With a crypto-friendly White House, growing institutional adoption, and a wave of spot ETF approvals on the horizon, some analysts believe 2026 could be a breakout year for digital assets—even as Bitcoin closed 2025 with its first annual decline since 2022.
Crypto YouTuber Jesse Eckel, who has 276,000 subscribers, declared in his 2026 predictions video that “2026 is going to be the bull run and alt season that everyone expected 2025 to be.”
“The Bull Run Everyone Expected in 2025”
“I sold my house. Everything is invested in this bet,” Eckel said. “If I’m wrong about this, I accept those consequences.”
Eckel admitted his 2025 predictions were “a huge failure,” particularly his call for an alt season in February 2025. Instead, altcoins plummeted amid market turmoil related to tariffs. This miss prompted him to re-evaluate the four-year cycle theory in its entirety.
“The 2025 rally wasn’t driven by a huge macro wave in liquidity like past cycles,” Eckel explained. “It was driven by narrative plus institutional flows—entirely different from what we’d seen before.”
He now predicts that by summer 2026, “everyone will accept that the four-year cycle is dead.” When that recognition hits, he expects “an epic reversal as all the good news that has been ignored gets priced in at once.”
Eckel outlined 10 catalysts he believes will drive the 2026 bull market:
Stablecoin explosion: Growth will dwarf 2025, with Wall Street recognizing stablecoins as crypto’s biggest success story. As crypto-native on-ramps, they’ll facilitate easier capital flows into other digital assets.
AI projects outperform: AI-related crypto projects will lead alt season gains, with at least one crossing $100 billion in market cap.
Market structure bill passage: Regulatory clarity will open the floodgates for ICOs and token launches, directly benefiting altcoins more than Bitcoin.
BTC and ETH ETF flows double: After macro headwinds suppressed 2025 flows, a liquidity-positive 2026 should drive at least 2x growth.
Altcoin ETF breakthrough: At least one altcoin ETF—whether Solana, XRP, or Dogecoin—will gain serious traction and spark speculation around future approvals.
At least three rate cuts: Following three cuts in late 2025, Eckel expects at least three more in 2026.
Trump-Bessent stimulus push: With midterms approaching, the administration will “stimulate any way physically possible,” potentially including stimulus checks.
For price targets, Eckel raised his Bitcoin cycle peak forecast to $170,000-$250,000, up from his previous $170,000 call, reflecting the extended timeframe into 2026. He maintained his Ethereum target at $10,000-$20,000.
“If I’m wrong about this one two years in a row, it almost becomes inexcusable,” Eckel admitted. “I might actually just call it quits.”
Stablecoins, RWA Tokenization to Drive Institutional Adoption
DeFi Technologies President Andrew Forson echoed the bullish sentiment in an interview, predicting that “institutional adoption will continue to accelerate in 2026.” He said that blockchain technology will be “deployed in more places, in more technologies, in more utilizations.”
Forson identified stablecoins as crypto’s “killer app,” explaining their central role in the digital asset ecosystem.
“Every stablecoin actually exists on a distributed ledger, on a decentralized ledger,” he said. “Every time we hear discussion of a stablecoin, there are a number of underlying blockchains upon which that stablecoin resides in order to validate the transactions.”
This infrastructure creates what Forson described as seamless “fluidity” between different asset classes.
“You will be able to park your assets in an instrument like a Bitcoin or an Ether or in one of our exchange-traded products and then move it back into an on-chain instrument and back into the stablecoin space,” he explained. “You have fluidity and fast resolution of assets going from the stablecoin space into yield-generating assets and back into the fiat equivalent.”
Beyond stablecoins, Forson highlighted the accelerating trend of real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. “Increasingly, we’re seeing that institutions are actually moving other assets on-chain, including stocks, bonds, commodities,” he noted. “This will only increase utilization and therefore the underlying values of these digital assets.”
Forson also pointed to the convergence of AI and blockchain as an emerging use case. “Provenance for some data sources has to be proven, and a great way of proving the provenance of data to be used to train an AI model is by actually logging this information onto the blockchain,” he said.
The second major use case, according to Forson, involves traditional finance infrastructure. “The ability to settle assets, equities, bonds, trade globally, quickly, and bring additional liquidity into that space. All of these things are made more possible, more flexible by leveraging distributed ledgers.” He added that DeFi Technologies plans to focus on this area in the coming years.
Not Everyone Is Convinced
Not all analysts share this optimism. Some warn that the crypto winter could return in 2026. They point to Bitcoin’s 30%-plus decline from its 52-week high and the exhaustion of major catalysts. Bears also question whether Bitcoin treasury strategies can sustain demand.
For bearish perspectives on 2026, see our coverage here.
