From "speculative assets" to "next-generation financial infrastructure," is Crypto growing a new TradFi world?

Author: imToken

To speak frankly, over the past few years, most narratives in the crypto industry can be summarized by an almost obsessive question:

"What is the next asset that will rise?"

Since the DeFi Summer, NFTs, public chains/L2, re-staking, memes, and even AI tokens have made their appearances in succession. The technical logic and market background of different narratives vary, but ultimately they all return to how price performs. Even though stablecoins, wallets, and cross-chain bridges have clear tool attributes, the market's attention to them is often limited to how many transactions and speculative activities they can support.

However, entering 2026, a series of changes across different tracks began to emerge intensively within the same time window:

• The total market value of stablecoins reached approximately $300 billion, entering a high platform period of penetrating global payment networks;
• DTCC completed the first batch of asset tokenization conversions in a production environment and plans to officially launch related services in October;
• Prediction markets are transitioning from crypto-native products to brokerages and regulated exchanges;
• AI Agents are starting to autonomously purchase data, model calls, and digital services through stablecoins;

On the surface, these changes seem unrelated, but when put together, a more complete context emerges: The issuance, custody, trading, payment, and settlement capabilities accumulated by the crypto industry over the past decade are gradually opening up from serving crypto assets themselves to broader financial activities and the machine economy.

In other words, crypto has not escaped speculation, but beneath the speculative market, it is growing a layer of increasingly complete infrastructure.

1. Why Did These Breakthroughs Happen Almost Simultaneously?

Objectively speaking, RWA, stablecoins, prediction markets, and AI Agents are not receiving attention at the same stage due to the sudden emergence of a hot narrative.

The real reason lies in the fact that the different components required for a new financial infrastructure, after years of independent development, have finally begun to connect with each other.

1. Stablecoins Turn Currency into Callable Interfaces

First, stablecoins are no longer a new thing, but the role they play is changing.

As is well known, early stablecoins mainly undertook tasks such as exchange pricing, on-chain hedging, and crypto asset trading settlement, with the vast majority of funds still circulating within the crypto ecosystem. Nowadays, an increasing number of issuers, banks, payment institutions, and fintech companies are starting to use stablecoins for merchant payments, global payroll, corporate payments, fund aggregation, and cross-border settlements.

According to data disclosed by Circle in the first quarter of 2026, the network's annualized transaction volume based on nearly 30 days of trading at that time reached approximately $8.3 billion, and partner Nium's payment network covers over 190 countries and regions. This means that stablecoins are no longer just "on-chain dollars," but a form of currency that can be directly called by software.

It can be transferred around the clock, embedded in programs, automatically released based on conditions, and can directly become a settlement asset after a transaction is completed. Thus, for internet applications, sending a stablecoin is increasingly resembling calling a payment API, without needing to understand intermediary banks, clearing times, and cross-border account systems; one only needs to confirm the amount, address, and execution conditions.

This is also a key change as stablecoins transition from a crypto trading tool to payment infrastructure.

2. RWA Turns Assets into Programmable Objects

If stablecoins solve the question of "what money to settle with," RWA addresses "what assets can be traded and settled."

Past RWA products mostly focused on areas such as U.S. Treasury bonds, money market funds, and private credit, with the core value primarily being to allow crypto users to earn returns on off-chain assets. However, since last year, TradFi infrastructure has visibly begun to bring securities registration, custody, trading, and settlement processes on-chain.

On July 15, DTCC completed tokenized asset trading tests in a real production environment, with over 30 traditional financial institutions and digital asset companies participating, and plans to officially launch related services in October. Unlike ordinary asset mapping, DTCC plans to allow tokenized securities to retain all ownership, investor protection, and rights arrangements corresponding to traditional securities.

Earlier, the U.S. SEC had approved Nasdaq in March to allow eligible listed securities to be traded in tokenized form. Tokenized stocks use the same CUSIP as traditional stocks, possess the same substantive rights, and continue to trade under existing market systems and securities rules.

This is fundamentally different from simply issuing a "stock mapping token"; it means that on-chain assets are beginning to attempt to connect with real ownership, custody relationships, corporate actions, and legal rights, starting to carry part of the lifecycle of traditional assets.

Therefore, as this layer of connection gradually establishes, blockchain is not just creating new assets but also beginning to carry part of the operational process of traditional assets.

3. Prediction Markets Turn Future Information into Prices

Prediction markets fill in the layer of information and price discovery.

Stock trading is about future cash flows of companies, bond trading is about credit and interest rates, and prediction markets trade the probability of certain events occurring. Election results, interest rate decisions, sports events, corporate events, and even product release times can all be compressed into a continuously changing market price (see further reading "World Cup Frenzy, Prediction Markets on the Table: How Polymarket and Others Break into the Mainstream?").

Robinhood disclosed that its prediction market business had over 1 million users participating in its first year, with cumulative trades of about 9 billion contracts, and has acquired a CFTC-regulated exchange and clearing infrastructure. From an infrastructure perspective, prediction markets provide a capability that traditional financial markets find difficult to cover on a large scale, which is to aggregate dispersed information into a probability that can be read in real-time.

4. AI Agents Begin to Become New Economic Actors

While stablecoins and RWA address asset and funding issues, the new variable brought by AI Agents is who initiates economic activities.

Traditional software can only execute operations according to pre-set processes, while Agents can understand goals, seek services, compare prices, and make decisions within a certain range of authority. When Agents can autonomously purchase APIs, they are no longer just information tools but begin to become new economic actors.

The problem is that the amounts paid by many Agents may only be a few cents or even lower, and traditional bank card fixed fees are difficult to cover. Their fixed fees, settlement cycles, and identity verification processes are not inherently suitable for high-frequency, low-value, automated machine payments.

This is precisely where stablecoins and low-cost blockchains can play a role.

Coinbase has integrated x402 and stablecoin wallets into AWS Bedrock AgentCore, allowing businesses to set budgets and governance rules for Agents; Google's Agent Payments Protocol records what users allow Agents to purchase, the maximum amount, and who initiated the operation through cryptographically signed authorization credentials (see further reading "A Panorama of Crypto AI Protocols: How to Build a New Operating System for AI Agents Starting from Ethereum's Main Battlefield?").

2. What Capabilities Does the Next Generation of Financial Infrastructure Already Have?

Overall, the reason these lines are happening simultaneously is precisely because they are different components of the same system.

Stablecoins turn currency into APIs, RWA turns assets into programmable objects, prediction markets turn future information into prices, and AI Agents allow software to directly participate in asset exchanges for the first time.

However, it is worth mentioning that determining whether crypto has begun to become infrastructure does not mean judging whether speculation still exists in the market. Just as there are many speculative trades in the stock, forex, and commodity markets, the more important standard is whether external enterprises and users have begun to rely on a set of technologies to accomplish tasks that were previously difficult, too costly, or inefficient.

Based on this standard, crypto and Web3, as the next generation of financial infrastructure, have initially formed multi-layered capabilities.

The first layer is asset issuance and mapping.

Now, what can enter the blockchain is no longer just native tokens. Stablecoins, Treasury bonds, money market funds, private credit, gold, fund shares, and stocks have all appeared in different forms of on-chain products, and the significance of various assets going on-chain is not just putting a certificate into a wallet.

When assets can be recognized by smart contracts, they can directly enter processes such as collateralization, lending, trading, fund management, and automated investment. Operations originally scattered among registries, custodians, brokers, and clearing systems have the opportunity to be compressed into a more unified execution environment.

The second layer is round-the-clock payments and settlements.

Traditional cross-border payments typically require multiple intermediary banks and are subject to business hours, account systems, and regional network restrictions. Stablecoins can achieve near real-time, round-the-clock value transfers under a unified asset standard.

J.P. Morgan stated that Kinexys has processed over $4 trillion since its launch, with an average daily transaction volume exceeding $7 billion, and has expanded blockchain deposit accounts to various currencies including USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, HKD, SGD, and CNY.

In simple terms, on-chain settlement does not necessarily require all funds to be converted into publicly issued stablecoins; in the future, there may simultaneously exist bank deposit tokens, regulated stablecoins, central bank digital currencies, and on-chain commercial bank currencies. Their commonality is that funds can be read and dispatched by programs and completed in sync with asset delivery.

The third layer is continuous trading and price discovery.

Crypto has proven that markets can operate around the clock and can automatically match and manage liquidity through smart contracts.

This capability is being extended to more asset classes. Tokenized securities can shorten the time between trading and settlement, while prediction markets can provide probabilities for events that traditional finance finds difficult to price directly.

In the future, a company can not only hold on-chain money market funds but also automatically adjust cash positions based on interest rate prediction market changes; AI Agents may also read asset prices, event probabilities, and liquidity conditions simultaneously before deciding whether to execute trades.

At that point, the market will provide not just quotes for people to view but a set of real-time signals that can be directly called by software.

The fourth layer is identity, permissions, and authorization.

Financial activities are not just about transferring assets; they must also answer a series of questions: Who initiated the transaction? Who has the authority? How long does this authorization last? What is the maximum amount? Who is responsible if something goes wrong?

Early crypto primarily answered these questions through private keys, where holding a private key meant having full control. However, as enterprises, institutions, and AI Agents enter the blockchain, a single private key clearly cannot meet the complex permission management needs.

Google AP2 uses verifiable authorization to record user intent; Visa is establishing an Agent identity directory, credentials, and scoring mechanisms; Mastercard's Agent Pay for Machines attempts to provide identity verification, permission settings, transaction, and settlement capabilities for machines.

Account abstraction, Passkeys, multi-signature wallets, session keys, and spending policies also allow users to grant limited permissions to a specific application or Agent rather than handing over complete account control.

This means that the role of wallets may also change. Future wallets will not only store assets and private keys but also need to manage user identities, institutional credentials, Agent permissions, spending budgets, and authorization records, becoming a layer of control interface for users entering the on-chain economy (see further reading "Web3 Wallets in Ten Years: As the AI Tipping Point Accelerates, Insights into the New Map of Crypto Users").

The fifth layer is the connection with real legal and regulatory systems.

Whether a financial system can become a true infrastructure depends not only on whether the technology can operate but also on whether real laws recognize the results of transactions.

In January 2026, the U.S. SEC issued a statement on tokenized securities, clearly distinguishing between tokenized securities directly issued by issuers, tokenized rights formed by third-party custodians of underlying assets, and on-chain products that only provide synthetic price exposure. This distinction is very important because several products may look like "on-chain stocks," but the legal rights actually owned by holders may be completely different.

The CLARITY Act attempts to further delineate the regulatory scope between the SEC and CFTC and establish clearer rules around digital asset issuance, trading platforms, software developers, DeFi, and investor protection. The act is still controversial and has not yet completed legislation, but the regulatory focus has gradually shifted from "should crypto exist" to "who can issue, who is responsible for custody, and what rules apply to what assets."

This shift itself is an important signal of infrastructure development because only when participants can roughly judge their legal responsibilities can banks, brokerages, asset management institutions, and payment companies make long-term investments rather than just conducting isolated pilot projects.

3. The Inevitable Path from "Speculative Market" to "Infrastructure"

Is crypto transitioning from a speculative market to infrastructure?

The answer is affirmative, and this process is irreversible, but it is not an either-or substitution process.

Crypto will not suddenly lose its speculative attributes due to stablecoin payments and RWA growth; more accurately, it is building an execution system that can be jointly used by real assets, traditional institutions, and intelligent software beneath the original trading market.

This change is first reflected in the expansion of funding sources in the industry. In the past, a large portion of protocol revenue came from leveraged trading, asset issuance, clearing, and on-chain fund circulation. Now, a second type of cash flow is beginning to appear on-chain from external economic activities, with enterprises using stablecoins for cross-border settlements, funds distributing and managing assets through on-chain channels, software purchasing APIs on a per-use basis, and Agents automatically paying for data and model fees.

Secondly, the participants in the on-chain economy are also expanding. The typical users of the past were human traders sitting in front of screens clicking "confirm" and "sign"; in the future, a large number of on-chain interactions may be initiated by enterprise systems, payment programs, and AI Agents, with humans responsible for setting goals, boundaries, and permissions, while software handles specific execution.

Regulatory discussions are also changing. Past debates mainly revolved around whether crypto should be included in the existing financial system; now the questions are gradually shifting to how to delineate regulatory boundaries, protect investors, constrain intermediaries, while preserving space for self-custody and open software.

However, from "can operate" to "worth relying on long-term," crypto infrastructure still has a long way to go.

First, on-chain confirmation does not equate to legal finality. Who holds the assets behind the tokens, whether investors can retrieve assets after the issuing institution goes bankrupt, whether different jurisdictions recognize ownership transfers on-chain, and whether token holders actually have dividend rights, voting rights, or only price exposure—these questions cannot be resolved solely by smart contracts.

Agentic payments also face boundaries of responsibility. When an AI Agent executes an erroneous transaction due to misinformation, prompt injection, or model hallucination, determining whether the responsibility lies with the user, model provider, wallet, or merchant currently lacks a mature handling mechanism. In the future, wallets will need to address not only how to enable Agents to make payments but also how to limit which assets they can use, who they can pay, what the limits are, and how to pause and revoke permissions in case of anomalies.

At the same time, as the number of assets and networks increases, the issue of liquidity fragmentation may become more pronounced. The same stablecoin, fund, or security can be distributed across different public chains, bank ledgers, and permissioned networks but may not be able to circulate freely. The next phase is more important than continuing to issue more assets; it is about establishing unified asset standards, cross-network communication, and secure settlement mechanisms.

Privacy is also an unavoidable aspect for institutions. Public blockchains are beneficial for verification and auditing, but enterprises are unlikely to want to disclose all customer, supplier, payroll, and fund flow information. How to leverage zero-knowledge proofs, selective disclosures, and on-chain credentials to retain necessary privacy while meeting compliance requirements will directly determine how far on-chain finance can go.

The more fundamental issue is that while blockchain can improve transaction and settlement efficiency, it cannot automatically create credit. Credit loans, insurance, accounts receivable, default handling, and liquidity support in real financial systems require complex risk control, legal, and liability frameworks. Prediction markets will not naturally resolve issues such as insider information, liquidity shortages, and outcome adjudication simply because prices are public.

Therefore, today's crypto resembles a basic framework that has been set up for assets, currency, trading, and settlement, but credit, privacy, responsibility, and legal finality have yet to form a complete closed loop.

It is becoming infrastructure, but it is far from being a set of infrastructure that everyone can trust unconditionally.

In Conclusion

Looking back, what is most noteworthy in 2026 is not a sudden explosion in a single track, but rather several pieces of the puzzle that have developed independently in the past beginning to come together at the same stage.

Assets have taken on on-chain forms, currencies have become programmable vehicles, markets are starting to provide round-the-clock prices, software is gradually gaining payment and trading permissions, and regulation is moving from vague gray areas to more concrete boundary delineations.

These changes are not enough to prove that a "completely new financial system" has been established, but they are sufficient to indicate that the role of crypto is changing. It has not left the speculative market; rather, beneath the speculative market, it is gradually establishing an execution system that can be used by real assets, traditional institutions, and intelligent software.

Regardless, the crypto industry has undergone 15 years of evolution and has finally taken the most critical step from "a sociological experiment of digital gold" to "a high-frequency speculative casino," and now to "frictionless global financial infrastructure."

In the next 15 years, let us continue to witness.