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Happy Thursday, advisors!
Happy New Year!. As we enter 2026, the question for wealth management has fundamentally shifted. It is no longer “will digital assets matter?” but rather “can your firm afford to be the one that says no?”
Andreessen Horowitz declared 2025 as the year crypto went mainstream, and for good reason. Traditional finance (TradFi) isn’t just watching from afar anymore; it’s undergoing a massive structural upgrade. We are now seeing blockchain move from a ‘niche experiment’ to the base layer for financial systems because of its undeniable efficiency and transparency.
In today’s newsletter, Andy Baehr from CoinDesk Indices provides his 2026 crypto outlook covering banks, bitcoin, privacy and the abundance of product choice. In Ask an Expert, I cover top trends advisors need to know heading into this year.
Happy Reading.
– Sarah Morton
2026 Outlook: Thematic Development We Expect
If 2025 reminded us of anything, it’s that price or growth predictions can go awry. We prefer to focus on the thematic development–progress that investors and traders can look forward to and track to help deepen their conviction to deploy capital in digital assets. In 2025, we expected:
- Bitcoin volatility to decrease with wider user base and growing ETF options markets. ✅
- Bitcoin “adoption momentum” to accelerate, which we noted in ETF holdership, DATs, and early structured products. ✅
- Breadth and more broad-based rallies to create better definition of the digital asset class. We did see some evidence of this in Q2 and Q3, but more of this is needed: more broad-based rallies and more definition. ⌛
For 2026, here are some topics of thematic development we expect (and will be glad to see).
The year banks go degen?
Hamstrung by the statutory capital price tag of holding crypto, banks have allowed the crypto-native community another “headstart” year to drive adoption and innovation. Whether or not some banks’ skepticism of crypto is earnest or circumstantial, we expect that they will merge onto the road with more force and presence in 2026. Demand from clients, maintaining competitiveness, and sheer revenue potential will make any other choice unappealing.
The burden of choice
Traders and investors (especially retail) will face a dizzying array of new and newly-accessible crypto and blockchain-related products in 2026, particularly in the United States. Tokens (via CEXs and DEXs), ETFs on tokens, tokens on equities, prediction markets, DATs, structured products, yield products, 2nd-gen NFTs … the list goes on.
Furthermore, retention of assets on-chain via stablecoin and tokenized yield product wallets will draw new users into the fold. How many more friends will split dinner checks with $USDC? On the other end of the scale, now many more regulated futures contracts will be collateralized with $USDC?
The breadth of new crypto-linked ETFs, while offering maximum opportunities to traders, may overwhelm longer-term investors and their advisors (our designated “5%ers”), who simply want to “track crypto.”
We expect (self-referentially) that indexed financial products–ETFs, listed derivatives, structured products, and tokenized baskets–will become more available, broadly-referenced, and utilized. The winning index(es), which we predict will be CoinDesk 20 and CoinDesk 5, will become new liquidity engines for constituents.
Bitcoin and ‘everything else’
Bitcoin’s relative simplicity, internally-consistent use and investment cases, tenure, and US ETF head start have led it to represent “crypto” and the crypto market. High historical correlations between bitcoin and other crypto assets have supported this shorthanding.
In 2025, the focus on stablecoins, top Layer 1 protocols Ethereum and Solana, and staking have helped pave the educational road for new crypto adopters. Good progress has been made there, to help reinforce the intuition of bitcoin being one thing, and much of the rest of the digital asset class being something else.
We expect bitcoin’s correlation to the CoinDesk 20 Index to decline in the future (despite bitcoin being its largest constituent). We note that the 90-day correlation fell to around 0.80 during the height of the market in Q3, before ending the year above 0.95. We see lower correlations as a sign of health and greater opportunity.
Spotlight on privacy
Privacy has been a controversial topic in crypto. Not only does privacy violate the original spirit of bitcoin and crypto–radical decentralization–but has helped feed the “crypto is used by criminals” narrative (at times justifiably).
Ultimately, a financial system without privacy is untenable, and integration into traditional markets will require accommodation. 2025 saw the progress made by semi-privacy solutions such as Canton take greater root. On the other end of the scale, Zcash’s spectacular 10x return in Q4 (in an aforementioned “soft tape”) reminded us that the voices of the enthusiasts can often be the loudest.
For more, read the full Digital Assets: Quarterly Review and Outlook.
– Andy Baehr, CFA, head of product and research, CoinDesk Indices
Ask an Expert
Q. What should advisors know going into 2026?
We are currently facing a “triple threat” that is reshaping how money moves, how assets are held, and how clients expect to be served:
- Stablecoins: The world’s largest payment systems — Mastercard, Visa, and SWIFT — are already integrating blockchain and stablecoin payment rails. Money is now moving on-chain in minutes versus days, with a level of transparency that replaces the historical “black hole” of traditional wire transfers.
- Tokenization: From private equity to real estate, the “everything on-chain” movement is here. Tokenization is providing the fractional ownership and liquidity that legacy systems simply can’t match.
- Crypto Access: The largest asset manager in the world, BlackRock, has declared its bitcoin ETF (IBIT) as its biggest revenue generator — and it’s only two years old.
Q. What should advisors know now that the banks will be offering crypto?
Wall Street’s most prominent crypto skeptics have pivoted. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, once a vocal critic, conceded in late 2025 that “crypto is real” and that blockchain, stablecoins, and smart contracts are genuine innovations that will be used “by all of us to facilitate better transactions” (Coincub, 2025).
Major global institutions like BVBA, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley have officially moved beyond the “1% experiment.” Their investment committees are now recommending 1–4% portfolio allocations to digital assets for high-net-worth clients (TradingView, 2025).
The verdict: For advisors, the “career risk” has flipped. The danger is no longer in participation; the danger is now in under-allocation.
Q. What country is leading the bitcoin charge?
Based on the latest 13F filings, U.S. companies are leading the charge. While adoption isn’t just a U.S. story, American institutions are dominating the top 10 list.
Core items to note:
- BlackRock’s IBIT remains the commanding leader in the ETF space, reaching $50 billion in AUM in record time and accounting for approximately 59% of all spot bitcoin ETF assets as of late 2025.
- Strategy Inc. (MicroStrategy) continues its aggressive accumulation, with its total holdings representing over 3% of the total Bitcoin supply.
- Mubadala and the Abu Dhabi Investment Council (ADIC) significantly expanded their positions in late 2025, more than tripling their stakes in BlackRock’s IBIT as part of a long-term “digital gold” diversification strategy.
Q. What’s the most critical item facing advisors?
The most critical data point for the 2026 outlook isn’t a price target — it’s a client demand metric. 82% of investors now state they are more likely to work with an advisor who offers digital asset guidance (InvestmentNews, 2025).
Clients are no longer asking if they should buy bitcoin; they are asking how to secure it, how to report it for taxes, and how to integrate it into their estate plans. As Charles Schwab and Morgan Stanley ‘turn on’ direct access for their 15,000+ advisors this year, the competition for these assets will be fierce.
– Sarah Morton
Keep Reading
- Bitcoin ETFs saw over $1.2 billion inflows in the first few days of 2026.
- The White House declares that the ‘war on crypto’ is over.
- Bank of America advisors can now recommend crypto ETFs to their clients.
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