7 Crypto Lessons and Trends to know before 2026

2025 is filled with actions that we have not seen before in any prior years. We’ve had a US president who supposedly is a pro-crypto, pro-AI president.

However, what ensued in 2025 was no bull, it was a massacre for the entire industry.

• Majority of altcoins faced 80%-99% drawdown in 2025
• Bitcoin dominance at 2019-2020 level (>60%), outperforming most coins
• ETH trading at similar price to 2022
• Alts heavily fragmented (40-50 million coins in the market)

Equities completely outperformed Crypto in 2025 despite slew of positive headlines for the industry (e.g. clearer regulations, approval of ETFs, enterprises adoption of blockchain rails, institutions investing in BTC & ETH & alts, and more)

2025 is viewed by many as the year of maturation for the industry despite the pain and sufferings, and soooo many people leaving the space.

So…. for those who are still around, here are the top things to know before 2026

Let’s dig in ↓

1. Prediction market is a versatile tool

Prediction market emerged as the fastest growing vertical in 2025 — weekly notional volume hit $3.8B for the first time with Polymarket, Kalshi, and Opinion dominating the vertical.

While there’s an ongoing debate on whether prediction market = gambling, CFTC views it as event contracts or binary options based on outcomes of real-world events. The pro-innovation stance from CFTC coupled with the rise in demand for betting/prediction spurred the growth in volume in 2025.

From a trading tool perspective, prediction market is extremely versatile. It can be used as options with better UI/UX (but still lacking when it comes to liquidity).

You can take leverage on any markets, buy Yes/No, take directional bets, use it as a hedging tool (by holding spot position elsewhere) or farm yields + potential airdrops by performing delta-neutral strategy (split equal amount of shares across Yes/No in a market)

2. Cash-secured puts and covered calls

Two option strategies that are great for conservative investors looking to be more responsible with their investing strategies.

Instead of buying the dip or sell your alts right away, you sell call or put options for cashflow. If the price hit a certain target, you buy the dip or sell your alts, if not you get your principal back.

This is one of the best ways to generate high % APR on your alts OR on your stablecoins.

The only caveat here is that your principal will be locked up for a certain period (usually 3-5 weeks) BUT you’ll get upfront premium on selling the call or put options

3. Narratives fatigue + Equity v Token = Back to fundamentals

Narratives rotated at a much faster pace, what used to last weeks or months are now lasted less than a few days at most.

Instead of narratives, CT is shifting their focus to real fundamentals (e.g. users, revenue, growth metrics). Metrics of real businesses in combination with clear value accrual between the business and the token.

We’ve seen so much f*ckery between equity vs token especially in M&A this year.

Pumpfun acquired Padre (trading tool) but left Padre token holders in the dark. Token dumped 50-80% and community backlash ensued. Pump placated Padre community promising future PUMP airdrop at the same value of PADRE holdings before the announcement of acquisition (before the dump).

Circle acquired Axelar but left Axelar token holders in the dark. AXL dumped. This is recent news so not sure what’s gonna happen next but the community is angry (as they should be).

The discourse between equity and token holders bring us to…..

4. Market-governed organizations & ownership coins

MetaDAO introduced a fair, transparent, unruggable ICO launchpad with high float, relatively low FDV structure, and no VC/private allocations. There are also mechanics like performance-based team unlocks and potential treasury clawbacks.

The structure gives token holders real ownership, real control, and real alignment addressing rugs, dumps, under-the-table deals, and misaligned acquisitions.

Colosseum, an independent org accelerating Solana ecosystem recently unveiled “STAMP” (Simple Token Agreement, Market Protected), a new investment contract specifically designed to bridge private VC raises into public MetaDAO ICOs, ensuring investor protections and alignment with MetaDAO’s on-chain governance.

MetaDAO gave rise to ownership coins, a category of projects launched via MetaDAO ICOs. Many of the launched projects have experienced highly positive price action — Umbra, Omnipair, Avici received massive demand during the raise, and their tokens significantly outperformed the market in 2025.

With MetaDAO model, all of this means, token holders are now important, token holders actually have a say in the business and own the business. No more funneling fee & revenue to equity instead of token holders.

The trend of market-governed organizations & ownership coins will likely permeate into 2026 which will coincide with……..

5. The rise of tokenized securities

On-chain liquidity is constrained, everyone focuses on fundamentals and revenue, buybacks, and so on.

Enterprises are adopting stablecoins, more institutions are deploying capital into crypto, and most recently tokenized securities are now significantly easier and much more viable than before particularly for regulated institutions.

Regulatory & relief for tokenized securities came recently on Dec 11,

no-action letter from the SEC explicitly states it won’t take enforcement action against DTCC’s subsidiary (DTC) for running a pilot for tokenizing Russell 1000 securities, U.S. Treasuries, and major ETFs.

This setup centralizes compliant tokenization through DTC for the pilot period (up to three years, starting in the second half of 2026), routing activity toward regulated infrastructure rather than fully decentralized alternatives.

All of this means we’ll get to see more tokenized securities in 2026 onwards which means more demand for tokenized stocks, bridging TradFi and Defi.

6. Consumer crypto & Perps at the heart of crypto

• Pumpfun peaked 24-25
• Virtuals followed similar model but with fresh AI agent narrative
• Zora basically did the same thing with content coins w/ Jesse support
• Collectibles, fantasy football, prediction markets became popular in 2025

All of these are consumer products that crypto-native (and non-crypto natives in PM case) can enjoy and make money at the same time.

Crypto in itself is a game, trading is an entertainment, so consumer products that feel fresh and can combine both together very well tend to stand out.

Perps is practically the same, people bet on an asset going up or down at the right time.

If you look at prediction market & perps headline metrics, they’re both at ATH in 2025. They’re literally screaming that this is Crypto PMF — PM weekly notional volume hit $3.8B while perps hit $340B weekly volume ($1.3T monthly volume, record highest).

This is why people are farming Hyperliquid, Lighter, Aster, Polymarket, Opinion, etc etc so much. Huge activity, huge demand, huge capital to go around which translate to higher valuation and more $$$ for airdrops.

Similar ideas for consumer crypto but we have yet to see sustainable consumer crypto yet in 2025. Sportsdotfun (SDF) showed good initial traction and is currently raising community round on Legion + Kraken. Remains to be seen how this category plays out but seems exciting so far.

The learning here is either you invest in the platform (invest in prediction markets, perps, consumer crypto products) OR be an active participants within these categories

• Learn to trade perps
• Predict in PMs
• Use that consumer crypto product

That’s where you can learn and find your edge in this market.

If not……

7. You can be a storyteller

Yep….

WSJ, Silicon Valley, tech bros been getting excited about “storyteller” lately. Many startups are opening job positions for “storyteller”.

I mean, this is pretty common in crypto at this point because we have yappers, KOLs, and storytellers talking about projects, contributing to the process of building crypto communities for years (even before the advent of “yappers” by Kaito).

But it seems like the entire world is waking up to the importance of having the right narrative, right ways to communicate their brands, their products, their positioning, and so on and so forth.

A storyteller goes beyond a yapper though. What we’re seeing so much of in crypto right now is yapper copy-pasting content to farm for yap, instead of people actually trying to learn & understand what they’re yapping about.

This opens up a gap for those who are in the know, specialists, or people who are really curious and like to learn, to standout on CT (and outside of CT).

Those who do it well can either scale their branding to the point where they can choose to do anything with it OR get acqui-hired by startups and projects that fit with your branding.

We literally saw this dynamic played out really well in 2025 with Kalshi hiring CT personas and crypto projects nailing close affiliates/ambassadors, sharing badges, etc.

Bottom Line

24-25 was like playing monopoly

26 is going to be like corporates, startups, the suits, less monopoly, less easy money, less number-go-up narratives,

It’s going to be more fundamentals, alignment, value accrual, and compounding leverage.

If you don’t develop real edge, it doesn’t matter if you’re an OG, you’ll be an exit liquidity.

Your edge could be not being delusional, know how to tell a story, build the right product that people need, spot the right trends, don’t trade with emotions, etc.

Stick around, form your edge, and you’ll be rewarded.

Personal Note: Thanks a lot for reading!

And if you want to see on projects that I’m excited for and unfiltered thoughts on things, check out The After Hour series on my Substack.

Disclaimer: This document is intended for informational & entertainment purposes only. The views expressed in this document are not, and should not be construed as, investment advice or recommendations. Recipients of this document should do their due diligence, taking into account their specific financial circumstances, investment objectives, and risk tolerance (which are not considered in this document) before investing. This document is not an offer, nor the solicitation of an offer, to buy or sell any of the assets mentioned herein

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