The true picture of cryptocurrencies heading into 2026 — a16z Crypto's 17 priorities, shifting from speculation to practicality

Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto asset division’s vision for 2026, announced at the annual series, is not just a wish list. It is a developer-oriented product roadmap that provides a concrete pathway for the industry to move away from speculative trading and toward infrastructure, privacy, and new economic models.

Revamping Stablecoins and Financial Infrastructure

At the core of a16z’s strategy are stablecoins. They are expected to function not merely as cash replacements within wallets but as a payment infrastructure that upgrades the banking ledger itself.

Better on-ramp and off-ramp solutions, native design in real-world asset tokenization—these require mechanisms that leverage the inherent properties of crypto assets rather than forcing them into traditional legacy financial models.

If applications can incorporate funds, yields, and payments directly into the user experience, the marketing slogan “the internet becomes a bank” will shift into an implementable architecture. When stablecoins and asset tokenization reach sufficient scale and regulatory transparency, applications will be able to provide custody, payments, and yield offerings without relying on traditional fintech stacks.

This signifies a fundamental evolution from crypto assets as assets to crypto assets as infrastructure.

Redefining Identity and Compliance

An era is approaching where software agents and automation services execute transactions on behalf of humans. To accommodate this, the industry must shift from traditional KYC(identity verification) to “KYA(Know Your Agent)”.

This approach, which verifies not only the human behind but also the agent’s logic, reputation, and constraints, will become important at every layer—from custody policies to on-chain dispute resolution.

Coexistence with AI—Fighting Invisible Taxes

AI is positioned not as a competitor but as a collaborator and challenger in the crypto space.

During the process of browsing, summarizing, and trading content, AI agents could capture the value of creators dependent on advertising and subscription models, potentially eroding the very business models of the web. A16z’s observation of this as “invisible taxes” calls for technical and economic countermeasures.

Designing new sponsored content models, incentive alignment among micro-attribution, nanopayments, and agent-creator platforms is an urgent task.

Privacy—The Strongest Fortress of Crypto Assets

Privacy will become the most critical competitive advantage in crypto assets. When networks host financial services tied to real economic activities, wages, healthcare, and identity, users and institutions will demand privacy guarantees beyond today’s public ledgers.

Investments in privacy-preserving technologies, more sophisticated zero-knowledge tools, and architectures that incorporate privacy as a first-class design constraint are expected.

Specific Implementation Items

Decentralized, quantum-resistant messaging systems, the rise of staked media(media companies and outlets demonstrating trustworthiness through tokenized interests), native tokenization of real-world assets(RWA) within crypto frameworks to enable frictionless pricing and exchange—these are not merely technical challenges.

Legal, economic, and product layer changes must align for the true potential of blockchain to be unleashed.

Until Regulation Catches Up

The final point emphasized by a16z is highly pragmatic. Building a legal framework that recognizes and accommodates blockchain architecture is the ultimate key.

Tokenized banking primitives, regulated stablecoins, and institutional custody with privacy guarantees—these require regulatory transparency and legal consistency to achieve real scale.

In other words, the technological future is sufficiently clear to design, but policy and legal foundations must catch up.

Vision for 2026

Overall, a16z Crypto’s priorities demonstrate a commitment to transforming crypto assets from volatile assets into practical infrastructure. This includes internet payment and settlement layers, new economic models rewarding creators in an AI-driven world, and privacy-focused systems capable of supporting real-world finance on-chain.

Whether the industry can execute these 17 items or regulators can scale them up—this will be the decisive question for the year.