The 2026 Turning Point in the Crypto Industry: From Bubble to Fundamentals, 27 Major Predictions Reveal Market Truths

The Contradiction of 2025: Prosperity and Dilemmas Coexist

2025 has become the most ironic year in the history of the crypto industry. Mainstream assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum reached new all-time highs, which should have sparked market euphoria, but the reality was quite the opposite— the entire industry was shrouded in a strange, dull atmosphere.

According to in-depth analysis by industry observers, the root of the problem lies in the huge gap between market expectations and reality. Investors anticipated a grand bull market, but what they got was a “false prosperity” in prices. Aside from a few lucky ones, most investors suffered significant losses this year. Especially for high-risk appetite investors, 2025 was a nightmare—mainstream coins saw minimal gains, while altcoins plummeted.

This “best and worst coexist” situation reflects a profound paradigm shift in the crypto industry. The market is evolving from early reckless growth to a mature stage driven by rationality and fundamentals. This transition was foreseen by insiders long ago but only became evident in 2025.

From “Wild West” to “Fundamentals”: The Awakening of Industry Rationalization

In recent years, the crypto market was characterized by irrational prosperity. Good projects and bad projects were mixed together, and prices soared without real value support. But now, this situation is reversing.

Many excellent projects are continuously improving and refining, yet their token prices keep falling. This phenomenon may seem contradictory, but it actually reflects a healthy market pricing mechanism. Investors are no longer blindly chasing concepts but are beginning to scrutinize the true value of projects—team capabilities, technological progress, revenue models, and other fundamental indicators.

This signals a key opportunity window is opening: Those who can identify projects with compound growth potential and choose the right tracks will reap substantial returns in 2026 and beyond. Unlike early luck-driven investments, future wealth will stem from in-depth research and strategic vision.

Echoes of the Internet Bubble: An Accurate Analogy for the Current Cycle

To understand the current state of the industry, a highly enlightening analogy is: We are now in the post-2001-2002 internet bubble burst phase.

Back then, internet startups received massive funding, and everyone believed the internet would change the world (which was ultimately proven correct). But the problem was overbuilding infrastructure. Investors poured wildly into transcontinental cables and bandwidth expansion, leading to the infamous “Dark Fiber” oversupply. When the bubble burst, the market entered a long-term downturn, with some even believing the internet was dead.

The crypto industry now faces a similar situation. Large amounts of investment and construction have taken place, but the feasibility of many projects remains unproven. The next phase’s key lies in insightful builders discovering truly innovative and sustainable business opportunities on top of existing infrastructure. This is not just about survival but about how to win in competition.

Core Theme for 2026: Mergers and Consolidation

The entire industry is entering an era of “survival is victory.” According to multiple industry observers, 2026-2028 will be a period of mergers and consolidations in crypto.

For builders, strategic choices become extremely critical. Founders and teams essentially face two paths: either be acquired or succeed in their respective fields and undergo integration. At this stage, half-baked projects will struggle to survive because capital will become more cautious, flowing toward companies with clear moats and the ability to generate real revenue.

This also explains why 2025 and 2026 are called “Strategic Deployment Years.” Without speculative frenzy, no one will get rich overnight from cryptocurrencies (except a few lucky ones). The entire industry is undergoing large-scale structural optimization, similar to 2019—only those who persevere will reap the most substantial rewards in the next cycle.

A New Paradigm in Investor Relations: From Stories to Standards

As the crypto industry becomes more institutionalized, a new topic has emerged: Investor Relations Management.

In traditional financial markets, CEOs of listed companies have two “products”—the business itself and its financial instruments (stocks or tokens). This means management must constantly tell the market the story of the asset, helping investors understand its value proposition. Crypto project teams now face the same challenge.

But the problem is, the standardization level in crypto is far lower than in traditional stock markets. Traditional US stocks follow unified GAAP accounting standards, but different data providers in crypto may report vastly different revenue figures. This chaos hampers rational decision-making by investors and constrains the industry’s institutionalization process.

It is expected that in 2026, there will be extensive discussions on accounting standards, although a unified standard may still take longer to establish. Meanwhile, some cutting-edge projects and trading platforms have already begun adopting Apple-like product launch events to communicate directly with users, which could become industry norms.

The Battle for Revenue Quality: Victory of Sustainability

Another key paradigm shift involves redefining “revenue.” Not all revenues are created equal.

In traditional finance, different quality revenues receive different valuation multiples. Key questions include: How sticky is the revenue? Is it repeatable? Is it overly dependent on a single customer? Does the revenue have strong cyclicality?

The crypto industry has made a classic mistake: when seeing revenue surge on charts, they annualize the peak year or overestimate the highest cyclicality revenue. The result is significant price corrections afterward.

By 2026, investors will gradually stop believing in this unreliable revenue model and focus more on sticky, high-quality revenues. Although such projects are rare in crypto, this trend is pushing the entire industry toward healthier development.

The Golden Age of DeFi

If there is one sector most worth watching in 2026, it is DeFi (Decentralized Finance).

Against the backdrop of asset tokenization, the importance of DeFi ecosystems will greatly increase. From stablecoins to lending protocols, from exchanges to derivatives platforms, all DeFi tracks will benefit from this grand narrative.

Chain Differentiation and Ecosystem Positioning

An important discovery in 2025 is: There is no truly universal chain.

People once thought Bitcoin was a universal chain, but now it is more often viewed as a blockchain focused on monetary applications. Similarly, different chains are finding their own differentiated positioning.

Ethereum is evolving into an asset issuance chain—the preferred platform for government bonds and real asset tokenization. Its L1 protocol optimizations, along with zk-EVM and other technological advances, have established clear advantages in the RWA (Real World Asset) on-chain domain. It is expected that 2026 will be Ethereum’s “revival year,” gaining market recognition in asset tokenization.

In contrast, Solana is gradually positioning itself as a “price discovery platform on-chain”—especially in decentralized trading. Although Solana performs well in the Memecoin ecosystem, it lags behind competitors in price discovery for other assets. 2026 is expected to be Solana’s “quiet year”—no hype, but continuous development.

As for specialized platforms like Hyperliquid, despite challenges from larger competitors, the competition for market share will become fierce. The final landscape of this track remains uncertain.

The Winners in the Prediction Market Are Already Decided

Prediction markets have entered a “winner-takes-all” stage. Existing mainstream players will continue to dominate, and new entrants face extremely high barriers.

Although the entire market still has growth potential (expected to grow about 2x, not 10x), market participants are largely settled. Attempts at decentralized protocols often end in failure because centralized platforms have established insurmountable moats in liquidity, user experience, and regulation.

A phenomenon worth noting is the rise of “All-in-One Apps.” More platforms aim to enable users to perform crypto trading, stock trading, prediction markets, and more within a single app. This integration trend will accelerate in 2026, transforming the entire trading ecosystem.

The Battle in Perpetual Contracts

The perpetual futures market appears explosive but is actually mired in chaos. Many platforms compete fiercely, but no clear market leader exists. The moat in this track is unclear, resulting in a highly fragmented long-term market.

Equity perpetual contracts are even more uncertain. Despite attracting much attention, actual adoption remains low. Investors need to gradually change trading habits, and this process may take much longer than expected. Therefore, it is predicted that in 2026, this track will still be in early stages, with trading volume share not exceeding 5%.

The “Crypto Winter” of Venture Capital

VC (Venture Capital) enthusiasm in crypto is cooling down. From the peak of $3 billion in 2021, investment levels have dropped to around $1.5-2 billion. This trend is expected to continue.

In traditional VC models, early-stage investments carry the highest risk. But crypto breaks this logic—because tokens can quickly gain liquidity, early investments are actually less risky. But now, the situation has changed: Token supply is abundant, and entry barriers have increased.

The shift in investment approaches is also obvious: from “altcoin arbitrage” (where DEX clones on certain chains often surge) to long-term investments in leading projects that have established clear competitive advantages. Growth equity investments are expected to increasingly flow into crypto.

Bitcoin’s Dilemma and Surpassing Gold

Bitcoin faces a delicate situation. While its position as the flagship crypto asset is unshakable, from a price trend perspective, Bitcoin is expected to underperform gold in 2026.

Reasons include: the economic environment may face stagflation pressures, in which case gold usually performs better; a reassessment of Bitcoin’s long-term risks; and an emerging concern—the threat of quantum computing.

Quantum Computing: The Imminent Black Swan

Although the real threat of quantum computing may not materialize until around 2032, discussions have already begun to heat up, which will itself impact Bitcoin’s price.

Quantum computing is not only a crypto industry issue but a societal challenge. Internet infrastructure, financial systems, national security, and more will face quantum threats. Therefore, the importance of this discussion will continue to rise.

For the crypto industry, although the actual threat is still years away, markets tend to price such risks in advance. So, it is expected that in 2026, there will be ongoing discussions about quantum threats, and solutions proposed by related companies will surface.

The End of Dual-Token Structures

The final important governance prediction: Dual-Token Equity structures are running out of time in crypto.

This structure was originally created for some form of regulatory arbitrage, but empirical evidence shows that in most cases (about 90%), this structure is unfeasible. While reforming such structures involves complex rights balancing, market and investor pressure will push more projects to take action.

It is expected that in 2026, there will be more discussions on this topic, and some projects will begin reforms. However, most projects may remain hesitant until market rebounds exert stronger reform pressures.

Summary: From Speculation to Creation

The crypto industry in 2026 will not feature the myth of overnight riches. No 100x gains, no miracle of instant wealth. Instead, it will be a more rational, mature market built on real fundamentals.

For true builders and investors, this is precisely the best era. Because investing in chaos is the hardest, while in silence, the greatest advantages can be accumulated. Those who endure this “boring period” will reap the most substantial rewards in future cycles.

This is the eternal law of markets: when most are waiting for the next hype wave, the real opportunities are quietly growing within the cold, hard fundamentals.