Tatum’s Predictions for 2026: What Builders Think Comes Next

Predicting the future of crypto is always a gamble, especially in an industry that reinvents itself every 18 months or so.

Yet inside every cycle, there are inflection points that reshape how we build, scale, and use blockchain technology.

For our 2026 outlook, we asked the Tatum team to share bold, uncompromising predictions about what comes next.

Some predictions are grounded in macro shifts already underway. Others point toward entirely new paradigms we’re only beginning to understand. But together, they paint a very real picture of how radically different crypto could look by 2026.

Here’s what our team believes is coming:

2026 Predictions

The biggest trading strategies won’t be coded by humans or executed manually anymore. AI agents will autonomously scan mempools, arbitrage across DEXs, prefix liquidity flows, generate strategies, and sign transactions on-chain without human approval. Instead of retail vs institutions, 2026 becomes AI vs AI, competing for block space, latency, and MEV opportunities. Crypto markets won’t be traded by humans - they’ll be simulated, optimized, and executed by autonomous agents in real time.

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Stablecoin adoption will accelerate so fast that USDT will flip Ethereum in market cap. With global demand for on-chain dollars exploding, from remittances to fintech settlement rails, stablecoins will become the largest source of blockchain transaction volume.

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A surge of liquidity pushes markets into a sharp, euphoric climb before a reset brings valuations back to sustainable levels. After the excess washes out, the industry enters a more stable phase marked by clearer pricing and healthier long-term growth patterns.

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Once banks settle payments, loans, and cross-border transfers directly with regulated stablecoins, they no longer need traditional crypto exchanges. Retail and fintech apps will access tokenized dollars through bank-issued wallets and APIs, not Binance-style platforms. The moment stablecoins become bank infrastructure, most exchanges become irrelevant - replaced by licensed rails, compliant liquidity pools, and custody built into banking apps.

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The institutional narrative has run its course: ETFs are here, corporate treasuries experimented, tokenization is underway. With little speculation left to extract from that story, the next cycle depends on a fresh wave of retail adoption. A new paradigm will emerge, still unclear, but forming, that will reignite broad public interest beyond Wall Street themes.

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By 2026, builders no longer commit to a single ecosystem. With execution environments converging, L2s multiplying, and app-specific chains becoming easier to deploy, portability becomes the real competitive edge. Teams design apps to move where fees, users, and blockspace conditions are best, shifting ecosystems the way startups once shifted providers.

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A new class of sub-10ms execution chains (Monad, Solana, MegaETH, and others) collapse the gap between intent and settlement. When blockspace reacts in the same time it takes a screen to refresh, execution speed stops being a backend problem and starts shaping how products feel. Trading, payments, and micro-options will be designed around the perception of instant feedback, not contract architecture. Latency becomes the new UX surface: users will choose ecosystems based on how interaction feels, not which protocol they’re built on. Chains won’t compete on TPS charts - they’ll compete on behavior they enable.

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Tokenized assets and stablecoins keep integrating deeper into financial infrastructure. They move from being speculative narratives to essential rails powering payments, settlement systems, and institutional workflows behind the scenes.

Final Thoughts

Each one of these predictions reflect what people inside this industry are really feeling right now: excitement, pressure, curiosity, and a sense that things are moving faster than anyone can fully process.

Some of us see stability finally emerging after years of noise.
Some see entire market structures flipping upside down.
Some sense a new story forming.

That’s the thing about working in crypto and blockchain: you’re always building in the dark a little. You see signals before the world does, but never the full picture. Predictions like these aren’t about being right. They’re about expressing what we’re noticing, what we hope for, and what we quietly fear might be true.

Whatever happens, there’s one constant: we’re all here because we're amazed by this technology and because it always can surprise us.
In 2026, we will keep building.

And that’s probably the safest prediction of all.