🎨 What will shape the 2026 crypto market?

The crypto market has started 2026 in a phase of strategic reorientation. While the classic four-year cycle model visibly lost of its influence in 2025, it is being increasingly replaced by macroeconomic conditions, institutional capital flows, and government actions.

Several market observers see this new year as a potential turning point: not so much as an impulsive rally, but rather as a deeper structural shift.

Sygnum analysts expect that the increasing regulatory clarity in the US will pave the way for the national Bitcoin reserve to grow for the first time in 2026. The CLARITY Act and possible Bitcoin legislation will create a legal framework that should make it easier for sovereign actors to hold Bitcoin as a strategic asset. Sygnum considers it plausible that several G20 or G20-related countries will officially include Bitcoin in their reserves as well. Although they initially expect only small allocations of up to one percent of reserves, it emphasizes a significant signal effect. In the long term, broader government adoption could help to significantly narrow the gap between Bitcoin and gold.

At the same time, market participants are urging for more modest expectations. Blockchain analyst Marcin Kazmierczak points out that the decline in the available supply of Bitcoin has so far been driven primarily by ETFs and institutional buyers, not by governments. For 2026, he expects a more gradual approach, with US states and municipalities taking the lead, while large economies could remain politically constrained.

Wintermute sees three possible catalysts for a broader recovery in 2026: an expansion of institutional mandates beyond Bitcoin and Ether, another sharp rise in leading assets with a wealth effect, or a return of private investors, who are currently more focused on stocks, AI themes, and commodities.

At the same time, there are increasing signs of cautious optimism in the macroeconomic sphere. VanEck expects the first quarter to be fundamentally favorable for risk-on investments, supported by improved fiscal and monetary policy predictability. Although the Bitcoin cycle signals are mixed in the short term, declining uncertainty and stabilizing budget data could favor risk assets overall.

The latest assessment of Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, also fits into this picture. He sees the outlook for Bitcoin in 2026 as primarily linked to the expansion of dollar liquidity – via central bank policy, lending, and government-backed investment programs. He interprets Bitcoin's weak performance in 2025 primarily as a consequence of scarce liquidity. If this factor reverses, Bitcoin could once again dock more strongly onto the global capital flow.

The forecasts for 2026 mark less the beginning of a new hype cycle than the transition to a market phase shaped by politics and macroeconomics. Bitcoin is increasingly being discussed not only as a speculative asset, but also as a strategic instrument in the context of public finances, liquidity policy, and institutional infrastructure. Whether this will actually result in sovereign reserves remains to be seen – but the shift in the debate itself already represents a structural break with previous market logic.

🔄 Bitcoin resets, more institutions and less leverage

Institutional capital inflows, a significant reduction in leverage positions, and new large purchases are currently shaping the Bitcoin market.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net inflows of $1.42 billion last week, the strongest week since last October. On Wednesday alone, around $844 million flowed into the ETFs.

Ethereum ETFs also raised capital again. According to Kronos Research, the combination of ETF purchases and declining whale selling pressure points to a shortage of effectively available supply. On-chain data shows that large holders have significantly reduced their net sales since the end of December.

Open interest in the Bitcoin derivatives markets has also fallen by around 30% since October. CryptoQuant interprets this as a classic deleveraging signal: excess leverage positions have been reduced, which historically has often been accompanied by market corrections and the formation of more stable floors. Although analysts warn that further deleveraging could follow if the market slips back into a bear market, the decline in open contracts reduces the risk of cascading liquidations in the short term.

Strategy continued its aggressive accumulation strategy and purchased 13,627 BTC for $1.25 billion at the beginning of this month. This brought its holdings to over 687,000 BTC. The purchase was again financed through share issues.

On-chain data also shows a trend reversal: addresses holding between 1,000 to 10,000 BTC recently recorded rising holdings again after months of net distribution. CryptoQuant speaks of an early accumulation signal after the strongest distribution phase since 2023.

Taken together, ETF inflows, declining leverage, and new large purchases point to a market phase in which capital is increasingly positioning itself selectively and structurally rather than speculatively.

The data shows less euphoria but more order: spot demand is replacing derivative leverage, and corporate balance sheets are taking the place of short-term traders. This suggests a slow rebuilding of market strength rather than an impulsive cycle restart.

🦾 Record activity and strong ETF demand for Ethereum

Ethereum is also starting the new year with a noticeably changed market structure. The staking exit queue has fallen to zero for the first time in months, while the entry queue has expanded to around 2.6 million ETH within a few weeks.

New validators currently have to wait up to 45 days to get started, while payouts are processed in minutes. Analysts see this as a clear sign of declining selling pressure and the growing appeal of ETH as a yield-bearing asset.

Institutional players such as BitMine Immersion Technologies are among the drivers of this development and have contributed large ETH holdings to the staking process. A total of around 36 million ETH are now in the proof-of-stake system, which corresponds to approximately 29% of the circulating supply.

At the same time, US spot ETFs on Ethereum are once again seeing significant inflows. Within four days, nearly $475 million flowed into the products, while daily institutional net buying volume rose again. Market observers see this as an important difference from previous months. New demand is increasingly meeting with constrained supply. Although the ETH price remains well below its all-time high of 2025, traders point to the combination of ETF inflows, rising network activity, and a stabilized market structure as prerequisites for a more sustainable recovery.

Ethereum is also reaching new heights in terms of usage. Glassnode reports that so-called "activity retention" has nearly doubled within a month. The number of first-time active addresses rose from around 4 million to around 8 million. At the same time, daily active addresses exceeded the 1 million mark for the first time in years, while daily transactions reached new records of around 2.8 to 2.9 million.

Santiment also reports an average of over 300,000 newly created wallets per day. The main drivers are considered to be the rapidly growing use of stablecoins, falling fees, and technical improvements from recent upgrades that make interactions with the network cheaper and smoother.

Taken together, we can see a convergence of several developments: rising capital inflows via regulated products, increasing lock-up of supply in the staking system, and a measurable expansion of real-world usage.

Ethereum is currently showing less speculative momentum than structural momentum. The convergence of ETF demand, user growth, and locked supply points to a phase in which fundamentals are becoming more important than short-term market rotations.

📢 Vitalik's rally call amid US regulatory pushback

Crypto regulation in the US has been put on hold for the time being, as the planned vote ("markup") on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY) in the US Senate Banking Committee has been postponed indefinitely. DeFi representatives are using the delay to intensify their criticism, particularly of provisions on tokenized stocks, stablecoin rewards, and the question of how far obligations such as KYC, registration with the SEC, or other requirements could also affect developers and infrastructure providers in the future.

The DeFi Education Fund warned that some of the proposed changes could seriously damage DeFi technology and worsen the situation for software developers. From the perspective of Paradigm and Variant, "significant changes" are necessary; in their view, the latest draft leaves too much uncertainty about who will ultimately bear which responsibilities.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who withdrew his support for the draft, spoke of "catastrophic" consequences for consumers and emphasized that it would be better to have no law at all than a bad one. Armstrong rejected reports of a conflict with the White House, saying that the government was being constructive and had asked Coinbase to work with banks on a solution. The goal is to set a new markup date in "a few" weeks. At the same time, the debate shows how deeply divided the industry is. At the heart of the matter is the question of whether stablecoin yields can be passed on to customers. This is an issue on which banks and parts of the crypto industry have conflicting interests. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said the CLARITY Act had "a long way to go," but Goldman was following it very closely because of its importance for tokenization and stablecoins.

While the US is wrestling with responsibilities, definitions, and DeFi obligations, Europe has a strict deadline. According to Reuters, France's financial regulator AMF has identified 90 crypto companies that are registered but do not yet have a MiCA license – despite the deadline at the end of June. Around 40% of the companies affected have indicated that they do not intend to apply, around 30% are in the process of applying, according to the AMF, and another 30% have not responded. Without a license, companies would have to cease operations by July. The report also highlights the political tensions surrounding MiCA enforcement. ESMA expects an "orderly winding up" for unauthorized providers, while the EU Commission has brought stronger central supervision by ESMA into play, a proposal that is seen in the industry as a potential brake on licenses and startups.

Parallel to these regulatory front lines, the debate within the Ethereum ecosystem is also shifting. Away from pure scaling toward fundamental questions. Vitalik Buterin warns that Ethereum has taken "steps backward" in decentralization, privacy, and self-sovereignty over the past ten years. 2026 should be the year in which these compromises are no longer accepted. Among his priorities are private payments, lower barriers to full nodes, Dapps without centralized servers, more control over on-chain data, and social recovery wallets.

He also argues that Ethereum must pass the "walk-away test": the protocol should be so robust that its value proposition will continue to function for decades, even if developers are no longer actively involved. Among other things, this requires quantum resistance, scalable architecture, and a block-building model that resists centralization and censorship pressure. Buterin also calls for a decentralized alternative for stablecoins whose stability does not depend on a single currency – for example, through a diversified basket of assets and currencies.

The past week revealed a common weak point: regulators and industry are wrestling for control, jurisdiction and liability, while core protocols must prove that "decentralization" is more than just a marketing term. When laws lead to vaguely worded obligations for developers and networks become more technically complex and less private, the same effect arises from two directions: innovation migrates into gray areas, and users into dependencies.

🏦 Institutions and tokenization, from hype to infrastructure

Traditional financial players are increasingly taking asset tokenization from the pilot phase towards product operation.

State Street has launched last week an institutional digital asset platform designed to help clients build tokenized money market funds, ETFs, tokenized deposits, and stablecoins. In addition to tokenization services, the offering includes custody and access to various digital assets, initially for institutional clients and subject to regulatory approvals.

State Street is thus explicitly positioning tokenization as part of a "core strategy" and building on its own activities from 2025, including a tokenized fund project with Galaxy Asset Management and Ondo Finance on Solana, which is designed to enable 24/7 liquidity via cash sweeps on the blockchain.

At the same time, SWIFT is testing interoperability between traditional payment infrastructure and tokenized assets. In cooperation with Société Générale-Forge (SG-Forge), the settlement of tokenized bonds in both fiat and digital currency was tested – including issuance, delivery-versus-payment, coupon payments, and redemption. The euro stablecoin EUR CoinVertible (EURCV), which SG-Forge introduced on Ethereum in 2023, was used. SG-Forge describes EURCV as a MiCA-compliant on-chain settlement instrument that is "natively" compatible with SWIFT's interoperability capabilities. SWIFT, in turn, is working on a system that integrates blockchain ledgers into its own infrastructure stack and is intended to serve as a common, rule-based real-time transaction protocol for financial institutions.

The commodities sector also shows that trading is shifting to new "rails": according to Cex.io, tokenized gold grew strongly in 2025. Market capitalization rose by 177% from around $1.6 billion to $4.4 billion, with the increase of just under $2.8 billion accounting for almost 25% of total net growth in the RWA sector.

The trading volume of tokenized gold was around $178 billion in 2025, with a strong Q4 – and Tether Gold (XAUT) dominated much of the activity, according to the report.

At the same time, the stablecoin issue remains political and technical. Vitalik Buterin calls for "better decentralized stablecoins" because complete dependence on a single fiat reference (predominantly USD for stablecoins) jeopardizes long-term resilience. He cites robust oracles and a stability logic that can withstand periods of stress and sharp price movements as areas that still need work. This is an indication that scaling and interoperability alone are not enough if the monetary layer itself remains fragile.

The direction is clear: Tokenization is less driven by "crypto narratives" and more by infrastructure decisions made by major players. The bottleneck is thus shifting from technology demos to governance and risk.

🎨 What will shape the 2026 crypto market?

🔄 Bitcoin resets, more institutions and less leverage

🦾 Record activity and strong ETF demand for Ethereum

📢 Vitalik's rally call amid US regulatory pushback

🏦 Institutions and tokenization, from hype to infrastructure

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