Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has identified stablecoins, real-world asset tokenization and privacy infrastructure as some of the most important forces set to shape the crypto industry in 2026, according to research published by its crypto team.

Stablecoins Move Into the Mainstream

The report argues that stablecoins have already reached mainstream scale citing an estimated $46 trillion in transaction volume last year — a level that rivals or exceeds major payment networks such as PayPal and approaches U.S. ACH volumes.

While sending stablecoins has become near-instant and extremely low-cost, a16z researchers said the next major challenge lies in building better on-ramps and off-ramps that connect digital dollars to everyday financial systems.

17 things we're excited about for crypto in 2026

1. Better, more clever onramps/ offramps for stablecoins

2. Thinking about tokenization of real world assets, and stablecoins, in a more crypto-native way

3. Stablecoins unlock the bank ledger upgrade cycle — and new payment scenarios

4. The internet becomes the bank

5. Wealth management for all

6. From know your customer (KYC) to ‘know your agent’ (KYA)

7. We’ll use AI for substantive research tasks

8.The invisible tax on the open web

9. Privacy will be the most important moat in crypto

10. The (near) future of messaging isn’t just quantum-resistant. It’s decentralized

11. ‘Secrets-as-a-service’

12. From ‘code is law’ to ‘spec is law’

13. Prediction markets go bigger, broader, and smarter

14. The rise of staked media

15. Crypto offers a new primitive for use beyond blockchains

16. Trading as a way station, not the last stop, for crypto businesses

17. Unleashing the full potential of blockchains… when legal architecture finally matches technical architecture

Stablecoins accounted for an estimated 46 trillion dollars in transaction volume last year, constantly hitting new all time highs. To put that into perspective, that’s more than 20x the volume of PayPal; close to 3x the volume of Visa (one of the largest payment networks in the world); and is rapidly approaching the volume of ACH, the electronic network for financial transactions like direct deposits and more in the United States.

Today, you can send a stablecoin in less than a second for less than a cent. What remains unsolved, however, is how to connect these digital dollars to the financial rails people actually use already every day in other words, on/offramps for stablecoins.