Digital assets are moving quietly yet inexorably from niche experiment to structural financial layer, and 2026 may be the year the broader market finally notices.
That’s the view from Fidelity Digital Assets, whose recent 2026 Look Ahead research report frames digital assets as undergoing the kind of fundamental transformation once seen in global trade, a point underscored by Fidelity VP of Research Chris Kuiper in a recent interview with CoinDesk
“Digital assets are approaching their shipping container moment,” Kuiper told CoinDesk, an analogy he borrows from The Box, Mark Levinson’s book about how a simple standardized metal container revolutionized global trade by retooling ports, logistics and supply chains. What seemed mundane in hindsight was decades in the making. The same is now happening in finance, he said.
Behind the scenes: retooling a financial industry
2025 looked flat on price charts, but Fidelity’s research argues the industry has been quietly retooling infrastructure, regulatory frameworks, and institutional workflows, laying groundwork for a breakout year in 2026. Much of this evolution is happening behind the scenes,through regulated products, custody solutions, and institutional strategies.
Kuiper echoes this, pointing to a parade of announcements in 2025 from major banks and brokerages signaling real commitments to building digital asset capabilities. “Every major bank announced last year that they intend to build some form of capability in digital assets,” he said.
“It takes a long time, you don’t see results immediately,” Kuiper said, but what’s clear to him: “This is not going away.”
From skepticism to acceptance
One subtle but significant shift last year was a cultural inflection point. 2025 was the first year in history where market participants stopped declaring bitcoin “dead.” Kuiper sees this as symbolic of broader acceptance, a transition from fringe speculation to an assumed future for the technology.
Digital assets are inching closer to integration with capital markets via exchange-traded products (ETPs), derivatives, tokenization and evolving legal frameworks that make them accessible to a broader investor base.
Tokenization is the process by which real-world assets are converted into blockchain-based tokens.
Institutional demand: from synthetic exposure to strategic reserves
Institutions, in Kuiper’s view, will continue to drive this evolution. Fidelity foresees firms expanding synthetic exposure, ways to participate in digital asset returns through derivatives and structured products, without diminishing bitcoin’s traditional appeal as a reserve asset.
Strategic companies are likely to keep building bitcoin reserves, while more conservative corporate treasuries make their first real steps into the space, the asset manager predicts. And behind those decisions are slow-moving but powerful capital allocators: pensions, endowments and foundations, some of the traditionally cautious segments that only recently opened the door to crypto allocations.
“The big pools of money, pensions, endowments, they’ve got boards and long processes to get approval,” he said. But cracks are starting to show. Harvard’s endowment making headlines for its digital asset exposure last year may be just the start.
Wealth managers, RIAs and the retail frontier
A quieter but potentially massive trend Kuiper sees brewing is in the advisory ecosystem. While many U.S. financial advisors technically can offer bitcoin and other digital assets to clients, the process has been cumbersome, full of hoops and risk-tolerance hurdles. That’s changing.
“Wealth managers and RIAs are going to offer crypto to more clients,” Kuiper said. With tens of trillions of dollars under advisement across RIAs and wire houses, even a slow, multi-year uptake represents a structural shift that few are pricing in correctly, he added.
“One of the most underestimated drivers of growth in this space is the continued adoption of crypto offerings by financial advisors for everyday investors (whether through ETPs or direct holdings). This multi-year trend has the potential to equate to tens of trillions of dollars and impact the investment landscape for years to come,” he said.
This shift matters, as advisors steadily allocating to bitcoin and other assets will create a consistent bid in markets, a demand floor that differs fundamentally from the wild sentiment-driven cycles of earlier years. It’s not instant, but it’s persistent.
Quantum concerns and Innovation
Fidelity’s research also touches on emerging technological issues that may shape 2026: quantum computing’s potential impact on cryptographic security, and the rise of “quantum-ready” solutions in custody and infrastructure. While new blockchain layers and tokens are already positioning themselves as quantum-resistant, custodians are preparing to stay ahead of evolving security needs.
Regulation as a catalyst?
On the regulatory front, Kuiper flagged ongoing U.S. market structure legislation that could be pivotal for institutional integration. “If that passes, in my opinion it will pave the way for traditional finance players and intermediaries to get the green light to continue to build,” he said, a potential accelerant for the bridges between crypto and legacy markets.
Looking ahead: more building, not just bullishness
What should markets expect in 2026? Kuiper’s answer is not fireworks so much as foundation-building.
“2026 may, in fact, follow a similar trajectory to what occurred in 2025, with digital assets continuing to integrate into the traditional financial system. Continued regulatory clarity could potentially accelerate momentum, making way for ongoing institutional participation, and over time, capital from pensions, endowments, and foundations could steadily enter the digital assets space as regulatory barriers evolve,” he said.
That aligns with Fidelity’s research view that while 2025 ended flat on price, structural tailwinds, from pension allocations to regulatory clarity and deeper market infrastructure, suggest digital assets could be poised for renewed all-time highs next year.
If bitcoin’s shipping container moment does arrive, it won’t be because of a sudden price explosion, but because an entire financial ecosystem, long in the making, finally clicks into place.
Read more: Digital assets to move from speculation to infrastructure in 2026, B. Riley says
