From political coups (Trump taking in Venezuela’s Maduro) and Epstien files, to eyewatering rallies in metals, agentic AIs breeding anti-human propaganda (clawdbots aggregating on moltbook to create AI language that humans cannot decipher on moltbook) and setting records in the Yen’s Interest Rate; we are halfway into the second month of 2026, and anywhere you turn, it seems as though the sky is falling.

Overdosing on the uncertainty brought on by divisive “us vs them” agendas that are amplified by dystopian AI fear mongering and hyper-interdependent global economics, social psychosis is running rampant.

2026 is a midterm year in the United States: a year when opposing political parties cause incredible uproar in an attempt to capture control, be it through the siphoning of capital or the imposition of societal unrest. This polarizing year ripples across continents, dislocating power structures.

Against this backdrop of psycho-social political chaos, we have the digital microcosm of crypto melting at its own hyperbolic pace…

Forged in the hellfire of anti-government rhetoric, the crypto industry we once knew is no more. 

The rebellious spirit of self-sovereignty and an independent internet economy, uncorrelated with the rest of the world, has been replaced by its suited big brother and turned into just another industry, or to be more accurate, a digital extension of all other industries, which it was actually intended to be in the first place.

Narratives of financial nihilism are finally shutting down, and a return to the “soul-less” financialization, where cold logic is king and the bottom line matters, is coming alive again. Once, fully crypto-native companies are crossing the corporate chasm and becoming traditionally structured corporations, case in point, Tether.

CT is going absolutely nuts watching the flames of a meme-fueled supercycle fizzle out. The first sign of a healing market.

This is not a bad thing; in fact, it is a natural progression from the grassroots wild west into the mega-corporate mainstream, the same progression that the internet experienced.

As we proceed into the acute phase of distress in the crypto-verse and an era of hyperbolic macroeconomic uncertainty, our cognitive consciousness begs the questions of “How to think” and “what to do”. 

As it stands, only TWO things are certain:

1) First and foremost, Nobody actually knows anything
2) Second, DO NOT ASK YOUR AI OVERLORDS FOR INSTRUCTIONS

At this moment in time, autonomy is becoming evermore important.

LEARN, ASSESS, and THINK FOR YOURSELF.

Sometimes, it helps to find others and bounce a few ideas around.

That is exactly what this piece is intended to do: open a conversation, stimulate some thoughts, and challenge the self-imposed emotional illusions we all encounter.

So let's take a look into the crystal crypto ball and make a few absolutely random, uneducated, educated guesses about what is/may be ahead of us.

Guessing the outcomes of specific events, and being right about them all, is the art of exponential insider knowledge; might as well throw a dart blindfolded. 

However, taking a directional bet could land us closer to the truth. The direction in which 2026 is headed can be summed up in two components: Drainings the Swap and Material Matters.

Borrowing this phrase from everybody's favorite American president, Donald Trump, draining the swamp refers to three things: 
- cleaning up the excesses
- returning to value-first thinking
- recalibration of power distribution

Cleaning up the excesses refers to the cleansing of misappropriated value. Regardless of what people think, or the Epstein files may say, Donald Trump did something that fundamentally heals society, re-enstating the obvious biological fact that there are two genders. From the Somali Day Care centers to the gender-dysphoria agenda, a lot of money has been funneled into worthless (I would argue harmful) pockets that must be clawed back and guarded against.

Returning to Value First Thinking builds on the cleansing of excesses but from a more social-first lens. Families should be focused on educating children, not empowering their sexual insecurities. Societies should be collaborating to solve problems, helping one another, not pushing each other down. Creating value should be the first priority of any sentient human being, not endless, mindless consumption. 
* No, I don't think that the administration will solve all problems, but it's nice to fantasize about a utopian, healthy world a little.

Recalibration of Power distribution is something on the borderline between political agendas and conspiracy theories. Here, we tread softly, but refer to the placement of decision-making into the hands of “reliable” parties. Who would you rather have shepherding your community: a successful businessman or a neurotic Somali daycare owner?

Please understand, this has nothing to do with political parties; it is definitely influenced heavily, but not solely determined by them.

Physical goods get their time to shine (pun intended). 

The overdrawn hyper-digitization that has taken place over the last 20/30 years put society ahead of its skis. 

Yes, AGI/ASI might be here/around the corner, and in that reality, the only thing that will separate man and machine will be the atomic world (at least before robots come online). 

2026 will likely give us a chance to appreciate the hard physical objects of value a little more: metals, jewelry, collectibles, fine art, and the simpler things in life.

And now.
It's time to throw some darts, to roll the dice with a few general predictions about specific things. The approach here is to acknowledge the direction of evolution, rather than try to pinpoint a single facet of it.

Let's roll:

While many of these touch on crypto directly, a few are more general subject matter assumptions that are not entirely confined to blockchain/web3, but that do to some degree influence the space. Regardless of what the CT prophets may try to spew, the industry is still (and only will increasingly moreso become) heavily tied to the global economy.

Somewhat hidden behind the crypto-native term RWA, this is the mega-godfather trend of all crypto trends.

Spanning long before, into, and far beyond 2026, more and more of the world will register, record, and track the ownership of valuable assets on blockchains rather than in Excel spreadsheets or private legacy databases. Larry Fink, easily one of the most influential leaders in finance (CEO of BlackRock), has been talking about the inevitability of all markets moving to tokenization since 2022.

Thus far, a minuscule fraction of the world's wealth has been brought on-chain, by some measures less than 0.1%. If it’s true (and I believe it to inevitably be so) that all objects of value will be on-chain, then this category hasn't even scratched the surface of its potential; we are talking about mind-bending numbers of 999x in growth from here. When accounting for the inflationary forces at play and the growth/arrival of data and service providers for this specific category, the future is abundant with opportunity. 

As it specifically pertains to 2026, it wouldn't be surprising to see a 4x growth take place, doubling the variety of tokenized assets and doubling the amount of existing assets that are tokenized. 

New geopolitical regimes are establishing a new world order. 

Power has always been concentrated in the hands of the upper social classes, and that will not change. What will change is the playground in which they facilitate the show. 

2026 will likely cement a new dynamic that determines where attention flows to/from, who is “endowed” with the natural resources for the provision of prosperity, and how trade will happen (in terms of physical supply chain). 

There are already inklings of this that have been popping up over the last few years; recent activity is heavily accentuated by places such as Venezuela, Greenland, and the eternally problematic Israel and Iran. 

The EU continues to tread down the path of absolute degeneracy with the outright diabolical implication of statements by individuals such as Ursula Von Der Leyen and Christine Lagarde, and the ruinous regulations being put in place, such as in the Netherlands. What was once the birthplace of capital markets has just become its antithesis and the poster child of civil-control corruption by pushing forward a 36% unrealized tax gain on crypto closer to law.

One of the more interesting ones could be Korea, where 2 of the world's top 3 largest RAM manufacturers are located; sounds like another opportunity to wreak havoc just as with the Taiwan semiconductor situation. One positive potential outcome might be a de-escalation in Ukraine, but only time will tell.

This is a two-pronged point, where logic takes precedence, and value accrual becomes the focal point for digital asset market participants. An exodus from memes and a flocking to “real value”.

The supermajority of last “cycle” was confined to memecoins. A few narrative hops between AI, DEPIN, and launchpads ultimately led down the path to memecoins.

Illustrative narratives were confabulated around community/culture money, financial nihilism, and other bombastic topics to validate why Smoking Chicken Fish (SCF) and GigaChad (GIGA) will have economic cults worth billions of dollars. 

If last year didn't make it obvious, then possibly 2026 will, that whatever CT gurus may try to vomit all over the internet, tokens that are entirely based on community by the nature of their virtue imply that the community is the product, which means there is no real economic value being created other than PVP speculation. 

Even though there were a few real long-term potential candidates born during this period of insanity, it should come as no surprise that almost all of these “projects” imploded. 
* Quick outtake, the author believes the root of the problem wasn't in the trial of these wild ideas, it was in the onslaught of supply from malicious operators

The industry has had enough.

People have been licking their wounds and re-evaluating where they should be allocating their capital. This brings them down the rabbit hole of real value tokens; the likes of those with healthy economic designs, real-working products, and more likely than not, no anonymous team or community takeovers. 

Most likely digital assets with clear-cut value dynamics expressed as healthy tokenomic designs with concrete value accrual systems (such as buybacks conducted by $HYPE and $PUMP) or extended-niche value, such as privacy and value storage.

Explosion in demand for privacy. 

Privacy is the next largest permanent zone of value after RWAs. We already got a taste of the privacy crazy at the end of 2025, and there is reason to believe the crazy will continue through 2026.

Measuring this in terms of adoption is tricky, so to evaluate this, we will assume that all metrics supporting public anonymity grow substantially and unilaterally. The activity, as well as the prices of privacy-centric crypto networks and currencies, go up. The entire sector. WAGMI in privacy.

In the privacy stack, we have 3 general buckets: private money, private computation, and privacy protocols. 

Protocols tend to have weak value accrual structures, so we will dismiss them. However, among the money and computation, the stickiness of a platform can be permanent. 

For the conversation around money, we have two main contenders, those being ZCash (ZEC) and Monero (XMR). There are also a handful of smaller contenders; however, their relative lack of magnitude leads to security leaks that long-term disqualify them. Honorable mention to (DASH). 

For the conversation about computation, there is quite a large pool of interesting platforms worth paying attention to. ZKsync (ZK), Railgun (RAIL), Zano (ZANO), Horizen (ZEN), and the new kid on the block, Zama (ZAMA). We can go on to list a handful more, but then we are just as lost as when we started. 

The important takeaway here is that over time, these will all likely consolidate around a very small select group, but that potential could be life-changing.

 Crypto was originally a retail-first product. 

The wild west nature, where there was a lack of regulation, made the space exude an aura of “by the people, for the people”. 

After years of molestation by scamming groups, the original narrative of self-sovereignty has become a conversation about ETFs, DATs, and regulations.

Now, with greater acceptance around the world by different regulatory bodies, it would be prudent to assume that MORE governments get involved and to a greater extent. 

This is a two-sided coin (pun intended). While there will likely be great progress in jurisdictions that embrace the space with favorable regulation, there will more than likely be the arrival of very bad decisions, as made extra clear by the shenanigans coming out of the Netherlands to tax UNREALIZED gains from crypto. 

Darling of the summer 2020 era, DEFI remains the foundation of crypto technology. Since its unofficial arrival in the post 2018 season, DEFI has been the silent foundation of all crypto technology. 

While greed and shady memecoin marketing may have distracted people, the ever-increasing distrust of governments from their populations and even other governments is the spark to light the DEFI fire. As the need for neutrality keeps rising, the need for DEFI instrumentation becomes all the more pronounced. 

2026 is well positioned to be the year in which decades of progress is made. 
Marked by the consolidation around good tech and the truncation of unsustainable wannabes, we will hopefully see a reduction of clone spam and a rise in quality utility, distribution, reliability, and economic design.

Already one of the major mega-trends from years past, 2026 will continue to fuel this train. 

In fact, it might intensify all the more. Success here is invisible to the naked retail eye. This game is about the dollar becoming the unit of internet accounting and settlement.

Growth metrics for stablecoins (specifically fiat-backed/pegged ones) are wholly different than metrics for cryptos/equities. 

Success here is invisible to the naked retail eye. Corporations issuing their own “branded” fiat coins and settling commercial activity/payments instantly and internationally on-chain without users ever even thinking/knowing about it is the objective.

As it pertains to 2026, the stablecoin evolution is compartmentalized into 3 parts, each of which will advance in some way:
a) New types of Stablecoins (Copper, Platinum)
b) Broader Selections (YEN, AED, etc)
c) Government-issued stablecoins (yes, pseudo-CBDCs)

ATHs inbound (Sort of). 

Value accrues vertically (price appreciation) and horizontally (unit expansion). The On-chain economy will continue to grow as more value is tokenized. Regardless of where the price of Bitcoin may go, the raw amount of different tokenized objects will eventually eclipse the entirety of the existing crypto-native economy.

As a simple way to measure this, we can use the total market cap of crypto. The last day of 2026 will be higher than where the year opened.

We won’t put an exact number or date on it; however, sometime this year, crypto will set a lower price than where it started the previous year, and then go screaming to new ATH’s. Full gas, no breaks kind of thing. Ok, maybe not straight to ATH’s, but we will find a bottom this year.

Even with the already absurd behavior in the prices of metals, there are still basic economic laws at play that can/will contribute to a never-ending exponential demand for alternative physical objects of value, and no object in this regard fares better than Metals. 

The previous rally was well-informed, well-resourced entities front-running future demand. Market price things looking forward, what they expect something to be worth tomorrow; tomorrow will eventually bring more money into circulation, more stringent regulations, and more people looking for more options.

That move has established a new higher watermark across the board; a forever higher threshold (we will never see Silver an ounce at $10 again, and Gold below $2,500)

The economic shenanigans taking place with China’s balance sheet, the inevitability of the American money printer turning on again, and the turbulences of intergovernmental competition for citizens contribute to persistent demand for assets that cannot be tracked or confiscated.

What the entire world of finance has been waiting for. 

Given that QE has long been considered consensus, everybody is trying to front-run its arrival. Therefore, in an attempt to dampen any sharp manipulative attempts that result in aggressive spirals, the method by which QE is introduced will be maximally silent (if not already in process).

Once the QE becomes obvious, we get a short window of violent movements that will lead to the final phase and meat of a directional trade.

Already heavily underway.

Clawdbot, Moltbook, and other developments are not showing any signs of slowing down.

Anthropic raising AGAIN, only this time at a $380 Billion valuation for a round G; all while certain key people are packing up and leaving.

With the constant acceleration of AI, it seems that a rebirth of agentic on-chain actors comes back into the crypto sphere. Everybody is expecting the AI bubble burst; this probably means that it still has some room to keep on chugging. 

There is a lot of pent-up demand for rare earth minerals for supply chains in batteries, robotics, electric vehicles, and data centers.

This demand results in forward-looking pricing speculation that is extremely sensitive to any disruptions.

As a mid-term year, 2026 is primed for having parties with conflicting interests superimposing constraints as part of their negotiations.

BRICS slows down, and the USD reasserts its global dominance as a unit of account, measurement, and settlement.

Russia has already begun floating rumors about potentially returning to a dollar standard for settling its international trade.

The incredible behavior we see taking place in the Japanese economy, coupled with the competitive exporting industry worldwide and the assumed agenda to MAGA, seems to be a concoction of variables highly likely to contribute to a strengthening USD. When evaluated against the upcoming need to print money, a strong dollar would give theprinter some breathing room.

Stock markets for developing countries that have been doing insane, mind-melting crypto shitcoin numbers.

Jordan, Venezuela, Israel, Laos, you name it. Over the past 2 years, stock markets around the world have performed MIRACLES.

IBVC — Venezuela’s Stock Market: +>328%
TA125 — Tel-Aviv Index: +>200%
BOVESPA — Brazilian Index: +>70%
ASE — Jordan Index: + >50%

After watching Saudi Arabia launch its international initiative by opening up its TADAWUL markets to the world, there is no doubt that this trend will continue.

The world is HYPER abundant, and opportunities are sometimes found where most people don't look. NEVER BLACKPILL. NEVER DOOM.

Capital flows have entered the manic zone for many retail ventures. Pokemon, One Piece, Hotwheels, and Sports Cards, the market has been flooded with supply; demand is spiking to the highest extremes, its time to cool off, and shake out scaplers… Soon, but not before we set a few more ATHs.

We have already seen some of these delirious markets cool off, specifically for the shoes. But the will to gamble on random things prevades society.

I do not think this is the end of this market, quite the contrary, this is a time to recalibrate and consolidate away the froth.

A new paradigm, forever embedded into the social fabric.

Everybody is now talking about prediction markets and their glorious expertise on the subject. Noise aside, the liquidity profile and informational asymmetries of these novel markets make it the PERFECT object of financial evolution. 

Even though we have already seen some absurd markets, not the least being the return of Jesus, we have seen nothing yet. Things are going to get so much weirder going forward. People are going to be betting daily on the weather, traffic, and any/everything else.

Being long prediction markets is being long the continued digital-hyper-financialization of society. LONG AND STRONG.

This one is a wildcard.

Surely all things must pump… right?
Will it happen? We can hope. 

This is a downright dangerous thing to even write. Here, there are a few silent threads being pulled that, when combined, contribute to a potential ALT SEASON. 

Capital that was diverted into gambling on worthless memecoins, poured into stocks, and gouged on TCG is always in search of the next opportunity. With morale at or near all-time lows, retail capitulations, liquidations, and positions that are an order of magnitude underwater, it could not be that crazy to see something like a 5–8x across the board (from prices within 50% lower from here). 

 a) The individuals from the crypto industry having direct relations with the cabinets (Toly advising CFTC).
 b) Inevitable attempt to front-run liquidity injections
 c) Expulsion of previous brains (Vitalik selling, Kyle Samani {sort of}, and most importantly, the brainwashed KOL trash of CT)

The tradfi Crypto-Meta of the post ETF period.

A lot of digital asset treasury companies overextended in an attempt to cashgrab during an opportune moment for them. Comp plans and flowing capital lead to a glutonous market situation. 

DAT's entry points serve as hard watermarks for incoming buyers. Having a few of these capitulating would clear out the runway for crypto prices to gain some levity.

Is this a necessity? No. This is more of a “nice-to-have”.

Great, thanks for the onslaught of information; but that doesnt actually help much… This doesn't answer the basic question of how to actually navigate this environment.

In this era of extreme uncertainty, informational overload, and fake news, the question of “what to do” becomes evermore complicated to answer...

Or perhaps, 
as always, 
It's just a matter of perspective.

There are two philosophies that succinctly capture this perspective:

The first, is timeless wisdom from every financier's uncle, Warren Buffett:

“When there is nothing to do,
Do nothing”.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is nothing. Especially extremely challangeing when uncertainty spikes, we have our primal impulses take over to do something… to take advantage or to secure ourselves.

Relax. 
The world you were born into is infinitely abundant.
There will always be opportunity.
Direction is more important than speed.

The second, is from one of my personal favorite glow-up stories of the modern day, Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong:

“ Do something; take action. 
Even if its wrong, it will produce information” 

Discovery leads to accelerations in course correction, helping you finally find what to actually do.

The prescription for thriving in 2026 is the same as it was, is, and always will be for ANY and EVERY year;
1) Be optimistic about a brighter future.
2) ABB — Always Be Building.

Who knows what will happen tomorrow? 
It may never come.

So hakkunah mata,
let's build great great things🥂

See you on the other side anon,
Live long & Prosper 💎

From political coups (Trump taking in Venezuela’s Maduro) and Epstien files, to eyewatering rallies in metals, agentic AIs breeding anti-human propaganda (clawdbots aggregating on moltbook to create AI language that humans cannot decipher on moltbook) and setting records in the Yen’s Interest Rate; we are halfway into the second month of 2026, and anywhere you turn, it seems as though the sky is falling.

Overdosing on the uncertainty brought on by divisive “us vs them” agendas that are amplified by dystopian AI fear mongering and hyper-interdependent global economics, social psychosis is running rampant.

2026 is a midterm year in the United States: a year when opposing political parties cause incredible uproar in an attempt to capture control, be it through the siphoning of capital or the imposition of societal unrest. This polarizing year ripples across continents, dislocating power structures.

Against this backdrop of psycho-social political chaos, we have the digital microcosm of crypto melting at its own hyperbolic pace…

Forged in the hellfire of anti-government rhetoric, the crypto industry we once knew is no more. 

The rebellious spirit of self-sovereignty and an independent internet economy, uncorrelated with the rest of the world, has been replaced by its suited big brother and turned into just another industry, or to be more accurate, a digital extension of all other industries, which it was actually intended to be in the first place.

Narratives of financial nihilism are finally shutting down, and a return to the “soul-less” financialization, where cold logic is king and the bottom line matters, is coming alive again. Once, fully crypto-native companies are crossing the corporate chasm and becoming traditionally structured corporations, case in point, Tether.

CT is going absolutely nuts watching the flames of a meme-fueled supercycle fizzle out. The first sign of a healing market.

This is not a bad thing; in fact, it is a natural progression from the grassroots wild west into the mega-corporate mainstream, the same progression that the internet experienced.

As we proceed into the acute phase of distress in the crypto-verse and an era of hyperbolic macroeconomic uncertainty, our cognitive consciousness begs the questions of “How to think” and “what to do”. 

As it stands, only TWO things are certain:

1) First and foremost, Nobody actually knows anything
2) Second, DO NOT ASK YOUR AI OVERLORDS FOR INSTRUCTIONS

At this moment in time, autonomy is becoming evermore important.

LEARN, ASSESS, and THINK FOR YOURSELF.

Sometimes, it helps to find others and bounce a few ideas around.

That is exactly what this piece is intended to do: open a conversation, stimulate some thoughts, and challenge the self-imposed emotional illusions we all encounter.

So let's take a look into the crystal crypto ball and make a few absolutely random, uneducated, educated guesses about what is/may be ahead of us.

Guessing the outcomes of specific events, and being right about them all, is the art of exponential insider knowledge; might as well throw a dart blindfolded. 

However, taking a directional bet could land us closer to the truth. The direction in which 2026 is headed can be summed up in two components: Drainings the Swap and Material Matters.

Borrowing this phrase from everybody's favorite American president, Donald Trump, draining the swamp refers to three things: 
- cleaning up the excesses
- returning to value-first thinking
- recalibration of power distribution

Cleaning up the excesses refers to the cleansing of misappropriated value. Regardless of what people think, or the Epstein files may say, Donald Trump did something that fundamentally heals society, re-enstating the obvious biological fact that there are two genders. From the Somali Day Care centers to the gender-dysphoria agenda, a lot of money has been funneled into worthless (I would argue harmful) pockets that must be clawed back and guarded against.

Returning to Value First Thinking builds on the cleansing of excesses but from a more social-first lens. Families should be focused on educating children, not empowering their sexual insecurities. Societies should be collaborating to solve problems, helping one another, not pushing each other down. Creating value should be the first priority of any sentient human being, not endless, mindless consumption. 
* No, I don't think that the administration will solve all problems, but it's nice to fantasize about a utopian, healthy world a little.

Recalibration of Power distribution is something on the borderline between political agendas and conspiracy theories. Here, we tread softly, but refer to the placement of decision-making into the hands of “reliable” parties. Who would you rather have shepherding your community: a successful businessman or a neurotic Somali daycare owner?

Please understand, this has nothing to do with political parties; it is definitely influenced heavily, but not solely determined by them.

Physical goods get their time to shine (pun intended). 

The overdrawn hyper-digitization that has taken place over the last 20/30 years put society ahead of its skis. 

Yes, AGI/ASI might be here/around the corner, and in that reality, the only thing that will separate man and machine will be the atomic world (at least before robots come online). 

2026 will likely give us a chance to appreciate the hard physical objects of value a little more: metals, jewelry, collectibles, fine art, and the simpler things in life.

And now.
It's time to throw some darts, to roll the dice with a few general predictions about specific things. The approach here is to acknowledge the direction of evolution, rather than try to pinpoint a single facet of it.

Let's roll:

While many of these touch on crypto directly, a few are more general subject matter assumptions that are not entirely confined to blockchain/web3, but that do to some degree influence the space. Regardless of what the CT prophets may try to spew, the industry is still (and only will increasingly moreso become) heavily tied to the global economy.

Somewhat hidden behind the crypto-native term RWA, this is the mega-godfather trend of all crypto trends.

Spanning long before, into, and far beyond 2026, more and more of the world will register, record, and track the ownership of valuable assets on blockchains rather than in Excel spreadsheets or private legacy databases. Larry Fink, easily one of the most influential leaders in finance (CEO of BlackRock), has been talking about the inevitability of all markets moving to tokenization since 2022.

Thus far, a minuscule fraction of the world's wealth has been brought on-chain, by some measures less than 0.1%. If it’s true (and I believe it to inevitably be so) that all objects of value will be on-chain, then this category hasn't even scratched the surface of its potential; we are talking about mind-bending numbers of 999x in growth from here. When accounting for the inflationary forces at play and the growth/arrival of data and service providers for this specific category, the future is abundant with opportunity. 

As it specifically pertains to 2026, it wouldn't be surprising to see a 4x growth take place, doubling the variety of tokenized assets and doubling the amount of existing assets that are tokenized. 

New geopolitical regimes are establishing a new world order. 

Power has always been concentrated in the hands of the upper social classes, and that will not change. What will change is the playground in which they facilitate the show. 

2026 will likely cement a new dynamic that determines where attention flows to/from, who is “endowed” with the natural resources for the provision of prosperity, and how trade will happen (in terms of physical supply chain). 

There are already inklings of this that have been popping up over the last few years; recent activity is heavily accentuated by places such as Venezuela, Greenland, and the eternally problematic Israel and Iran. 

The EU continues to tread down the path of absolute degeneracy with the outright diabolical implication of statements by individuals such as Ursula Von Der Leyen and Christine Lagarde, and the ruinous regulations being put in place, such as in the Netherlands. What was once the birthplace of capital markets has just become its antithesis and the poster child of civil-control corruption by pushing forward a 36% unrealized tax gain on crypto closer to law.

One of the more interesting ones could be Korea, where 2 of the world's top 3 largest RAM manufacturers are located; sounds like another opportunity to wreak havoc just as with the Taiwan semiconductor situation. One positive potential outcome might be a de-escalation in Ukraine, but only time will tell.

This is a two-pronged point, where logic takes precedence, and value accrual becomes the focal point for digital asset market participants. An exodus from memes and a flocking to “real value”.

The supermajority of last “cycle” was confined to memecoins. A few narrative hops between AI, DEPIN, and launchpads ultimately led down the path to memecoins.

Illustrative narratives were confabulated around community/culture money, financial nihilism, and other bombastic topics to validate why Smoking Chicken Fish (SCF) and GigaChad (GIGA) will have economic cults worth billions of dollars. 

If last year didn't make it obvious, then possibly 2026 will, that whatever CT gurus may try to vomit all over the internet, tokens that are entirely based on community by the nature of their virtue imply that the community is the product, which means there is no real economic value being created other than PVP speculation. 

Even though there were a few real long-term potential candidates born during this period of insanity, it should come as no surprise that almost all of these “projects” imploded. 
* Quick outtake, the author believes the root of the problem wasn't in the trial of these wild ideas, it was in the onslaught of supply from malicious operators

The industry has had enough.

People have been licking their wounds and re-evaluating where they should be allocating their capital. This brings them down the rabbit hole of real value tokens; the likes of those with healthy economic designs, real-working products, and more likely than not, no anonymous team or community takeovers. 

Most likely digital assets with clear-cut value dynamics expressed as healthy tokenomic designs with concrete value accrual systems (such as buybacks conducted by $HYPE and $PUMP) or extended-niche value, such as privacy and value storage.

Explosion in demand for privacy. 

Privacy is the next largest permanent zone of value after RWAs. We already got a taste of the privacy crazy at the end of 2025, and there is reason to believe the crazy will continue through 2026.

Measuring this in terms of adoption is tricky, so to evaluate this, we will assume that all metrics supporting public anonymity grow substantially and unilaterally. The activity, as well as the prices of privacy-centric crypto networks and currencies, go up. The entire sector. WAGMI in privacy.

In the privacy stack, we have 3 general buckets: private money, private computation, and privacy protocols. 

Protocols tend to have weak value accrual structures, so we will dismiss them. However, among the money and computation, the stickiness of a platform can be permanent. 

For the conversation around money, we have two main contenders, those being ZCash (ZEC) and Monero (XMR). There are also a handful of smaller contenders; however, their relative lack of magnitude leads to security leaks that long-term disqualify them. Honorable mention to (DASH). 

For the conversation about computation, there is quite a large pool of interesting platforms worth paying attention to. ZKsync (ZK), Railgun (RAIL), Zano (ZANO), Horizen (ZEN), and the new kid on the block, Zama (ZAMA). We can go on to list a handful more, but then we are just as lost as when we started. 

The important takeaway here is that over time, these will all likely consolidate around a very small select group, but that potential could be life-changing.

 Crypto was originally a retail-first product. 

The wild west nature, where there was a lack of regulation, made the space exude an aura of “by the people, for the people”. 

After years of molestation by scamming groups, the original narrative of self-sovereignty has become a conversation about ETFs, DATs, and regulations.

Now, with greater acceptance around the world by different regulatory bodies, it would be prudent to assume that MORE governments get involved and to a greater extent. 

This is a two-sided coin (pun intended). While there will likely be great progress in jurisdictions that embrace the space with favorable regulation, there will more than likely be the arrival of very bad decisions, as made extra clear by the shenanigans coming out of the Netherlands to tax UNREALIZED gains from crypto. 

Darling of the summer 2020 era, DEFI remains the foundation of crypto technology. Since its unofficial arrival in the post 2018 season, DEFI has been the silent foundation of all crypto technology. 

While greed and shady memecoin marketing may have distracted people, the ever-increasing distrust of governments from their populations and even other governments is the spark to light the DEFI fire. As the need for neutrality keeps rising, the need for DEFI instrumentation becomes all the more pronounced. 

2026 is well positioned to be the year in which decades of progress is made. 
Marked by the consolidation around good tech and the truncation of unsustainable wannabes, we will hopefully see a reduction of clone spam and a rise in quality utility, distribution, reliability, and economic design.

Already one of the major mega-trends from years past, 2026 will continue to fuel this train. 

In fact, it might intensify all the more. Success here is invisible to the naked retail eye. This game is about the dollar becoming the unit of internet accounting and settlement.

Growth metrics for stablecoins (specifically fiat-backed/pegged ones) are wholly different than metrics for cryptos/equities. 

Success here is invisible to the naked retail eye. Corporations issuing their own “branded” fiat coins and settling commercial activity/payments instantly and internationally on-chain without users ever even thinking/knowing about it is the objective.

As it pertains to 2026, the stablecoin evolution is compartmentalized into 3 parts, each of which will advance in some way:
a) New types of Stablecoins (Copper, Platinum)
b) Broader Selections (YEN, AED, etc)
c) Government-issued stablecoins (yes, pseudo-CBDCs)

ATHs inbound (Sort of). 

Value accrues vertically (price appreciation) and horizontally (unit expansion). The On-chain economy will continue to grow as more value is tokenized. Regardless of where the price of Bitcoin may go, the raw amount of different tokenized objects will eventually eclipse the entirety of the existing crypto-native economy.

As a simple way to measure this, we can use the total market cap of crypto. The last day of 2026 will be higher than where the year opened.

We won’t put an exact number or date on it; however, sometime this year, crypto will set a lower price than where it started the previous year, and then go screaming to new ATH’s. Full gas, no breaks kind of thing. Ok, maybe not straight to ATH’s, but we will find a bottom this year.

Even with the already absurd behavior in the prices of metals, there are still basic economic laws at play that can/will contribute to a never-ending exponential demand for alternative physical objects of value, and no object in this regard fares better than Metals. 

The previous rally was well-informed, well-resourced entities front-running future demand. Market price things looking forward, what they expect something to be worth tomorrow; tomorrow will eventually bring more money into circulation, more stringent regulations, and more people looking for more options.

That move has established a new higher watermark across the board; a forever higher threshold (we will never see Silver an ounce at $10 again, and Gold below $2,500)

The economic shenanigans taking place with China’s balance sheet, the inevitability of the American money printer turning on again, and the turbulences of intergovernmental competition for citizens contribute to persistent demand for assets that cannot be tracked or confiscated.

What the entire world of finance has been waiting for. 

Given that QE has long been considered consensus, everybody is trying to front-run its arrival. Therefore, in an attempt to dampen any sharp manipulative attempts that result in aggressive spirals, the method by which QE is introduced will be maximally silent (if not already in process).

Once the QE becomes obvious, we get a short window of violent movements that will lead to the final phase and meat of a directional trade.

Already heavily underway.

Clawdbot, Moltbook, and other developments are not showing any signs of slowing down.

Anthropic raising AGAIN, only this time at a $380 Billion valuation for a round G; all while certain key people are packing up and leaving.

With the constant acceleration of AI, it seems that a rebirth of agentic on-chain actors comes back into the crypto sphere. Everybody is expecting the AI bubble burst; this probably means that it still has some room to keep on chugging. 

There is a lot of pent-up demand for rare earth minerals for supply chains in batteries, robotics, electric vehicles, and data centers.

This demand results in forward-looking pricing speculation that is extremely sensitive to any disruptions.

As a mid-term year, 2026 is primed for having parties with conflicting interests superimposing constraints as part of their negotiations.

BRICS slows down, and the USD reasserts its global dominance as a unit of account, measurement, and settlement.

Russia has already begun floating rumors about potentially returning to a dollar standard for settling its international trade.

The incredible behavior we see taking place in the Japanese economy, coupled with the competitive exporting industry worldwide and the assumed agenda to MAGA, seems to be a concoction of variables highly likely to contribute to a strengthening USD. When evaluated against the upcoming need to print money, a strong dollar would give theprinter some breathing room.

Stock markets for developing countries that have been doing insane, mind-melting crypto shitcoin numbers.

Jordan, Venezuela, Israel, Laos, you name it. Over the past 2 years, stock markets around the world have performed MIRACLES.

IBVC — Venezuela’s Stock Market: +>328%
TA125 — Tel-Aviv Index: +>200%
BOVESPA — Brazilian Index: +>70%
ASE — Jordan Index: + >50%

After watching Saudi Arabia launch its international initiative by opening up its TADAWUL markets to the world, there is no doubt that this trend will continue.

The world is HYPER abundant, and opportunities are sometimes found where most people don't look. NEVER BLACKPILL. NEVER DOOM.

Capital flows have entered the manic zone for many retail ventures. Pokemon, One Piece, Hotwheels, and Sports Cards, the market has been flooded with supply; demand is spiking to the highest extremes, its time to cool off, and shake out scaplers… Soon, but not before we set a few more ATHs.

We have already seen some of these delirious markets cool off, specifically for the shoes. But the will to gamble on random things prevades society.

I do not think this is the end of this market, quite the contrary, this is a time to recalibrate and consolidate away the froth.

A new paradigm, forever embedded into the social fabric.

Everybody is now talking about prediction markets and their glorious expertise on the subject. Noise aside, the liquidity profile and informational asymmetries of these novel markets make it the PERFECT object of financial evolution. 

Even though we have already seen some absurd markets, not the least being the return of Jesus, we have seen nothing yet. Things are going to get so much weirder going forward. People are going to be betting daily on the weather, traffic, and any/everything else.

Being long prediction markets is being long the continued digital-hyper-financialization of society. LONG AND STRONG.

This one is a wildcard.

Surely all things must pump… right?
Will it happen? We can hope. 

This is a downright dangerous thing to even write. Here, there are a few silent threads being pulled that, when combined, contribute to a potential ALT SEASON. 

Capital that was diverted into gambling on worthless memecoins, poured into stocks, and gouged on TCG is always in search of the next opportunity. With morale at or near all-time lows, retail capitulations, liquidations, and positions that are an order of magnitude underwater, it could not be that crazy to see something like a 5–8x across the board (from prices within 50% lower from here). 

 a) The individuals from the crypto industry having direct relations with the cabinets (Toly advising CFTC).
 b) Inevitable attempt to front-run liquidity injections
 c) Expulsion of previous brains (Vitalik selling, Kyle Samani {sort of}, and most importantly, the brainwashed KOL trash of CT)

The tradfi Crypto-Meta of the post ETF period.

A lot of digital asset treasury companies overextended in an attempt to cashgrab during an opportune moment for them. Comp plans and flowing capital lead to a glutonous market situation. 

DAT's entry points serve as hard watermarks for incoming buyers. Having a few of these capitulating would clear out the runway for crypto prices to gain some levity.

Is this a necessity? No. This is more of a “nice-to-have”.

Great, thanks for the onslaught of information; but that doesnt actually help much… This doesn't answer the basic question of how to actually navigate this environment.

In this era of extreme uncertainty, informational overload, and fake news, the question of “what to do” becomes evermore complicated to answer...

Or perhaps, 
as always, 
It's just a matter of perspective.

There are two philosophies that succinctly capture this perspective:

The first, is timeless wisdom from every financier's uncle, Warren Buffett:

“When there is nothing to do,
Do nothing”.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is nothing. Especially extremely challangeing when uncertainty spikes, we have our primal impulses take over to do something… to take advantage or to secure ourselves.

Relax. 
The world you were born into is infinitely abundant.
There will always be opportunity.
Direction is more important than speed.

The second, is from one of my personal favorite glow-up stories of the modern day, Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong:

“ Do something; take action. 
Even if its wrong, it will produce information” 

Discovery leads to accelerations in course correction, helping you finally find what to actually do.

The prescription for thriving in 2026 is the same as it was, is, and always will be for ANY and EVERY year;
1) Be optimistic about a brighter future.
2) ABB — Always Be Building.

Who knows what will happen tomorrow? 
It may never come.

So hakkunah mata,
let's build great great things🥂

See you on the other side anon,
Live long & Prosper 💎