Binance Research crypto outlook for 2026 builds on a pivotal 2025 for Bitcoin, DeFi and stablecoins

Binance Research’s latest crypto outlook frames 2025 as a year of structural progress and sets the stage for a more adoption-led 2026.

How 2025 reshaped crypto market structure

Binance Research’s full-year report reviews what defined crypto markets in 2025 and outlines key themes for 2026. Moreover, the study focuses on structural shifts rather than short-term price action, highlighting clearer regulatory frameworks, expanding institutional access, and the rise of stablecoins as core settlement infrastructure.

According to the report, DeFi continued to mature into a cash-flow generating sector, while tokenization advanced from pilot experiments to production-grade workflows. That said, the authors stress that the most important signals came from usage tied to real economic activity rather than speculative bursts.

2025: structural gains amid macro-driven volatility

In 2025, total crypto market capitalization surpassed $4 trillion for the first time, while Bitcoin set a new all-time high of $126,000. However, macro uncertainty around monetary policy, trade tensions, and geopolitical risk drove choppy trading conditions across digital assets.

Binance Research describes a year of “data fog” shaped by a new U.S. administration, the Liberation Day tariff shock, and a government shutdown that obscured key economic signals. Over the year, total market value swung between about $2.4 trillion and $4.2 trillion, ultimately ending 2025 down roughly 7.9%.

The optimistic interpretation is that infrastructure, access, and rulemaking advanced even when prices did not. Moreover, many of the strongest growth pockets were linked to practical usage: institutional-grade access channels, compliant settlement rails, and applications building recurring revenue streams instead of one-off hype cycles.

Industrialization: from raw activity to economic relevance

The report frames 2025 as a year of industrialization, where markets increasingly rewarded robust infrastructure and credible access routes. Regulatory clarity, particularly around stablecoins, combined with the expansion of regulated investment products to broaden participation by institutions and sophisticated investors.

At the same time, crypto’s economic center of gravity shifted toward compliance-friendly building blocks. These included stablecoins for settlement, tokenized treasuries for on-chain cash management, and applications designed to monetize recurring flows. However, simple activity metrics became weaker signals of value.

Binance Research repeatedly distinguishes between raw usage and economic relevance. What matters, the report argues, is whether a network or protocol can capture recurring value, generate durable fees or revenue, and support reliable settlement and trading services.

Bitcoin increasingly trades as a macro asset

Bitcoin’s 2025 performance underscored its evolution into a macro asset held through regulated channels. BTC maintained roughly 58% to 60% market dominance and a capitalization near $1.8 trillion, even as more demand and liquidity flowed through off-chain financial products.

Two data points in the report anchor this shift. First, U.S. spot BTC ETFs saw over $21 billion in net inflows, highlighting strong bitcoin institutional demand. Second, corporate holdings surpassed 1.1 million BTC, equal to about 5.5% of total supply, underscoring the role of treasuries and balance sheets.

By contrast, on-chain activity softened: active addresses fell around 16% year over year, and transaction counts stayed below prior cycle peaks. However, network security continued to strengthen, with hash rate exceeding 1 zettahash per second and mining difficulty rising about 36% year over year. In sum, Bitcoin is increasingly defined by its role in macro portfolios and regulated markets rather than purely by base-layer usage.

DeFi’s blue-chip turn and the rise of tokenized assets

DeFi in 2025 moved further away from incentives-led growth and closer to capital efficiency and compliance. Total value locked stabilized near $124.4 billion, while capital composition shifted toward stablecoins and yield-bearing assets instead of inflationary tokens.

Economic output from DeFi strengthened as protocol revenue reached $16.2 billion, a level Binance Research notes is comparable to major traditional financial institutions. Moreover, the report highlights that this revenue came increasingly from sustainable activity rather than temporary liquidity mining programs.

Tokenization also shifted from narrative to core collateral. RWA total value locked climbed to $17 billion and surpassed DEXs, driven by tokenized treasuries and equities. This evolution changes what backs on-chain finance: when collateral consists of yield-bearing, real-world instruments, DeFi becomes more anchored to repeatable financial demand.

The report further observes that on-chain execution continued gaining relevance. DEX-to-CEX spot trading ratios peaked near 20%, signaling that decentralized venues are now meaningful execution hubs for specific flows. However, ratios remain cyclical, and long-term growth depends on deeper stablecoin liquidity and more liquid tokenized collateral.

Stablecoins solidify as internet-native fiat rails

Among all crypto segments, stablecoins were the clearest mainstream success story of 2025. Binance Research portrays them as having matured into default settlement rails for both on-chain and cross-border activity.

Key data from the report include total stablecoin market capitalization rising nearly 50% to more than $305 billion. Daily transaction volumes averaged about $3.54 trillion, while annual transaction volume reached $33 trillion, compared to approximately $16 trillion for Visa.

Regulatory clarity accelerated, led by the U.S. GENIUS Act, while issuer competition expanded beyond the historic duopoly. In particular, BUIDL, PYUSD, RLUSD, USD1, USDf, and USDtB each surpassed $1 billion in market capitalization. Moreover, the report argues that stablecoins now serve as both a medium of exchange in crypto markets and a practical rail for payments and fintech applications.

By abstracting away volatility, stablecoins allow users and businesses to leverage crypto infrastructure without directly holding more volatile tokens. That said, ongoing compliance standards and reserve transparency will remain central to sustaining trust in these “internet fiat” instruments.

Layer-1 and layer-2 networks: monetization over raw throughput

Across layer-1 ecosystems, 2025 reinforced that transaction counts alone are insufficient to support value. Many networks struggled to convert activity into fees, value capture, or durable token performance, while others differentiated through recurring monetizable flows such as trading, payments, and institutional settlement.

Ethereum remained dominant in developer activity, DeFi liquidity, and aggregate value. However, fee compression driven by rollup execution weighed on ETH performance relative to BTC. Moreover, cheaper blockspace forced attention toward where economic value actually accrues in the stack.

Solana sustained high usage, expanded stablecoin supply, and generated meaningful protocol revenue even after speculative surges faded. It also secured U.S. spot ETF approval, improving institutional accessibility. Meanwhile, BNB Chain benefited from strong retail transaction demand and market narratives, which supported large stablecoin settlement flows and RWA deployments. The report identifies BNB as the best-performing major crypto asset in 2025.

Layer-2 networks accounted for more than 90% of Ethereum-related execution in 2025, aided by upgrades that reduced data availability costs. Activity and fees concentrated among a small number of rollups such as Base and Arbitrum, while many others faded as incentives waned. However, fragmentation across more than 100 rollups and uneven sequencer decentralization remain constraints.

These dynamics reinforce a core 2026 theme: as blockspace becomes cheaper and more abundant, value capture may migrate “upstream” to the application layer that owns the user relationship. In this context, wallets, aggregators, DEXs, and specialized front ends could capture a larger share of revenue than the underlying blockspace providers.

2026 crypto outlook: risk reset and adoption-led growth

The report’s 2026 crypto outlook centers on a more constructive policy backdrop and a shift toward adoption-driven growth. Binance Research argues that macro conditions, product innovation, and market structure are aligning in ways that may favor verifiable and compliant systems.

On the macro side, the authors highlight a potential “policy triumvirate” of monetary easing, fiscal stimulus via cash and tax refunds, and deregulation. Historically, when financial conditions loosen, risk assets often benefit, and crypto has been highly sensitive to global liquidity cycles. Moreover, the report flags the possible creation of a U.S. Strategic BTC Reserve as a notable policy catalyst.

On the product and market-structure front, Binance Research expects less reliance on single, sweeping narratives. Instead, it outlines several areas where durable usage could concentrate: PayFi, institutionalization of on-chain markets, application-layer value capture, “intelligent” finance, and prediction markets.

PayFi, institutional workflows and value capture

PayFi refers to the convergence of neobanks and wallets, where yield-bearing stablecoins underpin new consumer financial applications. In this model, everyday users interact with familiar interfaces while on-chain infrastructure and stablecoins power yield and settlement in the background.

Institutionalization is another major theme, with on-chain money markets, tokenized treasuries, and RWA-based settlement expected to be embedded more deeply into institutional workflows. That said, successful deployments will depend on compliance, integration with existing systems, and demonstrable efficiency gains.

As blockspace costs fall, Binance Research expects more value to accrue to applications that directly control user relationships. Wallets, aggregators, DEXs, and prediction markets may capture a larger portion of fees and revenue, while base-layer protocols function increasingly as commoditized infrastructure.

Intelligent finance and prediction markets

The report also points to the rise of “intelligent” and agentic finance, where AI-driven execution, automated workflows, and new trust-tooling frameworks coordinate capital. However, regulatory and governance questions around autonomous agents will need careful navigation.

Prediction markets are highlighted as a complementary way to price information, offering an alternative to opinion-driven narratives. By aggregating capital-weighted views on events, these markets can potentially improve decision-making for both individuals and institutions, especially in uncertain macro environments.

Conclusion: foundations for the next phase of adoption

Across 2025, crypto continued to progress despite macro headwinds and volatile price action. Bitcoin demand increasingly flowed through regulated channels, stablecoins scaled into core settlement infrastructure, DeFi consolidated as a revenue-generating sector, and tokenization moved closer to production-grade finance.

Looking ahead to 2026, Binance Research’s crypto outlook builds on these foundations: greater institutional integration, deeper application-layer adoption, and a macro setup that could turn more supportive. In this framework, systems that are verifiable, compliant, and built around recurring utility appear best positioned for the next phase of crypto’s evolution.