Silicon Valley Bank: 2026 as the year crypto becomes core financial plumbing

SVB frames 2026 as the year crypto is treated as core financial plumbing rather than an experimental sidebar, driven by four converging dynamics: institutional capital, payment-grade stablecoins, tokenization of real-world assets and AI-enabled execution. The bank highlights material private-market activity in 2025 — venture funding skewing toward larger, institutional-grade rounds, rising median check sizes and concentrated follow-on capital — and reports internal recovery metrics (roughly 2,100 new clients, $108 billion in client funds and $44 billion in loans at year-end) that it says reflect renewed enterprise demand for token-native services.

Independent industry tallies and conference reporting complement SVB’s view with additional, corroborating datapoints: dollar‑pegged stablecoin supply measured near $308 billion at peak 2025, on‑chain transaction flows in the tens of trillions for the year, and multiple estimates placing tokenized real‑world assets in the low‑to‑mid tens of billions. Those external measures are backed by discrete, operational proofs — from a $75 million institutional credit package issued natively on‑chain to sizeable growth and growth‑stage raises (including a noted $250 million growth round for a payments‑linked stablecoin issuer) — that show institutions testing on‑ledger balance‑sheet use cases.

M&A and buy‑rather‑than‑build behaviour accelerated: over 140 VC‑backed crypto targets were acquired in the year ending September (per SVB’s tally, a ~59% YoY increase), and several multi‑hundred‑million to multi‑billion dollar transactions signalled consolidation toward scale economics. At the same time, major financial firms and trading houses — including increased commitments from principal market‑making firms — are investing in validators, sequencers, custody and middleware to capture execution and UX layers where fee income is concentrating.

Regulatory and market‑utility pilots are reshaping practical guardrails: conditional charters, the GENIUS Act’s reserve and disclosure expectations, DTCC and exchange settlement experiments, and clearer SEC sequencing have nudged many participants toward custody‑integrated designs and legal wrappers that support institutional on‑chain activity. Platform‑level experiments (for example, Sui ecosystem product work and exchange‑led delivery‑versus‑payment pilots) further illustrate how low‑latency settlement and programmable compliance are being prioritized by institutional adopters.

Technological convergence with AI also matters: investment trends show a rising share of venture capital targeting blockchain projects that embed AI for agentic commerce, automated settlement and data monetization — a shift SVB links to more operationally driven product roadmaps rather than speculative narratives. The practical result for corporates and fintechs, SVB argues, will be near‑instant settlement options, lower transfer costs for treasury operations, and the need to align product, compliance and reserve practices to meet evolving federal standards.

SVB expects 2026 to favor consolidation into multiproduct platforms — exchanges, custodians and banks bundling custody, settlement and lending — while warning that concentration risks and composability exposures will require careful operational and regulatory design. In short, multiple market indicators and pilot outcomes across industry reporting reinforce SVB’s contention that the industry is moving from episodic pilots to production‑grade finance infrastructure, even as adoption will hinge on continued regulatory clarity and successful enterprise pilots.