Digital Bytes 31st December 2025
Happy New Year
31st December 2025 Digital Bytes
According to Mirriam Webster, the word of the 2025 is “slop”, which stands for: “Digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” In keeping with the AI theme, the Collins Dictionary’s Word of the Year 2025 is “vibe coding”, referring to using AI with natural language prompts to create software.
Having fed our 2025 predictions into a selection of large language models (aka AI Bots), we were delighted to have been given an 85.9% accuracy score, so hopefully our predictions for 2026 will be similarly on the mark!!!
1. Continued growth of stablecoins
We could well see the total value of stablecoins grow from approximately $300billion to over $450billion as other jurisdictions will provide regulatory clarity (such as the UK, Australia and Canada). Therefore, expect to see more non-USD denominated stablecoins being issued with greater uptake from SMEs and also import-export businesses seeking more efficient and cheaper cross-border payments.
2. Open architecture becomes standard
Leading platforms will adopt multi-provider aggregation, offering both proprietary and third-party funds (traditional and tokenised) - mirroring Morgan Money’s approach of distributing products from 35+ fund families beyond just JP Morgan’s own offerings.Currently it is a challenge for banks with tokenised deposits to transfer payments, and the same is true for issuers of different stablecoins. We are likely to see new platforms emerge to allow much greater interoperability between various providers. The firms that control these platforms (JP Morgan, Goldman/BNY, State Street and likely Fidelity) will define tokenisation winners for the next decade, not because they have superior blockchain technology, but because they control the “front door” - the trusted portals through which institutional treasurers access tokenised products. Distribution trumps innovation.
3. Self-custody of digital assets to rise
Digital assets cover a multitude of assets including photos, healthcare records, passwords, downloaded music and films, cryptocurrencies, tokenised shares, bonds, funds, real estate even. Increasingly, companies and individuals will have some digital assets being held by traditional custodians and digital exchanges, and some of their digital assets will be in self-custody.
4. Inheritance of assets will increase
In 2025, it was estimated by the Economist that $6 trillion of assets will have been passed from one generation to another in developed nations during the year. This accounts for 10% of GDP across wealthy countries, with some nations seeing figures as high as 15%. Younger investors are more digitally engaged and potentially may never meet a stockbroker or bank manager, so how soon before their tokenised assets are managed by an AI bot 24/7?
5. Fertility rates continue to decline
Five of the ten biggest countries globally have a birth rate of less than 2.1%, so therefore face declining populations. Blockchain technology is already being used to hold sensitive medical records and AI is already being used to help in cases of infertility; these two technologies are likely to be used more so in 2026.
6. Private equity and private credit funds move on-chain to establish truth, not hype
By 2026, private markets will increasingly live on-chain, not to unlock instant liquidity, but to establish a shared, verifiable source of truth. As private equity, credit and infrastructure assets continue to outgrow public markets, their reliance on PDFs, quarterly reporting and manual reconciliation becomes incompatible with AI-driven decision-making and regulatory oversight. Tokenisation will be used primarily as a data and rights container-embedding ownership, cashflows, covenants and permissions into programmable, auditable objects. Blockchain becomes the neutral layer where institutions, regulators and machines can independently verify the same reality in real time.
7. AI becomes an economic actor and needs wallets
In 2026, AI systems will shift from advisory tools to active economic agents that allocate capital, manage assets and execute financial decisions within defined constraints. This transition is driven by the growing cost of decision latency in global markets and the inability of human approval loops to keep pace. To operate autonomously yet safely, AI requires native financial primitives: wallets for identity and authorisation, smart contracts for enforceable intent and on-chain assets for deterministic execution. Blockchain provides the only environment where machine actors can transact, be constrained and be audited without relying on human trust intermediaries.
8. Discretionary portfolios increase fund’s importance decline
As more assets become tokenised and are traded 24/7 using AI, we are likely to see growing use of discretionary portfolio management and copy trading as opposed to investors using funds. This trend will save investors having to pay fund administration fees but they will need to be cognisant of paying tax, especially if using copy trading where there can be a large number of transactions taking advantage of profiting from falling as well as rising prices.
9. Finance becomes invisible infrastructure embedded everywhere
Financial services will increasingly disappear as stand-alone products and re-emerge as invisible infrastructure embedded directly into software platforms, marketplaces and supply chains. Users will no longer “use” finance; capital, risk and settlement will simply occur in the background at the moment of need. This shift is enabled by programmable money and atomic settlement, allowing payments, lending, hedging and insurance to be triggered contextually rather than manually. Blockchain and digital assets make this possible by removing integration friction and enabling global, real-time financial logic to operate natively inside non-financial applications.
10. Regulation stops fighting blockchain and starts running on It
During 2026, regulators will increasingly adopt blockchain infrastructure, not as a tolerated novelty but as a supervisory tool. Traditional after-the-fact reporting cannot scale to AI- driven, always-on markets, pushing regulators toward continuous, rules-based oversight. On-chain compliance, programmable permissions and cryptographic proofs of reserves or liabilities will replace large parts of today’s manual reporting regimes. Blockchain offers regulators something legacy systems cannot: real-time visibility, selective disclosure and enforcement by code rather than trust or paperwork.
11. Globally a rise in the number of people using cryptocurrencies
Crypto user numbers grew significantly from 2024 into 2025, with estimates reaching around 650-861 million global users by 2025 (an increase from over 650 million in late 2024). This will lead to a growth in the number of people using a digital wallet to store their digital assets.
12. Capital becomes modular as ownership, yield and control split apart
Assets will no longer be treated as monolithic financial instruments but as modular stacks of distinct rights that can be unbundled and recombined. Different market participants increasingly want precise exposure-yield without control, upside without duration and governance without capital intensity. Tokenisation enables this dis-aggregation by representing specific, enforceable rights rather than vague claims. Blockchain turns capital into composable building blocks, allowing markets to price, trade and manage risk at a far more granular level than traditional financial structures allow.
13. Greater issuance of debt on chain
In 2026, expect more governments announce plans to issue digital debt instruments and corporations. Global sovereign issuance of debt, according to OECD, will be $22.5trillion. Global debt, including corporate bonds, was reported by Reuters topping $338 trillion.
14. RWAs become the institutional on-ramp, not the endgame
In 2025, real-world assets (RWAs) grew to $16.7billion. In 2026, they will emerge as the primary bridge between traditional finance and on-chain infrastructure but their importance lies less in novelty and more in necessity. Institutions will adopt RWAs to gain operational efficiency, transparency and programmability - not ideological exposure to crypto. Tokenised treasuries, private credit, funds and equities provide familiar economic profiles whilst introducing superior settlement, reporting and risk management capabilities. In 2026, RWAs will be viewed less as “crypto products” and more as upgraded financial instruments running on better rails.
15. Trust shifts from institutions to verifiable systems
In 2026, trust will increasingly be placed in systems rather than institutions. As global co- ordination intensifies and AI accelerates decision-making, trust based on brand, jurisdiction or reputation alone, becomes insufficient. Market participants (human and machine alike) will demand verifiable rules, transparent state and auditable history by default. Blockchain enables this shift by replacing belief with proof, whereby allowing trust to be established mathematically and enforced programmatically. In a fragmented world, credible neutrality becomes the most valuable infrastructure of all.
16. The user experience of banks to change
By 2026, retail banking will look less like a utility and more like a platform. For digital natives, banks will embed gamification, social features and crypto-native rewards directly into everyday finance. Savings, spending and investing will be incentivised through tokens, digital assets and community challenges, so blurring the line between finance, gaming and social media. Crypto assets will shift from speculation to behavioural tools, rewarding loyalty, education and healthy financial habits.
17. More digital asset treasuries to be created by private and publicly quoted companies
Bitcoin Treasury companies raised over $29billion in 2025 and we are likely to see more companies establishing digital asset treasuries (DAT) as well as existing DAT diversifying to survive, thus, in turn, becoming more akin to Bitcoin banks.
18. Global GDP growth hits 2.8%, fuelled by ai productivity and blockchain-enabled FinTech
With US leadership, AI will propel sturdy growth. Blockchain technology adds momentum via stablecoins overtaking legacy payment rails and tokenisation leading a new crypto adoption cycle. This combination could add 0.2-0.5% to global GDP through faster, cheaper cross-border finance, although uneven adoption amplifies inequality in emerging markets.
19. Central banks ease aggressively to 3% rates whilst addressing blockchain disruptions
Facing AI deflation, the Fed and peers cut rates to 3-3.25%, but blockchain’s rise (e.g., stablecoins challenging traditional banking) prompts regulatory tweaks - potentially new frameworks for crypto integration. This supports financial innovation but risks bubbles in tokenised assets, with banks pivoting to hybrid models.
We asked a selection of AI Bots for an analysis of 2025 trends, news reports and general market interest, with the ranking of search interest, from most to least popular, based on the words highlighted below:
1. “Crypto” and “Bitcoin” remain the most dominant and widely searched terms globally, often serving as the general entry point for public interest and mainstream media coverage.
2. “Blockchain” is a foundational technology term that maintains high, steady interest as the underlying infrastructure for digital assets and various applications.
3. “Stablecoins” have seen a significant surge in transaction volume and search interest, becoming a major part of the crypto ecosystem and a macro-economic force in 2025.
4. “Tokenization” (especially of “real world assets”) is a rapidly growing area, attracting significant institutional interest and is projected to expand significantly in the coming years, although current search volume is likely lower than the more established terms.
5. “Digital money” is a general consumer term, less specific than other terms but still relevant to the broader narrative of digital finance.
6. “CBDC” has a more specialised audience (primarily central banks, governments and financial institutions) leading to lower general public search volume.
7. “Digitization” is a broad business and tech term describing the process of converting information into a digital format. Whilst pervasive in 2025 business trends, its general usage is distinct from the more specific, trend-driven searches related to crypto and blockchain technology.
We would like to thank the following, as the above predictions are from them as well as the Digital Bytes Team:
Alex Bausch - 2Tokens; Helen Disney - Unblocked; Dan Feaheny - Treasuri; Matt Green - Partner Lawrence Stephenson; Korby Hayre - House of Block; David Parsons -TPX; Phillip Pieper - Swarm; Efi Pylarinou - Growfin; Dr Jane Thomason and James Tylee - Cyber.FM
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