwrite that and I wrote about it in the blog piece like it's just hard for what I'm doing. I just don't have the time. I'm not a trader. But I will say it's it's one of those things that the cryptonators have been wrong every year. They fight the momentum. They fight the narrative. They fight the memes. And and Ripple is a interesting exercise where they they actually might grow into their valuation given the acquisitions that they've made. Like it's impressive. Like they they raised a really big round this year. They did how many acquisitions, Rob? Three acquisitions. Hidden road. A couple like three or four. G Treasury. Uh big. Yeah. And they did rail. So those are the three that come out to mind. There's probably more. There is a couple more, I think, but three that are like I think really sizable.

Rob: The last thing I'll say holistically, I went into the year being quite um having a sense of urgency that we needed to put numbers on the dashboard to justify valuations and I was very nervous about valuations. across the board. Uh and and as I look to now of which project actually executed the most was Ripple because because I I will say Tom Lee is not a I don't see that as BD even though Ethereum cleaned up its act on the margin. It is a very disconnected. It's all I I think it actually does more harm to Ethereum having a figure like Tom Lee publicly say one thing and privately say another to his investors and then Ethilla change its tune and sell ETH like these DATs are not your beady muscle that you want contrary to like that that that's no one really kind of predicted the DAT game here I think maybe you did have I mean that like oh who could have right but what I'm saying is Ripple I think is a force not to be reckoned with. Wow. All right. All right. Let's bring Let's get Brad on the pod in 2026. That's the That's a prediction. Um Santi, I'm not saying it's worth what it is today. I'm just saying it it has strategically used its token to show at least I want to ask you a question because I and we're this is I think this conversation needs to come back up on the 26 side but do you think that XRP or Ripple equity will be worth more in terminal value? I mean what what is your terminal value in 10 years? Yeah, 10 years let's call it. What's it at now? Uh what is the token at 2008 180 Ripple is sitting at ladies and gentlemen $188 XRP fully diluted valuation of 188 billion. Do I think that that and what's Ripple like 40 40 billion. Yeah. Although that there was like some uh reports that came out that was basically saying that the there was like downside protection given to that investment which means it's probably not you know call it what yeah so the the foundation has roughly 90 billion of XRP I believe or give or take it's probably less than that at 180 but yeah less than that okay do I think that they can I this is I wrote about in my blog piece I think 2026 is going to be a really tough year across the board in crypto and across and and equity markets. I'm I'm I'm moving us past this conversation because I want to get us into 2026 and then we'll we'll come back to I'll answer this question. I think Ripple has a higher probability than pretty much any other crypto network in the top 10 to if everything goes down, they actually have a higher probability to reach that all-time high. Whereas I'm very bearish Ethereum reaching it all going back to its all-time high. You're more bullish on Ripple hitting an alltime high than Ethereum and ETH. Yes. Wow. All right. All right. I think Santi just really wants to be on that first clip in the beginning. That's what's happening here. The number Santi like wrote on a whiteboard the community is on Twitter. He's like, "How can I troll each and every one of these?" Listen, I I I think the most important it's it's sort of like distribution is king, but I also come around product is super important. I think Ripple, this is the last point I made is that decentralized product strategy in BD does not work. Decentralized security but centralized product decision-m is the way to win. Ethereum does not have that. You had Justin Drake, right? Leave the stripe across the board like ETH as an asset is not worth 300 and whatever billion 350 billion, dude. Ripple at least is 182 billion. Visa 600 billion. Now we're we're using we're valing everything on a relative basis. I think Ripple has more breathing room to use its currency to buy real businesses to build distribution and a product and has more time to figure this out whereas some of the other projects do not because the market is losing its patience.

Host: All right, I'm moving us forward before people turn off this episode. I love you Santi. Um all right, I'm going to cruise through mine and then we'll get into it. Um the ones that I got right really right were uh okay I'll start with the ones I got right and then I'll get I got many of these very wrong ones I got right I said stable coins are going to become great for crypto's brand banks will issue banks issuing their own stables increases consumer trust and accelerates global adoption of crypto normies and regulators understand crypto understand stable coins crypto finally has a use case this leads to stable coin legislation passing in the US I got that right ICOs we'll see a hund00 million ICO but unlike 2017 ICOs these are more buttoned up on actual platforms. This gets seen as crowdfunding's golden moment. Institutional investors participate in these ICOs which drives significant capital uh could which drives significant capital. Um I got that right. Pump Fund, how much did Pump Fund raise? Pump Fund did like a $600 million ICO. Monad couple hundred. Yeah, Monad was like 187 and was oversubbed. Yeah. Um and I think Pump Yeah. was a little bit higher, right? It was it was like 800 million. So uh another one I got right was M&A. I said we'll see a crypto company acquire a non-crypto company for 100 million. Few examples of this biggest one is probably Kraken acquiring Ninja Trader for like 1.5 billion. Um what I didn't get right is I said this will be an L1 or L2 because they have the funds. This was kind of playing off Santiago's thesis that you know these companies these protocols with huge treasuries had to make some acquisitions. I I said we're going to get another $1 billion crypto acquisition. I think we saw that with Coinbase and Darabit. Um, uh, a couple that I got wrong. I said both memes and AI agents will win. I would say both of them definitively lost. Um, I said one of the biggest chains will be from a chain will be a chain that an application builds. I definitely got that one wrong. Um, I thought that centralized crypto companies would start launching tokens and the thought process here was uh overvalued valuations from 2021 and 2022 combined with an extreme mismatch in equity versus token valuations would drive this. I I thought there were a lot of companies that had raised it, you know, five, six, seven, eight, n billion dollars didn't see any way to get out of that and get liquidity and exit and so they'd start launching tokens. I think I got that wrong. Um, I thought a Bitcoin fork of sorts would become contentious. You're kind of seeing this. I don't know if you guys have been following Nick Carter and the quantum resistant Bitcoin stuff. You're starting to see some contention there, but not to the point where there's a fork. And I got this extremely wrong. I said social would get hot again. Uh, people would build apps on top of existing platforms that pull in your social data. Something will happen with Instagram and Tik Tok to get this token uh to get tokens. Creates a weird convergence with normies. Uh, normies flood in, celebrities flood in, and that's the top. Uh, we saw the opposite. Farcasters pivoting away from social. Maybe the closest thing to this was Zora in the middle of the year, but yeah, I got that wrong.

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Santi: Um I'll go straight to it. Ethereum lower or higher at the end of the year, next year? Well, this is your this basket basket of I'll I'll spare Rob the regulatory uh you know the compliance headache. A basket of L1's lower or higher?

Host: Well, what's your prediction?

Santi: Lower. I'm guessing lower. I did not have a prediction around this, Rob. Did you?

Rob: No. And I I don't agree that we'll have I mean, it depends on your basket, right? I think we'll just see more dispersion, right? And well, but I I would guess that if you took like, you know, call it the ones that you think are doing well today, whatever. ETH, Salana, name whatever ones else you