Coinbase Institutional Outlook Report: Next Year Will See "DeFi 2.0," Privacy, AI, and RWA Will Be Key Focus Areas

BlockBeats News, December 20th, Coinbase Institutional released the "2026 Crypto Market Outlook" report, analyzing the macro environment, regulatory progress, technological evolution, and application trends of the crypto market in 2026. The report believes that the U.S. economy remains resilient, but uncertainty remains high.

In the first half of 2026, the crypto market environment is more similar to 1996 than 1999. Regarding institutional participation, Coinbase proposes the "DAT 2.0" model, suggesting that institutions will shift from simple asset allocation to more professional trading, custody, and block space access. On the technological and application front, as institutional adoption increases, the demand for privacy technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs and fully homomorphic encryption is rising. The integration of AI and crypto for automated agents, application-specific blockchains and cross-chain interoperability, as well as asset tokenization (including tokenized stocks), are seen as important directions.