Both show how community-driven tokens can generate significant returns, but also underline the risks of speculation in meme-driven markets. This flexibility has attracted financial institutions experimenting with RWA platforms, including pilot projects from banks like JPMorgan. As institutions tokenize assets and require secure data feeds, Chainlink’s role becomes more critical. This keeps Ethereum as the base layer for everything from decentralized finance to tokenized real-world assets.

Strategic Exit And Defensive Positioning: Navigating The Bear Market

Big themes are driving markets, and investors are paying attention. The first notes that the CFTC filed two consent orders against Greg Smith of New York and Michael Nowak of New Jersey for spoofing precious metals futures markets during their respective https://tradersunion.com/brokers/binary/view/iqcent/ tenures at a major bank. Fifth, it requires futures commission merchants to use qualified digital asset custodians to hold digital assets. Prediction markets have already gone mainstream, and this coming year, they’ll only become bigger, broader, and smarter as they intersect with crypto and AI — while also posing new and important challenges for builders to resolve. It’s also a massive blocker for the institutions looking to tokenize real world assets right now. As such, the banking industry — especially critical core ledgers, the key databases that track deposits, collateral, and other obligations — still often run on mainframe computers, programmed with COBOL, and with batch file interfaces instead of APIs.

Views expressed are as of the date indicated, based on the information available at that time, and may change based on market or other conditions. “However, on a very long-term time horizon, I personally do not think you can ever be fundamentally late to bitcoin if you are thinking of it as a store of value,” says Kuiper. However, he notes if the 4-year cycle was to repeat, we would need to have already put in the all-time high of the cycle, and be continuing into a full-blown bear market. If the 4-year cycle repeats, we could be at or near the end of the current bull market for bitcoin. For example, investors who may not be able to buy bitcoin directly may choose to gain exposure through these corporations, or the securities they offer.”

Crypto Market Outlook

However, troubles at SVB led investors to doubt Circle’s ability to access its deposits at SVB amid the bank’s imminent collapse, causing the price of USDC to trade as low as $0.87 per coin. Are well designed and consistently enforced, the likelihood of runs can be substantially reduced.” Specifically, the paper asserts that stablecoins “that are fully backed one-to-one with highly liquid assets are less vulnerable to runs or de-pegging episodes, as issuers can more easily meet redemption requests even during periods of market stress.” In that zone, the increase in bank deposits resulting from the initial threat of CBDC/stablecoin issuance is not swamped by a high level of stablecoins that drives banks out of credit intermediation. The Cong paper simply updates the Chiu et al. paper’s analysis by using more recent economic data and assumes that the issuance of interest-paying stablecoins by private firms would have the same impact on deposit and lending markets as the issuance of an interest-paying CBDC by the Federal Reserve.

Bitcoin’s Emerging Bear Market Signals And Strategic Exit/defensive Positioning For 2026

Youngblood warns that unclear rules continue to deter risk-averse institutions, even as crypto companies grow accustomed to operating in gray areas. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has championed the concept, as well, calling it "the next generation for markets" in 2025 earnings calls. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins has repeatedly asserted that tokenization is key to modernizing U.S. markets. Blume calls stablecoins “a breakout product,” arguing that they are a better way of moving money around for individuals and businesses than traditional methods, like bank or wire transfers. Institutional investors are a big part of that shift, with firms like Vanguard and Merrill Lynch recently opening broader access to bitcoin products. Behind these numbers is a belief that bitcoin is shedding its reputation as a fringe asset and becoming more mainstream.

Following a turbulent period marked by the Crypto Winter and characterized by dramatic price swings and high-profile exchange collapses, cryptocurrency ownership in America has stabilized. According to our latest survey of 992 U.S. adults, 30 percent of Americans now own cryptocurrency—up from 27 percent in 2024 and matching the 2023 baseline. After a turbulent few years marked by dramatic price swings and high-profile exchange collapses, cryptocurrency ownership in America has stabilized and begun climbing again. As regulatory frameworks mature and financial incumbents expand their onchain offerings, RWAs could emerge as one of the most durable crypto investment themes heading into 2026. “Coinbase will have a huge leg up when assets truly begin to become tokenized,” Huang said, citing the exchange’s regulatory positioning and custody infrastructure.

Or Continue With Others

• Nexo’s 2025 call of $250,000 for bitcoin "was less a rejection of its long-term thesis and more a consequence of market mechanics colliding with a shifting macro backdrop," according to Iliya Kalchev, an analyst at the cryptocurrency exchange.
• By late 2025, the asset had surged to an all-time high of $126,000, with 97% of its supply in profit.
• Regulatory scrutiny could limit Al development, with data collection facing closer examination and potential fines.
• The crypto sell-off at the end of the year came against that backdrop.

“This idea that it was an off switch that got flipped on once bitcoin ETFs got approved and institutional capital immediately started flowing is just wrong,” says Rasmussen. But while bitcoin ETFs were approved in early 2024, their impact is still unfolding. He argues that this represents a significant shift in who is buying bitcoin and for what purpose. Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Citibank’s last estimates sit at $170,000 and $133,000, respectively. Crypto asset managers Bitwise and Bernstein remain optimistic, both projecting $200,000. Bitcoin started 2025 around $93,000, twice as high as its 2024 opening price of $42,280.

President Trump’s Impact On Cryptocurrency In The Us

While the market may find temporary stability around $70,000, investors must remain vigilant as the cycle unfolds. Given these dynamics, investors must adopt defensive strategies to mitigate downside risk. The 2022 bear market also saw price break below the 365-day moving average, a key iqcent broker technical indicator of bear territory.

The large majority of global assets https://www.producthunt.com/products/iqcent-launch live on those same core ledgers that are also decades old. That’s why debt assets should be originated on chain, not originated off chain and tokenized. I also believe that emerging market equities are one of the most interesting asset classes to perpify. Perps also provide easy-to-understand leverage, so I believe they are the crypto-native derivative with the strongest product-market fit. Together, these approaches broaden who can participate in the digital dollar economy — and could accelerate stablecoins being used more directly as mainstream payments. Some use cryptographic proofs to let people privately swap local balances for digital dollars.

• There is a zone where stablecoins are circulating and the amount of deposits and bank loans are higher than they would have been without any stablecoins.
• The values of some of the most popular cryptocurrencies reached historic record highs over the course of 2025.
• Under the amendment, unlicensed virtual currency businesses could face criminal prosecution with charges ranging from an A misdemeanor to a C felony, based on the amount of cryptocurrency transmitted.
• Meanwhile, DeFi tools like Morpho Vaults automatically allocate assets into lending markets with the best risk-adjusted yield — providing a core yield-bearing allocation in a portfolio.

Cal State Fullerton Class of 2026 grad Severo De La Riva began investing in the growing world of cryptocurrency even before he was a Titan. As stablecoins become more widely adopted, they tend to strengthen the larger blockchain ecosystems like Bitcoin and Ethereum by increasing transaction activity, liquidity, and real-world utility, according to Smart. Along similar lines, Smart says crypto’s primary potential advantage lies in its asymmetric return profile and its historically low correlation to some traditional asset classes, particularly over longer periods. Advisors say there are advantages crypto offers that traditional asset classes do not.

Recent Acceptance By Big Banks Bodes Well For Crypto In 2026, Advisors Say

• But most data pipelines today — what’s fed into or out of the model — are opaque, mutable, and unauditable.
• Still, a persuasive case can be made for focusing on assets and sectors with durable, long-term relevance, rather than relying solely on the predictability of four-year market cycles tied to the Bitcoin halving.
• In support of that contention, a blog post from crypto investment firm Paradigm describes recent research that models the impact of stablecoin growth on bank deposits.
• From an investment standpoint, dollar-pegged stablecoins themselves offer virtually no upside.
• Of course, current owners are more optimistic than non-owners, but fewer than 20 percent of respondents believe values will drop.

Corporations may increasingly get in on the action, some of which started adding bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to their balance sheets in 2025. “Any additional demand for bitcoin may push up the price in terms of simple supply-demand economics,” says Kuiper. Preferred stocks are not necessarily correlated with securities markets generally. Convertible securities are subject to the market and issuer risks that apply to the underlying common stock. Technologies perceived to displace older technologies or create new markets may not in fact do so. Digital assets represent a new and rapidly evolving industry, and the value of the Shares depends on their acceptance.