Author: imToken
To be realistic, for the past few years, most narratives in the crypto industry can be boiled down to a nearly obsessive question:
"What is the next asset that will go up?"
Starting from the DeFi Summer, NFTs, public chains/L2s, restaking, memes, and even AI tokens have taken turns on stage. While the technical logic and market context of different narratives vary, they all ultimately circle back to price performance. Even though stablecoins, wallets, and cross-chain bridges have clear utility attributes, market attention often remains confined to how much trading and speculative activity they can support.
But entering 2026, a batch of changes distributed across different sectors began to appear densely within the same time window:
- The total market cap of stablecoins reached approximately $300 billion, entering a high plateau of penetrating global payment networks;
- DTCC completed the first production-environment tokenized asset conversions and plans to officially launch related services in October;
- Prediction markets are moving from crypto-native products into brokerages and regulated exchanges;
- AI Agents are beginning to autonomously purchase data, model calls, and digital services using stablecoins;
These changes appear unrelated on the surface, but placing them together reveals a more complete thread: the issuance, custody, trading, payment, and settlement capabilities accumulated by the crypto industry over the past decade are gradually opening up from serving crypto assets themselves to broader financial activities and the machine economy.
In other words, Crypto has not shed speculation, but it is growing an increasingly complete layer of infrastructure beneath the speculative market.
I. Why Are These Breakthroughs Happening Almost Simultaneously?
Objectively speaking, RWA, stablecoins, prediction markets, and AI Agents did not suddenly gain attention in the same phase due to a single hot narrative.
The real reason is that different components needed for a new financial infrastructure, after years of independent development, are finally beginning to connect with each other.
1. Stablecoins Turn Money into a Callable Interface
First are stablecoins. They are far from new, but the role they play is changing.
As is well known, early stablecoins mainly performed tasks like exchange pricing, on-chain hedging, and crypto asset transaction settlement, with the vast majority of funds still circulating within Crypto. Today, more and more issuers, banks, payment institutions, and fintech companies are starting to use stablecoins for merchant payments, global payroll, corporate disbursements, fund concentration, and cross-border settlement.
According to data disclosed by Circle in Q1 2026, the annualized transaction volume calculated based on the network's nearly 30-day trading at that time reached approximately $8.3 billion, and its partner Nium's payment network covered over 190 countries and regions. This means stablecoins here are no longer just "on-chain dollars," but a form of currency that can be directly invoked by software.
They can be transferred around the clock, embedded in programs, automatically released based on conditions, and can directly become the settlement asset after a transaction is completed. For internet applications, sending a stablecoin is increasingly like calling a payment API; there's no need to understand correspondent banks, clearing times, or cross-border account systems—just confirm the amount, address, and execution conditions.
This is the key change turning stablecoins from a Crypto trading tool into payment infrastructure.
2. RWA Turns Assets into Programmable Objects
If stablecoins solve "what money to settle with," RWA solves "what assets can be traded and settled."
Past RWA products mostly concentrated in areas like U.S. Treasuries, money market funds, and private credit, with their core value primarily letting Crypto users earn off-chain asset yields. But starting last year, TradFi infrastructure has visibly taken the initiative to bring securities registration, custody, trading, and settlement processes on-chain.
On July 15, DTCC completed a production-environment test for tokenized asset transactions, with participation from over 30 traditional financial institutions and digital asset companies, and plans to officially launch related services in October. Unlike simple asset mapping, DTCC plans for tokenized securities to retain the ownership, investor protections, and rights arrangements corresponding to traditional securities.
Earlier, in March, the U.S. SEC approved Nasdaq to allow eligible listed securities to trade in tokenized form. Tokenized shares use the same CUSIP as traditional shares, possess the same substantive rights, and continue to trade within the existing market system and securities rules.
This is fundamentally different from simply issuing a "stock-mapped token." It means on-chain assets are beginning to connect with real ownership, custody relationships, corporate actions, and legal rights, starting to carry part of the lifecycle of traditional assets.
Therefore, as this connection gradually establishes, blockchain no longer just creates new assets but also begins to host part of the operational process of traditional assets.
3. Prediction Markets Turn Future Information into Prices
Prediction markets fill in the information and price discovery layer.
Stocks trade future corporate cash flows, bonds trade credit and interest rates, while prediction markets trade the probability of a specific event occurring. Election results, rate decisions, sporting events, corporate events, even product release dates—all can be compressed into a continuously changing market price.
Robinhood disclosed that in the first year of its prediction market business, over 1 million users participated, trading approximately 9 billion contracts cumulatively, and it has acquired a CFTC-regulated exchange and clearing infrastructure. From an infrastructure perspective, prediction markets provide a capability traditional financial markets struggle to cover at scale: aggregating dispersed information into a real-time readable probability.
4. AI Agents Begin to Become New Economic Actors
Stablecoins and RWA solve asset and funding problems; the new variable AI Agents bring is who initiates economic activity.
Traditional software can only execute operations according to pre-set processes, while Agents can understand goals, find services, compare prices, and make decisions within certain permission boundaries. When an Agent can autonomously purchase APIs, it is no longer just an information tool but also begins to become a new type of economic actor.
The problem is, payments by numerous Agents may be just a few cents or even less. Traditional card fixed fees struggle to cover these, and their fixed fees, settlement cycles, and identity verification processes are not inherently suited for high-frequency, micro-payment, automated machine payments.
This is precisely the scenario where stablecoins and low-cost blockchains can play a role.
Coinbase has integrated x402 and stablecoin wallets into AWS Bedrock AgentCore, allowing enterprises to set budgets and governance rules for Agents; Google's Agent Payments Protocol uses cryptographically signed authorization credentials to record what users allow Agents to purchase, what the spending limits are, and who specifically initiated the operation.
II. So What Does the Next Generation Financial Infrastructure Already Possess?
Overall, the reason these threads are happening simultaneously is precisely because they are different components of the same system.
Stablecoins turn money into APIs, RWA turns assets into programmable objects, prediction markets turn future information into prices, and AI Agents allow software to directly participate in asset exchange for the first time.
However, it's worth noting that judging whether Crypto is beginning to become infrastructure does not mean judging whether speculation still exists in the market. Just as stock, forex, and commodity markets also have vast speculative trading, the more important criterion is: are external enterprises and users beginning to rely on a set of technologies to complete work that was previously difficult, costly, or inefficient?
By this standard, Crypto and Web3 as the next-generation financial infrastructure have preliminarily formed multi-layered capabilities.
The first layer is asset issuance and mapping.
What can now go on-chain is no longer limited to native tokens. Stablecoins, government bonds, money market funds, private credit, gold, fund shares, and stocks have all seen different forms of on-chain products. The significance of various assets going on-chain is not just putting a certificate into a wallet.
When assets can be recognized by smart contracts, they can directly enter processes like collateralization, lending, trading, fund management, and automated investing. Operations originally scattered across registries, custodians, brokers, and clearing systems have the opportunity to be compressed into a more unified execution environment.
The second layer is around-the-clock payment and settlement.
Traditional cross-border payments typically pass through multiple correspondent banks and are constrained by business hours, account systems, and regional networks. Stablecoins, under a unified asset standard, can achieve near real-time, 24/7 value transfer.
J.P. Morgan stated that since its launch, Kinexys has processed over $4 trillion cumulatively, with average daily transaction volume exceeding $7 billion, and has expanded blockchain deposit accounts to multiple currencies including USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, HKD, SGD, and CNY.
Simply put, on-chain settlement does not necessarily require all funds to be converted into publicly issued stablecoins. In the future, there may simultaneously exist bank deposit tokens, regulated stablecoins, central bank digital currencies, and on-chain commercial bank money. Their commonality is that funds can be read and orchestrated by programs and settled synchronously with asset delivery.
The third layer is continuous trading and price discovery.
Crypto has already proven that markets can operate 24/7 and that liquidity can be automatically matched and managed via smart contracts.
This capability is being extended to more asset classes. Tokenized securities can shorten the time between trading and settlement. Prediction markets can provide probabilities for events traditional finance struggles to price directly.
In the future, an enterprise may not only hold on-chain money market funds but also automatically adjust cash positions based on changes in interest rate prediction markets; AI Agents might simultaneously read asset prices, event probabilities, and liquidity conditions before deciding whether to execute trades.
By then, markets will provide not just quotes for humans to view, but a set of real-time signals directly callable by software.
The fourth layer is identity, permissions, and authorization.
Financial activity isn't just transferring assets; it must also answer a series of questions: Who initiated the transaction? Who has permission? How long does this authorization last? What are the spending limits? Who is responsible if something goes wrong?
Early Crypto primarily answered these questions with private keys; holding the private key meant having full control. But when enterprises, institutions, and AI Agents enter the on-chain realm, a single private key clearly cannot meet complex permission management needs.
Google AP2 uses verifiable authorization records for user intent; Visa is building Agent identity directories, credentials, and scoring mechanisms; Mastercard's Agent Pay for Machines attempts to provide machines with identity authentication, permission setting, transaction, and settlement capabilities.
Account abstraction, Passkeys, multi-signature wallets, session keys, and spending policies also allow users to grant limited permissions to specific applications or Agents, rather than handing over full account control.
This means the role of wallets may also change. Future wallets won't just store assets and private keys; they will need to manage user identity, institutional credentials, Agent permissions, spending budgets, and authorization records, becoming a control interface for users entering the on-chain economy.
The fifth layer is connection with real-world legal and regulatory systems.
Whether a financial system can become true infrastructure depends not just on whether the technology works, but also on whether real-world law recognizes the transaction results.
In January 2026, the U.S. SEC issued guidance on tokenized securities, clearly distinguishing between tokenized securities directly issued by the issuer, tokenized equity formed by third-party custody of underlying assets, and on-chain products merely providing synthetic price exposure. This distinction is crucial because several products might look like "on-chain stocks," but the actual legal rights held by owners could be completely different.
The CLARITY Act attempts to further delineate regulatory boundaries between the SEC and CFTC, establishing clearer rules around digital asset issuance, trading platforms, software developers, DeFi, and investor protection. The bill remains controversial and has not completed legislation, but the regulatory focus is gradually shifting from "whether Crypto should be allowed to exist" to "who can issue, who is responsible for custody, what rules apply to which assets."
This shift itself is a key signal of infrastructuralization, because only when participants can roughly judge their legal responsibilities can banks, brokerages, asset management institutions, and payment companies make long-term investments, rather than just conducting isolated pilot projects.
III. The Inevitable Path from 'Speculative Market' to 'Infrastructure'
Is Crypto transitioning from a speculative market to infrastructure?
The answer is yes, and this process is irreversible, but it's not a mutually exclusive, zero-sum replacement process.
Crypto won't suddenly lose its speculative nature because of stablecoin payments and RWA growth. More accurately, it is building, beneath its original trading market, an execution system that can be used by real-world assets, traditional institutions, and intelligent software alike.
This change is first reflected in the expansion of industry funding sources. In the past, a large portion of protocol revenue came from leveraged trading, asset issuance, liquidations, and on-chain capital circulation. Now, a second type of cash flow from external economic activities is emerging on-chain: enterprises using stablecoins for cross-border settlement, funds distributing and managing assets via on-chain channels, software purchasing APIs per use, Agents automatically paying for data and model fees.
Second, the participants in the on-chain economy are expanding. The typical user of the past was a human trader sitting before a screen clicking "confirm" and "sign." In the future, a large portion of on-chain interactions might be initiated by enterprise systems, payment programs, and AI Agents. Humans will be responsible for setting goals, boundaries, and permissions, while software handles specific execution.
Regulatory discussions are also changing. Past debates were mainly about whether Crypto should be integrated into the existing financial system; current questions are gradually shifting to how to delineate regulatory boundaries, protect investors, constrain intermediaries, while preserving self-custody and open software space.
However, from "can operate" to "worth relying on long-term," crypto infrastructure still has a long way to go.
First, on-chain confirmation does not equal legal finality. Who custodies the asset behind a token? Can investors retrieve assets if the issuer goes bankrupt? Do different jurisdictions recognize on-chain ownership transfers? And do token holders actually have dividend rights, voting rights, or merely price exposure? These questions cannot be solved by smart contracts alone.
Agentic payments also face liability boundaries. When an AI Agent executes an erroneous transaction due to misinformation, prompt injection, or model hallucination, does responsibility lie with the user, model provider, wallet, or merchant? Mature handling mechanisms are still lacking. In the future, wallets need to solve not just how to let an Agent pay, but how to limit which assets it can use, who it can pay, what the limits are, and how to suspend and revoke permissions in case of anomalies.
Meanwhile, as assets and networks proliferate, the problem of liquidity fragmentation may become more pronounced. The same stablecoin, fund, or security can exist across different public chains, bank ledgers, and permissioned networks, but may not flow freely. More important than issuing yet more assets in the next phase is establishing unified asset standards, cross-network communication, and secure settlement mechanisms.
Privacy is also an unavoidable hurdle for institutional adoption. Public blockchains are good for verification and audit, but enterprises won't want to publicly disclose all customers, suppliers, payroll, and fund flows. How to use zero-knowledge proofs, selective disclosure, and on-chain credentials to preserve necessary privacy while meeting compliance requirements will directly determine how far on-chain finance can go.
A more fundamental problem is that blockchain can improve transaction and settlement efficiency but cannot automatically create credit. Credit loans, insurance, accounts receivable, default handling, and liquidity support in the real financial system all require complex risk management, legal, and liability frameworks. Prediction markets also won't naturally solve issues like insider information, insufficient liquidity, and outcome adjudication just because prices are public.
Therefore, today's Crypto is more like having erected the basic framework for assets, money, trading, and settlement, but credit, privacy, liability, and legal finality have not yet formed a complete closed loop.
It is becoming infrastructure, but it is far from becoming a set of infrastructure that everyone can trust unconditionally.
In Conclusion
Looking back, what is most noteworthy in 2026 is not a single sector suddenly exploding, but that several pieces of a puzzle that developed separately in the past are starting to connect in the same phase.
Assets have on-chain forms, money has programmable carriers, markets provide around-the-clock prices, software is gradually gaining payment and trading permissions, and regulation is moving from a vague gray area towards more specific boundary delineation.
These changes are not yet sufficient to prove a "completely new financial system" is built, but they are enough to indicate that Crypto's role is changing. It has not left the speculative market; rather, beneath the speculative market, it is gradually building an execution system that can be used by real assets, traditional institutions, and intelligent software.
Regardless, after 15 years of evolution, the Crypto industry has finally taken the most critical step from a "social experiment of digital gold" to a "high-frequency speculative casino" and now towards "frictionless global financial infrastructure."
Let's continue to witness the next 15 years.
