Written by: Paul Veradittakit
Compiled by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News
2026 will be a pivotal year. We will see "crypto as an industry" completely transform into "crypto as a service".
The past decade has been filled with hype and hype in the crypto world. The approval of the Bitcoin ETF in 2024 gave it mainstream financial recognition. In 2025, everyone focused on building the underlying infrastructure. But in 2026, the real value will belong to companies that use blockchain to solve long-standing problems in traditional industries while making the blockchain completely imperceptible to users.
Future crypto unicorns won't be built on hype. They will be companies that use blockchain technology to boost product efficiency by an order of magnitude, thereby unlocking a multi-billion dollar market, while completely concealing the complex technology.
Encryption technology won the "weekend" battle.
When the conflict with Iran erupted, the US stock market was closed for the weekend, unable to react to the sudden global risk. But the crypto market didn't stop; Bitcoin surged to $74,000 at one point. Commodities completed price discovery on the decentralized prediction market Hyperliquid, even before traditional markets opened. This wasn't an isolated case—the same thing happened last month when China introduced its policies.
Traditional hedge funds are increasingly flocking to this space. The crypto market's "24/7 operation" is no longer just a slogan, but a structural advantage that traditional finance cannot match.
Nevertheless, the current valuation of the crypto market remains far below what its fundamentals should warrant. We are undoubtedly in another bear market (this is the fourth time I've experienced one), but this time it's completely different: regulations are becoming clearer, institutional funds have entered the market, and infrastructure is becoming increasingly robust.
This feeling was particularly strong at the recent Consensus conference in Hong Kong. The dynamism of Asian markets contrasts sharply with that of the West, where bipartisan government support, new institutional investment, and a strong focus on consumer applications have fueled a robust bullish sentiment.
Key Takeaways for Asia in 2026:
- Cross-border payments using stablecoins are particularly valuable in the B2B sector. For Asia, with its relatively fragmented economic systems, crypto payments are a natural choice.
- The tokenization of gold, stocks, and real estate. Asian banks and fintech companies are catching up with the US.
- Perpetual contract trading on DeFi. Driven by retail investors, its development may outpace that of the West.
- Prediction markets are poised to become an important sector, although their form may differ from that in the West.
Key Trend: Encryption 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 that the blockchain exists.
For the past decade or so, we've been passionate about building "crypto wonders"—gas fee wars, TPS races, modular stacks, ZK proofs. The 2024 ETF was a vote of confidence from mainstream institutions. In 2025, we laid the groundwork. In 2026, it's time to turn around.
Saying goodbye to the "casino" era
The next generation of unicorns won't be the kind that "builds L3 networks for AI-NFTs." They will be companies that leverage blockchain to increase product efficiency tenfold while completely hiding the technology, thereby unlocking a market worth hundreds of billions.
This perfectly explains our recent investment logic:
Novig: Saying Goodbye to the Era of "Water Pumping" (US$75 million Series B)
Traditional sports betting is a monopolistic and distorted market. Bookmakers take exorbitant commissions from every bet, resulting in abysmal user win rates of only 2%. We led the $75 million investment in Novig 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 whether a decentralized order book is used; they only know they can get the best odds in the US. This is a prime example of "crypto as a service."
Based on: Consumer-grade super apps (US$11.5 million Series A funding)
We recently led the Series A funding round for Based, a composable, consumer-grade Web3 super app built on the Hyperliquid ecosystem. "Consumer-grade crypto" used to be equated with "clumsy experience." Based is changing that, making on-chain interactions as smooth and seamless as top-tier fintech apps. Complex operations like cross-chain bridging and gas fees are abstracted away, making them imperceptible to users. They can simply focus on the social and financial value of their assets.
Doppler: The default asset issuance infrastructure (US$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 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 the entire underlying infrastructure from scratch. Doppler is like the Stripe of on-chain assets—purely practical functionality, all encapsulated behind a concise API.
Why is "invisibility" more important than "viral transmission"?
This trend of "invisibility" also permeates our entire investment portfolio:
- Real-world assets: Tokenized government bonds are no longer an experiment in the crypto world; they are becoming the cornerstone of back-end liquidity in global trade.
- AI Agents: Blockchain provides a trusted “layer of truth” for AI agents through predictive markets and verifiable data, enabling them to interact with digital assets autonomously and reliably.
- Proxy payments will accelerate this process. Payment standards like x402 allow AI proxies to complete transactions directly using crypto assets. Meanwhile, the increasing clarity in stablecoin regulation will further streamline this payment pathway.
Advice for entrepreneurs
If you're planning to start a business in 2026, my advice is simple: stop talking about technology and focus on the practical problems you can solve. If your fundraising presentation has the page about consensus mechanisms before your presentation about customer ROI, it means your thinking is still stuck in 2022.
We are looking for teams that are building the next Novig, Based, or Doppler—people who truly understand what "mass adoption" means: a technology has truly entered every household when it becomes so seamless that people completely forget it exists.
