Author: Paul Veradittakit
Compiled by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News
2026 will be a pivotal year. We will witness the complete transformation of "crypto as an industry" into "crypto as a service".
The past decade in the crypto world has been filled with various gimmicks. The approval of the Bitcoin ETF in 2024 gained it recognition from mainstream finance. In 2025, everyone focused on building out the underlying infrastructure. By 2026, the real value will belong to those companies that leverage blockchain to solve long-standing problems in traditional industries while making users to be completely unaware of the blockchain's presence.
The future crypto unicorns will not be built on hype. They will be the kind of companies that use blockchain technology to improve product efficiency by an order of magnitude, thereby leveraging trillion-dollar markets, and completely hiding the complex technology.
Crypto Technology Won the 'Weekend'
When the Iran conflict broke out, the U.S. stock market was closed for the weekend and couldn't react to the sudden global risk. But the crypto market didn't stop; Bitcoin once rose to $74,000. Commodities completed price discovery first on the decentralized prediction market Hyperliquid, even before the traditional market opened. This is not an isolated incident—the same thing happened last month when China introduced new policies.
Traditional hedge funds are increasingly flooding into this space. The crypto market's "24/7 non-stop" operation is no longer just a slogan, but a structural advantage that traditional finance cannot match.
Nevertheless, the current valuation of the crypto market is still far below the level it should be based on its fundamentals. There's no doubt we are in another bear market (this is the fourth one I've experienced), but this time it's completely different: regulations are gradually becoming clearer, institutional funds have entered the market, and the infrastructure is increasingly mature.
This feeling was particularly strong at the recent Hong Kong Consensus conference. The vitality of the Asian market contrasted sharply with the West. There, support from bipartisan governments, newly entered institutional funds, and a focus on consumer-facing applications are all driving strong bullish sentiment.
What to watch in Asia in 2026:
- Cross-border payments via stablecoins, especially in the B2B sector. For Asia's relatively fragmented economic systems, crypto payments are a natural choice.
- Tokenization of gold, stocks, and real estate. Asian banks and fintech companies are catching up with the pace set in the U.S.
- Perpetual contract trading on DeFi. Driven by retail investors, development speed may surpass that of the West.
- Prediction markets are expected to become an important track, although their form may differ from that in the West.
Core Trend: 'Crypto as a Service'
The core theme for 2026 is the shift from "crypto as an industry" to "crypto as a service". The goal is no longer to make users see the blockchain, but to make them completely forget its existence.
For over a decade, we have been keen on building "crypto spectacles"—Gas fee wars, TPS competitions, modular stacks, ZK proofs. The 2024 ETF was a vote of approval from mainstream institutions. In 2025, we laid all the underlying infrastructure. In 2026, it's time to turn around.
Farewell to the 'Casino' Era
The new generation of unicorns will not be those "L3 networks built for AI-NFTs". They will be the companies that use blockchain to improve product efficiency tenfold, completely hide the technology, and thereby leverage trillion-dollar markets.
This exactly explains our recent investment logic:
Novig: Farewell to the 'Vig' Era ($75 Million Series B)
Traditional sports betting is a monopolistic,畸形 (distorted/j畸形的 - likely meant 'distorted' or 'dysfunctional') market. Bookies take high commissions from every bet, resulting in a miserable user win rate of only 2%. We led Novig's $75 million round because they treat sports betting as a high-frequency financial product. Through a peer-to-peer trading model, Novig users achieve an average win rate of 23%. Most users don't care at all whether a decentralized order book is used in the backend; they just know they get the best odds in the US here. This is a vivid case of "crypto as a service".
Based: Consumer-Grade Super App ($11.5 Million Series A)
We recently led the Series A funding for Based. This is a composable Web3 consumer-grade super app built on the Hyperliquid ecosystem. "Consumer-grade crypto" was often equated with "clunky experience". Based is changing that; it makes the on-chain interaction experience as smooth and seamless as a top-tier fintech app. Complex operations like cross-chain bridging and Gas fees are abstracted away; users are completely unaware. They only need to focus on the social and financial value brought by the assets.
Doppler: The Default Asset Issuance Infrastructure ($9 Million Seed Round)
If Based and Novig are cool new cars, then Doppler is the high-performance fuel system. We led Doppler's $9 million seed round, aiming for it to become the default infrastructure for on-chain asset issuance. It allows developers to issue assets with institutional-grade security and compliance standards without having to build all the underlying technology from scratch. Doppler is like the Stripe for on-chain assets—pure utility, all encapsulated behind a simple API.
Why 'Invisibility' is More Important Than 'Virality'
This trend of "invisibilization" also runs through our entire investment portfolio:
- Real World Assets (RWA): Tokenized treasury bonds are no longer an experiment in the crypto world; they are becoming the backend liquidity cornerstone for global trade.
- AI Agents: Blockchain provides a trusted "truth layer" for AI agents through prediction markets and verifiable data, enabling them to autonomously and trustworthily interact with digital assets.
- Agent payments will accelerate all this. Payment standards like x402 allow AI agents to directly complete transactions using crypto assets. The gradual clarification of stablecoin regulations is making this payment轨道 (track/rail - likely meant 'rail') smoother.
Advice for Entrepreneurs
If you are planning to start a business in 2026, my advice is simple: Stop talking so much about the technology, and talk more about what practical problems you can solve. If the slide in your funding presentation about the consensus mechanism comes before the one about customer return rates, it means your thinking is still stuck in 2022.
We are looking for teams that are building the next Novig, Based, or Doppler—those who truly understand what "mass adoption" means: when a technology becomes so seamless that people completely ignore its existence, it has truly entered millions of households.
