4th January 2026 > > Tokenisation & crypto industry predictions.
- Jan 4
- 3 min read
tl;dr
The tokenisation news cycle has already started already. Some crypto industry predictions for 2026.
Market Wrap
With a near $4k gain since the year end close for 2025 of $87.5k, 2026 really could not have got off to a better start.
Curious Crypto’s Commentary – My key 2026 prediction
On the 2nd, January (https://www.curiouscryptos.com/post/2nd-january-2026-a-couple-of-thoughts-taxes), I commented in relation to the tokenisation of financial assets that “I am quietly confident that this will be the crypto story of 2026.”
Right on cue, this is happening already.
DTCC (Depositary Trust & Clearing Corporation) is a core part of the plumbing for the financial services industry. It provides clearing, settlement, and custody services for the broadest range of securities and some derivatives. It processes trillions of dollars of transactions every single day, ensuring fast settlement and security for both parties to any trade. One cannot underestimate how important DTCC is to the global capital markets.
DTCC has announced that is has been authorised by the SEC to “Offer New Tokenization Service, Paving the Way to Tokenized DTC-Custodied Assets”:
The authorisation comes in the form of a “No-Action Letter” which permits DTCC to offer tokenisation of the following assets, for a period of three years:
“Eligible Securities: limited to (i) securities in the Russell 1000 Index at the time the Preliminary Base Version launches as well as any additions to the index thereafter and notwithstanding the subsequent removal of any securities from the index, (ii) U.S. Treasury securities (i.e., bills, bonds, and notes), and (iii) ETFs that track major indices, such as the S&P 500 index and Nasdaq-100 index.”
Frank La Salla, President & CEO, DTCC, explains his vision:
“I want to thank the SEC for its trust in us. Tokenizing the U.S. securities market has the potential to yield transformational benefits such as collateral mobility, new trading modalities, 24/7 access and programmable assets, but this will only be achievable if market infrastructure provides a robust foundation to usher in this new digital era. We welcome this opportunity to further enable and innovate for the industry, our participants and their clients. We look forward to partnering across the industry to tokenize real-world assets safely and securely while advancing the future of finance for generations to come.”
Crucially, these digital tokenised versions of the assets will carry the same legal rights as the real-world asset – they will not merely be representations of the assets, but will be the actual asset itself, now recorded on the blockchain rather than merely as entry into an old-school and insecure database.
Matthew Sigel of VanEck knows the game:
“The SEC is giving the $100 trillion backbone of U.S. markets approval to tokenize stocks on blockchain”.
Any financial institution that does not embrace the tokenisation revolution powered by cryptos has a very short life expectancy.
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I think I might have mentioned in the past the Chainlink is going to be the central driver of providing market information for the tokenisation revolution. If you have not yet done your homework, you really need to get a wriggle on:
Curious Crypto’s Commentary – Some other predictions
Here is what a handful of crypto-adjacent companies have publicly suggested for how 2026 will pan out.
Andreessen Horowitz – “Privacy will be the most important moat in crypto”.
BlackRock – stablecoins will challenge government’s control over their domestic currencies, especially in emerging markets.
Coinbase – the convergence of autonomous A.I. agents and cryptos will be “… a fundamental shift towards the next stage of technological progress”.
Fidelity – “… more countries may buy bitcoin in the future due to game theory” as well as corporations, killing the four-year cycle.
Galaxy Digital – BTC will reach $250k.
J.P. Morgan – digital assets will post big wins in 2026.
OKX Ventures – 2026 will be the year of tokenisation (Editor – right!).
VanEck – the four-year cycle is intact (Editor – wrong!) meaning a flat year for crypto prices.
Vanguard – BTC is going to zero.
I hope you are as excited as I am to find out how many of these predictions turn out to be correct, or complete tosh.
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