a16z Outlined 17 Main Trends in the Crypto Industry in 2026

• a16z has released a report on 2026 with the main trends for the cryptocurrency industry.
• The key forecasts concern stablecoins, AI agents, and privacy.
• The company also expects the development of tokenization and prediction markets.
• At the same time, the crypto economy will become the financial infrastructure of the Internet.

Investment company Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has published its annual report summarizing 17 key topics that will determine the development of the crypto space in 2026.

The document contains the forecasts and opinions of a16z partners on the areas of stablecoin payments, asset tokenization, artificial intelligence (AI) agents, decentralized finance (DeFi), forecast markets, privacy, cryptoasset-based technologies, and new blockchain use cases.

a16z expects the development of new solutions for integrating stablecoins into everyday payments. The report notes that while this category of crypto assets already allows “sending a stablecoin in less than a second for less than a cent,” it is still unclear “how to connect these digital dollars to the financial rails people actually use already every day.”

A new generation of startups is addressing this gap by creating on/off ramps, integrations with QR payments, real payment networks, and card products. This can “expand participation in the digital dollar economy” and accelerate the use of stablecoins as a basic payment layer.

In July 2025, US President Donald Trump signed the Guiding and Enabling National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act into law.

In November, a16z submitted its first proposals to the US Treasury Department on the implementation of the GENIUS Act, which, in particular, addressed the need to take into account modern cryptographic solutions in anti-money laundering (AML) and customer due diligence (KYC) procedures.

Analysts also drew attention to the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs). The report says that despite the growing interest of banks and asset managers in tokenizing US stocks, commodities, and indices, it is often “rooted in the current idea of real-world assets” instead of using crypto capabilities.

Instead, synthetic instruments, such as perpetual futures (perps), are considered promising in crypto registration, as they provide deeper liquidity and easy implementation.

Another trend is the development of online lending, where assets are not only tokenized, but the loans themselves originate online, which should reduce servicing and structuring costs.

The report also drew attention to the fact that banking systems often run on outdated software, which hinders the emergence of new financial products.

Stablecoins and tokenized deposits can provide financial institutions with new opportunities without completely modernizing their core systems. As a result, banks and fintechs can “build new products and serve new customers” without rewriting old systems.

The report also talks about a future where money moves as fast as information on the internet. a16z described a scenario where smart contracts will settle payments around the world “in seconds” without the need for bankers or exchanges as intermediaries.

In addition, she believes that new primitives will emerge, such as x402, which allows agents to pay each other for data, computing power, or API calls “instantly and without permissions.”

a16z expects that in 2026, portfolio management technologies will become available not only to wealthy clients: with the rise of tokenization of various asset classes, AI recommendations, and automatic rebalancing with the ability to work simultaneously with NFTs, stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and direct loans will mean that wealth management services will become available to everyone.

The report also mentions DeFi tools such as Morpho’s vaults, which automatically allocate assets to the credit markets with the best risk profile.

Another focus is the emergence of AI agents, which will increasingly perform automated transactions and decision-making. The report emphasizes that agents will need cryptographically signed identifiers — “Know Your Agent” (KYA), just as humans have KYC — to enable transactions to be carried out without blocking or restrictions from services.

AI is no longer just an auxiliary tool, but is capable of conducting high-level research on its own: models can receive abstract instructions and generate new answers or ideas, making them part of a new workflow where different models help evaluate solutions and synthesize conclusions.

It is worth noting that last year’s report, “A few of the things we’re excited about in crypto (2025),” focused more on the integration of AI into blockchain and digital assets.

The authors of the publication highlighted that privacy will become a key advantage for all blockchains:

This makes it harder for users to “migrate” between networks, as leaving the private zone transmits metadata that reveals identity or behavior. This will create a winner-take-all dynamic for networks with advanced privacy capabilities.

A16z also predicts that the future of messengers will be not only quantum-resistant but fully decentralized, without trusted servers, where users control their own keys and messages just like their digital assets.

The report also draws attention to the evolution of DeFi security — from “code is the law” to “spec is the law.”

a16z describes how new tools for formally proving invariants in code can automatically stop transactions that violate critical properties of protocols. This can significantly reduce the risk of exploits.

Other areas include the expansion of prediction markets, where the number of contracts for various events will increase, as well as the integration of AI to determine the truth in cases of contradictions.

It is worth noting that this year, many crypto companies have launched prediction markets, including MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Binance, Coinbase, FanDuel, Truth Social, and others

At the same time, the media segment will take on a new form — “staked media”, where authors and analysts will publish forecasts or opinions, accompanying them with open “staked” capital that demonstrates the degree of their confidence.

Technologies that used to be purely blockchain-oriented, such as SNARKs, are becoming efficient enough to run on graphics processing units (GPUs) and can be used outside of blockchains, for example, for cryptographically verified cloud computing.

a16z points out that the traditional “trading as a way station” should not remain the dominant model: platforms should build structurally sound products that are not dependent on short-term speculative demand.

Regulatory uncertainty in the US is also a significant factor, and the partners believe that the pending Digital Asset Market Structure legislation could create clear standards, promote transparency and encourage the development of networks as truly autonomous and neutral.

Earlier, we wrote that the US Senate is not in time to pass a bill on the structure of the crypto market due to the difference of opinion between Republicans and Democrats on a number of issues, including ethics, tools to combat illicit financing, etc.