2026 Crypto Market Outlook: what to expect?

A year can feel like a lifetime in crypto.

This time last year, Bitcoin had just smashed through the long-awaited $100K mark. There was euphoria, victory laps and the sense that the next decade of digital finance had finally begun.

Fast-forward to today: Bitcoin is back below $100K. The mood has flipped. Joy has given way to anxiety, reluctance and a nagging question lingering across trading desks and Telegram chats: What on earth happened?

To answer that, we need to break down the forces that shaped 2025 and the setup heading into 2026. The story is not just about prices — it’s about market structure, macro shocks, broken trust, technological promises that stalled and the kinds of use cases that are finally gaining traction.

Let’s take it quarter by quarter.

Q1 – A Terrible Start

The year opened with the exact opposite of the previous one.

Where Q1 of last year brought optimism, inflows and aggressive risk-taking, Q1 of this year collapsed under its own weight.

Three forces dominated:

• Memecoin mania backfired.
  The wave of new meme coins - Trump and Melania coins - eroded trust among classic retail investors. The casino effect scared off the “normies.”
• Macro shocks piled up.
  US tariffs and intensifying geopolitical tensions — particularly the Israel conflict — injected macro uncertainty into all risk assets.
• Liquidity thinned.
  With global risk appetite fading, crypto looked fragile again.

Q2 – Corporates Step In

Q2 brought relief — not from ETFs this time, but from Treasury-savvy companies stepping in with cash piles.

Large corporates started exploring:

• stablecoins for settlement,
• tokenization pilots, and
• treasury management tools built on-chain.

This wasn’t the flashy ETF narrative of 2024, but it was practical, scalable and sticky — exactly the kind of capital crypto has often lacked.

Q3 – Leverage Returns

By Q3, perpetual futures and leverage took center stage.
Volumes surged, open interest exploded and traders piled into high-beta exposure.

This leverage created the setup for what came next: Bitcoin hit a fresh ATH of $126K.

Q4 – Chaos Hits

Then came 10 October — the day everything cracked.

A crypto-specific shock hit the entire industry:
Binance experienced a mispricing issue that triggered a cascade of liquidations. Billions evaporated. Confidence collapsed. And with it, the market’s fragile recovery.

What’s remarkable is what followed:

After October 10, Bitcoin began falling sharply  — down to $80K on November 21st -roughly two weeks before the Nasdaq rolled over.

Forced liquidations — estimated around $1 billion in leveraged BTC positions by late November — didn’t just crush crypto. They may have bled into tech sentiment as well.

1. Stablecoins: Massive Adoption, Minimal Returns

According to Swissquote’s Carlos Doncel, stablecoins remain the strongest real-world crypto use case. They continue to grow at breakneck speed, with thousands of companies and millions of individuals relying on them daily.

But here’s the issue:

• Users move billions through stablecoins, but they earn nothing
• Meanwhile, issuers enjoy T-bill yields above 5%

Net new money isn’t rewarded.
Stablecoin usage is booming, but the value capture is asymmetrical.

2. Prediction Markets: No Token, No Gain

Prediction markets, despite rising adoption, still don’t have native tokens that actually capture the value being created on the platforms. They’re growing in usage — millions of predictions placed, better accuracy models and strong traction among the crypto-savvy — but the economics do not trickle down to token holders because, in many cases, there is no token to hold.

It’s a strange paradox: prediction markets are one of the clearest, most functional crypto use cases, yet the value they generate is almost entirely non-financial.
Users benefit from better odds, faster settlement, censorship resistance and global access. But for investors hoping to gain exposure to the sector, there’s nothing that resembles traditional value capture:

• no revenue-sharing token,
• no governance token tied to platform fees,
• no staking or yield component,
• and no equity-like instrument that reflects growth.

So while the user metrics keep climbing, investors are stuck watching from the sidelines.
The activity is there, the liquidity is there, the demand is there — but the investable asset is not. This creates a gap in the market: prediction markets may be finally working at scale, but until there’s a viable token model, they remain great for users and terrible for investors looking for exposure or upside.

3. AI Agents on Crypto – A Slow Reality Check

Feyyaz Alingan, the host of Swissquote’s Crypto Market Talk, adds that last year, excitement was high around the idea that AI agents would transact, automate and operate entirely on-chain.

But this December, he notes the obvious:
The implementation has been slow.
AI is booming, but the crypto-AI convergence is still theoretical, not operational.

Amazing? Yes.
But not yet.

Doncel highlights that Bitcoin remains correlated to risky assets — a far cry from the “digital gold” dream.

But the counterargument is strong:

Bitcoin has actually been more stable than gold at several moments this year.

The irony?
Gold experienced a surprising wave of volatility due to a global gold-rush narrative earlier this year.

BTC isn’t digital gold yet — but gold isn’t exactly being gold either.

Back to use cases, AI may wait — but stablecoins are not waiting for anyone.

This year, JPMorgan launched its own coin, offering:

• 24/7 settlement
• faster cross-border transactions
• lower operational costs

This is more than a proof of concept: it’s the beginning of traditional finance merging with crypto rails.

Scale and adoption comes with regulation. Happily, Donald Trump makes the regulation matter easier for the crypto world. Hence, we’re moving toward a pro-crypto regulatory stance, with concepts like:

• strategic Bitcoin reserves,
• favourable treatment for Bitcoin miners,
• and stablecoin issuers integrating with Treasury markets.

This institutional momentum supports Bitcoin indirectly, even if the use case isn’t fully defined.

Here’s a number that surprised even seasoned analysts this year:

• Tether holds more than $100 billion in U.S. Treasuries
• Circle holds tens of billions

And with T-bill yields above 5%, the math is simple:

• Issuers earn billions in risk-free yield
• Users earn zero

This imbalance is becoming a hot topic.
Is there a way to let users benefit?

(Keep reading!)

AVE proposes a structure where the underlying yield from T-bills or short-term instruments is no longer captured exclusively by the issuer. Instead, part of the yield flows back to users, in a model that looks and feels like a crypto-native savings account — but without the centralized intermediaries or opaque balance sheets that caused trouble in earlier "CeFi yield" experiments.

If it succeeds, AVE could become the money-market fund of crypto, a kind of high-velocity, on-chain equivalent of the ultra-boring but ultra-important products that power trillions in traditional finance. The idea is simple:

• Stablecoins already behave like digital dollars.
• Those digital dollars already sit in interest-bearing instruments.
• So why not let the holders benefit?

The demand for this is obvious and mounting. In a world where users are increasingly yield-aware and regulators are pushing for transparency, an AVE-style structure feels like the natural next step. It offers something DeFi has struggled with since its inception: sustainable yield, backed not by leverage loops or incentives, but by real-world returns.

Whether AVE becomes the standard remains to be seen. Much depends on regulatory alignment, issuer cooperation and the market’s appetite for a more democratized yield model. But one thing is unmistakable: the era when stablecoin issuers kept all the yield is coming to an end, and AVE is the first credible blueprint for what replaces it.

Carlos makes this very clear:

Bitcoin is an asset on its own. Then, there are other cryptocurrencies.

Feyyaz however outlines the landscape:

• Ethereum remains essential for stablecoins, DeFi and financial primitives.
• Solana is increasingly dominant for prediction markets and high-throughput use cases.

But do either replace Bitcoin?
Not yet.

Bitcoin’s narrative — digital reserve asset, censorship-resistant store of value — still stands alone.

Here are the themes to keep an eye on.

1. AVE and Yield-Sharing Models

Will stablecoin issuers finally share yield with users?
If AVE or similar models gain traction, it could change how stablecoins are used — and who benefits.

2. Return to Basics

A shift back toward:

• Bitcoin as reserve infrastructure
• Ethereum as the financial layer
• Solana as the execution layer

The speculative excess of memecoins may give way to utility.

3. Zcash?

With privacy debates heating up and CBDCs moving forward, assets like Zcash could see renewed attention.
Privacy is back on the agenda — and regulators are grappling with how to handle it.

4. Corporate and Bank Stablecoins

More banks will follow JPMorgan.
Corporate coins may become the settlement rails of global finance.

Other big names dealing with large capital flows (Amazon) are tempted to find cheaper and more efficient alternatives to Mastercard, Visa transactions.

5. AI/crypto convergence — eventually

AI agents aren’t here yet.
But the moment a real, functioning agent begins executing on-chain tasks, the shift will be seismic.

Watch our Market Outlook 2026 here!

DISCLAIMER: The content in this article is provided for educational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice, financial recommendations or promotional material.