Wintermute: 2026 The seven key areas we will focus on investing in

Wintermute

Compiled by: Ken, Chaincatcher

For decades, the internet has enabled information to flow freely across borders, platforms, and systems. However, the transfer of value has lagged behind. Money, assets, and financial protocols still operate on fragmented infrastructure built upon outdated rails, national borders, and intermediaries, which rent-seek at every stage.

This gap is closing at an unprecedented speed. It creates opportunities for companies that can directly replace traditional clearing, settlement, and custody functions. Infrastructure that allows value to flow as freely as information is no longer just theoretical; it is being built, deployed, and used at scale.

For years, the crypto space has mainly existed on-chain, disconnected from the real economy. That is changing. Crypto technology is becoming the clearing and settlement layer that the internet economy has long desired—a 24/7, transparent, permissionless system.

The following themes represent our predictions for the development of digital assets by 2026, and the directions that Wintermute Ventures is actively supporting among founders.

Everything is Tradeable

Through new financial primitives like prediction markets, tokenization, and derivatives, more and more assets and real-world outcomes are becoming tradable. This shift provides a liquidity layer for historically illiquid sectors.

Tokenization and synthetic assets bring liquidity to known assets. Prediction markets go further, pricing previously unpriceable things and transforming raw information into tradable tools.

Prediction markets will continue to expand as consumer products and new financial instruments, supporting hedging, outcome-based trading, and expressing views on granular events. They are also beginning to replace parts of traditional financial infrastructure.

Insurance is a compelling example: outcome-based markets can offer cheaper, more flexible hedging solutions by directly pricing specific risks instead of bundling them into broad products. Users won’t need to buy hurricane insurance covering entire regions; they can hedge against specific wind speeds at specific locations and times. Over longer periods, through smart agent workflows, these tailored risks can be curated and bundled to meet individual needs.

As prediction market infrastructure scales, entirely new data product categories will emerge around topics that have never been priced before. We expect markets specifically designed for trading and quantifying perceptions, sentiment, and collective opinions on objective indicators. These emerging markets are a natural extension of decentralized finance, unlocking new ways to price and exchange information itself. When everything is tradable, infrastructure that provides liquidity, price discovery, and settlement becomes critical.

This structural shift will concentrate value at the infrastructure layer, directly reshaping capital allocation. We are actively supporting the development of core markets and settlement infrastructure, data layers for verification and proof, and new data products emerging to support previously untradeable outcomes. We are also focused on novel abstraction models that make these markets programmable and composable, enabling integration into real-world workflows and replacing parts of traditional finance and insurance infrastructure.

Stablecoins as Trust Layer, Banks Handling Transitional Settlements

Digital assets lack the robust facilities like settlement banks and clearinghouses that serve as the lubricants of traditional finance. While stablecoins have achieved open access and programmable value, fragmentation caused by the absence of settlement infrastructure limits their application.

As stablecoin issuers adopt different collateral models across ecosystems, the need for an interoperability layer capable of reliably combining these assets is growing. To scale this system, crypto needs infrastructure that can perform cross-stablecoin and cross-chain net settlement, exchange, and clearing without adding extra credit risk, liquidity risk, or operational overhead.

The missing abstraction layer involves transferring exchange and credit risk to stablecoin issuers through asset-liability-based interoperability, rather than forcing end users to manage FX, routing, or counterparty exposure during cross-stablecoin transactions. We see this as an on-chain “agent bank” business capable of instant settlement and accessible to application builders. We expect more companies to position themselves as coordination layers between issuers and applications.

Markets Will Favor Sustainable, Persistent Income Over Temporary Incentives

Token-driven growth without sustainable business models is losing effectiveness. Companies relying on subsidies to users or liquidity providers, while operating fragile revenue structures, will find it increasingly difficult to compete.

Valuations will be more closely anchored to sustainable earnings and forward-looking forecasts, aligning with cash flow-based frameworks. Annualizing short-term, volatile monthly expenses is no longer a reliable measure of enterprise value, as profit quality and incentive alignment will become central. Without a reliable value capture path, demand after the speculative phase will be hard to sustain.

Therefore, companies issuing tokens early on will reduce their issuance. Many will default to “equity-first” structures, mainly using blockchain as back-end infrastructure, which remains largely invisible to users and investors. Even when tokens are used, issuance will increasingly occur after product-market fit is confirmed—once revenue, unit economics, distribution channels, and stakeholder incentives are aligned.

We see this shift as a healthy and necessary evolution that benefits the entire ecosystem. Founders can focus on building sustainable businesses rather than prematurely prioritizing token incentives and demand. Investors can evaluate companies using familiar financial frameworks. Users will access products designed for long-term value.

Decentralized Finance Will Merge with Fintech

The future of finance isn’t decentralized finance or traditional finance—it’s the integration of both. A dual-track architecture allows fintech applications to route transactions dynamically based on cost, speed, and yield.

Breakthrough consumer applications will resemble traditional fintech products, with underlying technologies like wallets, bridges, and blockchains fully abstracted. Capital efficiency, yields, settlement speed, and transparent execution will define the next generation of financial products.

As user experience merges with fintech, the industry’s foundational expansion continues rapidly. Tokenization and highly composable financial primitives drive this growth, enabling deeper liquidity and more complex financial products.

The importance of distribution capabilities will surpass interface ownership. Successful teams will build “backend-first” infrastructure that integrates with existing platforms and channels, rather than competing as standalone apps. Personalization, automation, and increasingly advanced AI will improve pricing, routing, and yield behind the scenes. Users won’t consciously choose decentralized finance; they will choose better, more user-friendly products.

Privacy Becomes a Fundamental Requirement

Privacy is gradually becoming a baseline for institutional adoption, shifting from a regulatory burden to a regulatory driver. Techniques like zero-knowledge proofs and multiparty computation enable selective disclosure, allowing participants to prove compliance without revealing raw data.

In practice, this means banks can assess creditworthiness without accessing transaction records, employers can verify employment without disclosing salaries, and financial institutions can prove reserves without revealing holdings. The concrete extension of this vision is that companies no longer need to store large amounts of data, freeing them from costly and cumbersome data privacy regulations. Technologies like private shared state, zero-knowledge transmission protocols, and multiparty computation unlock new on-chain activities such as undercollateralized lending, layered financing, and innovative on-chain risk products—shifting several previously off-chain structured finance activities onto the chain.

Regulation Shifts from Compliance Barrier to Distribution Advantage

Regulatory clarity has transitioned from an adversarial obstacle to a standardized distribution channel. While the early “permissionless” nature of decentralized finance remains a key driver of innovation, frameworks like the US “Genius Act,” the European “Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation,” and Hong Kong’s stablecoin regime are providing greater clarity for traditional institutions. By 2026, the focus will no longer be on whether institutions can use blockchain but on how they leverage these guidelines to replace traditional infrastructure with high-speed on-chain channels.

These standards will foster more compliant on-chain products, regulated onboarding and offboarding channels, and institutional-grade infrastructure—without forcing complete centralization—thus increasing institutional participation.

Regions that combine clear rules with rapid approval processes will attract more capital, talent, and experimentation, accelerating the normalization of on-chain value distribution in native cryptocurrencies and hybrid financial products, leaving slow-moving regimes behind.

The Internet Economy Built on Crypto Technology

The maturation of infrastructure is the overarching theme of this transformation. Crypto technology is becoming the clearing and settlement layer of the internet economy, enabling value to flow as freely as information. Protocols, primitives, and applications being built today are unlocking new forms of real-world economic activity and expanding possibilities online.

At Wintermute Ventures, we support founders building this infrastructure. We seek teams with deep technical expertise and strong product thinking. We look for those capable of delivering solutions that users truly want. We favor teams that operate within regulatory frameworks while advancing core principles of decentralization. We support those capable of creating long-lasting business models.

2026 will mark a turning point. For users, crypto infrastructure will increasingly operate behind the scenes, becoming the backbone of the global financial system. The best infrastructure is the one that quietly empowers people without seeking attention.