Crypto asset management firm Grayscale released its 2026 Digital Asset Outlook report , predicting an accelerated structural shift in the digital asset investment landscape in 2026. This shift is primarily supported by two themes: macro-level demand for alternative stores of value and increased regulatory transparency. Grayscale also outlined its top ten cryptocurrency investment themes for 2026, reflecting the wide-ranging applications of public blockchain technology and listing relevant crypto assets that could benefit from such investments.
The risk of dollar depreciation is driving demand for currency alternatives.
Beneficiary assets: BTC, ETH, ZEC
The US debt crisis could ultimately undermine the dollar's status as a store of value. Meanwhile, a small subset of digital assets, with their high penetration, decentralization, and limited supply growth, can be considered viable stores of value. These include the two largest crypto assets by market capitalization: Bitcoin and Ethereum. Similar to physical gold, their utility stems in part from their scarcity and autonomy.
The concept of a digital currency system with a transparent, predictable, and ultimately scarce supply is simple, but it is gaining popularity in today's economy due to the tail risks of fiat currencies. As long as macroeconomic imbalances that contribute to fiat currency risks continue to worsen, portfolio demand for alternative stores of value is likely to continue to grow. Besides BTC and ETH, Zcash (ZEC), a smaller decentralized digital currency with privacy features, may also be suitable for investors who are allocating their portfolios to mitigate the impact of a depreciating dollar.
The GENIUS Act will boost the influence of stablecoins.
Beneficiary assets: ETH, TRX, BNB, SOL, XPL, LINK
Stablecoins experienced a boom in 2025: circulating supply reached $300 billion, monthly trading volume averaged $1.1 trillion in the six months ending November, and the US Congress passed the GENIUS Act, attracting a large influx of institutional capital into the industry. Grayscale anticipates seeing tangible results in 2026: stablecoins will be integrated into cross-border payment services, used as collateral in derivatives exchanges, appear on corporate balance sheets, and become an alternative to credit cards in online consumer payments. Continued growth in prediction markets may also drive new demand for stablecoins. Higher stablecoin trading volumes will benefit the blockchains recording these transactions (such as ETH, TRX, BNB, and SOL), as well as various supporting infrastructures (such as LINK) and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.
Asset tokenization is at a turning point
Beneficiary assets : LINK, ETH, SOL, AVAX, BNB
Tokenized assets are currently very small: representing only 0.01% of the total market capitalization of global stocks and bonds (see chart below). Grayscale predicts that asset tokenization will grow rapidly in the coming years, driven by the increasing maturity of blockchain technology and a clearer regulatory environment. It wouldn't be surprising if the size of tokenized assets grew by approximately 1,000 times by 2030. This growth could bring value to blockchains that process tokenized asset transactions and various related applications. Currently, leading tokenized asset blockchains include Ethereum (ETH), BNB Chain (BNB), and Solana (SOL), but this list may change over time, with Chainlink (LINK) appearing to have a particular advantage due to its unique software technology suite.
As blockchain technology becomes mainstream, privacy solutions are becoming essential.
Beneficiary assets : ZEC, AZTEC, RAIL
Privacy is an inherent part of the financial system: almost everyone expects their salary, taxes, net worth, and spending habits to remain hidden on public ledgers. However, most blockchains are designed for transparency. If public blockchains are to integrate more deeply into the financial system, stronger privacy infrastructure is needed—a fact that is becoming increasingly apparent as regulation pushes for this integration. Investor concerns about privacy could benefit projects like Zcash (ZEC), with other major projects including the privacy-focused Ethereum Layer 2 protocol Aztec and the DeFi-oriented Railgun. We may also see increased adoption of confidential transactions on leading smart contract platforms such as Ethereum (using the ERC-7984 protocol) and Solana (using the Confidential Transfers token extension). More robust privacy tools may also necessitate stronger identity and compliance infrastructure for DeFi.
Centralized artificial intelligence calls for blockchain solutions
Beneficiary assets : TAO, IP, NEAR, WORLD
The fundamental alignment between cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence is closer and clearer than ever before. As AI systems increasingly concentrate in the hands of a few dominant players, concerns about trust, bias, and ownership have arisen, and cryptocurrency offers a fundamental mechanism to directly address these risks. Decentralized AI development platforms like Bittensor aim to reduce reliance on centralized AI technologies; verifiable identity verification systems like World distinguish between humans and intelligent agents in synthetic worlds; and networks like Story Protocol provide transparent and traceable intellectual property rights in an era where identifying the source of digital content is becoming increasingly difficult. Meanwhile, tools like X402—an open, zero-fee stablecoin payment layer supporting platforms like Base and Solana—enable low-cost, instant, micro-payments for economic interactions between intelligent agents or between machines and humans.
These components together form the early infrastructure of the "proxy economy," in which identity, computation, data, and payments must all be verifiable, programmable, and censorship-resistant. Although the integration of cryptography and artificial intelligence is still in its early stages and developing unevenly, it has already given rise to one of the most attractive long-term use cases in the field, and protocols for building true infrastructure are expected to benefit as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly decentralized, autonomous, and economically active.
DeFi is accelerating its development, with lending services leading the trend.
Beneficiary assets : AAVE, MORPHO, MAPLE, KMNO, UNI, AERO, RAY, JUP, HYPE, LINK
In 2025, driven by technological advancements and favorable regulatory factors, DeFi applications experienced strong growth momentum. The growth of stablecoins and tokenized assets served as significant success stories, and DeFi lending also saw substantial growth, with platforms like Aave, Morpho, and Maple Finance performing exceptionally well. Meanwhile, decentralized perpetual futures exchanges like Hyperliquid saw continued growth in open interest and daily trading volume, comparable to some of the largest centralized derivatives exchanges. Looking ahead, the increasing liquidity, interoperability, and correlation with real-world prices of these platforms will make DeFi a reliable option for users looking to conduct financial transactions directly on-chain. We anticipate more DeFi protocols integrating with traditional fintech companies to leverage their infrastructure and large user base. We expect core DeFi protocols to benefit, including lending platforms like AAVE, decentralized exchanges like UNI and HYPE, related infrastructure like LINK, and blockchains supporting most DeFi activities (such as ETH, SOL, and BASE).
Mainstream applications will require next-generation infrastructure
Beneficiary assets : SUI, MON, NEAR, MEGA
New blockchains are constantly pushing the technological frontier. However, some investors argue that there is no need for more block space due to insufficient demand on existing blockchains. Solana itself was a prime example of this criticism, but it became one of the most successful cases in the subsequent wave of large-scale adoption. Not all high-performance blockchains today will follow a similar trajectory, but we expect some of them to. Superior technology does not guarantee widespread adoption, but the architecture of these next-generation networks makes them perfectly suited for emerging fields such as AI micropayments, instant game loops, high-frequency on-chain transactions, and intent-based systems. Among these projects, we expect Sui to stand out with its technological advantages and all-in-one development strategy (see chart below). Other promising projects include Monad (parallelized EVM), MegaETH (ultra-fast Ethereum L2 cache), and Near (an AI-focused blockchain whose Intents product has already achieved success).
Focus on sustainable income
Beneficiary assets : SOL, ETH, BNB, HYPE, PUMP, TRX
Blockchains are not businesses, but they do possess measurable fundamental elements, including users, transaction volume, fees, capital/TVL, developers, and applications. Among these metrics, Grayscale considers transaction fees to be the most valuable fundamental element because they are the most difficult to manipulate and the most comparable across different blockchains. Transaction fees are analogous to "revenue" in traditional corporate finance. For blockchain applications, it may also be important to distinguish between protocol fees/revenue and "supply-side" fees/revenue. As institutional investors begin allocating funds to the cryptocurrency space, we expect them to focus on blockchains and applications with high and/or growing fee revenues (excluding Bitcoin). Smart contract platforms with relatively high revenues include TRX, SOL, ETH, and BNB (Chart 16). Application-layer assets with relatively high revenues include HYPE and PUMP, among others.
Investors seek to pledge
Beneficiary assets : LDO, JTO
US policymakers made two adjustments to staking policies in 2025, which will allow more token holders to participate:
- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) clarified that liquidity pledging activities do not constitute securities transactions.
- The IRS and Treasury Department have stated that investment trusts/exchange-traded products (ETPs) can be used to pledge digital assets.
These guidelines regarding liquidity staking services are likely to benefit leading TVL-based liquid staking protocol like Lido and Jito on Ethereum and Solana. More broadly, the fact that crypto ETPs can be staked is likely to make them a viable structure for holding Proof-of-Stake (PoS) token stakes, leading to higher staking ratios and higher reward rates. In an environment where staking is more widely adopted, custodial staking via ETPs will provide a convenient way to earn rewards, while on-chain non-custodial liquidity staking offers composability advantages in DeFi. This dual structure is expected to persist for some time.
This article, Grayscale's 2026 Digital Asset Outlook Report: Which Tokens Are Worth Investing In?, first appeared on ABMedia ABMedia .
