As digital assets and crypto have moved from the edges of financial services to take their place as a core technology, the leading entities involved are also taking greater control of the industry’s development. Coupled with the hands-off regulatory approach of the current administration, what comes next will be defined not by the government but by the decisions of the financial institutions themselves.
The new 2026 Digital Assets and Crypto Trends report from Javelin Strategy & Research focuses on the most important shifts that will affect the industry in the coming year. With the Digital Assets Market Clarity Act now making its way through Congress, the landscape is expected to get much smoother.
Regulatory Easing
The first major shift is the result of the green light regulators have given to major institutions, which can now focus on the underlying infrastructure that makes digital assets safe rather than trying to decide if crypto is reputationally acceptable. The industry has made significant progress in building out its extensive plumbing mechanisms, but room remains for regulators to step in to provide even more clarity. That would bolster confidence and gain even more participation from the major crypto players.
“The next area of infrastructure focus should be partnering with or building out solutions that can trade from or send payments from one blockchain to another,” said Joel Hugentobler, Cryptocurrency Analyst at Javelin and a co-author of the report. “Right now, they can’t really speak to each other. They’re running in parallel. If you send Solana, you have to have a Solana address on the receiving point as well. Having interoperability, where they can send Solana to somebody’s wallet, who can cash out in XYZ token, will alleviate a lot of headaches.”
Many of the players remain narrowly focused on a single rail. Visa and PayPal have integrated stablecoins into their payment processes, and they’re focusing on the specific network that carries those individual assets. It’s still too early to say which blockchain will win the day, but there is plenty of room—and even the need—for multiple rails.
“It’s going to be a world of many blockchains,” Hugentobler said. “They all offer different perks, such as different throughput and governance models. At the end of the day, one bank might prefer to use Solana because it’s so cheap, and another one might prefer Avalanche for its byzantine fault-tolerant consensus mechanism. It’s going to be tricky, but it needs to be done for these seamless transactions.”
Challenges for Custody Holders
Custody is another area seeing dramatic shifts, especially with the explosive growth of crypto ETFs in the past two years. Most of the Bitcoin ETFs get custodian services fromCoinbase, which has dominated the field with its extensive tooling and wire product suite. But given the reduction in reputational risk, more financial institutions are likely to get involved as custodians of their own.
“The custodians have to offer more services, rather than just be a wallet type of service to hold on to assets for safekeeping,” Hugentobler said. “There are many other applications that they will need to start building out.”
The next stage for the crypto industry is embedded delivery. That means not just safeguarding assets held in custody but also integrating with other networks or platforms, such as trading exchanges, payment networks, and settlement through a variety of mechanisms. Custody solution providers that don’t adapt and expand their product suite will fall behind.
Several financial institutions and hedge funds are looking for new opportunities in decentralized finance. They will be dependent on a custody provider to integrate seamless solutions to help them get involved in those markets. The most important needs include payout methods, stablecoin swaps, methods of getting yields, and other offerings that extend beyond just safekeeping Bitcoin.
Dangers of Falling Behind
If custodians don’t look to these new opportunities and integrate other solutions as well, they are likely to become a thing of the past. Hugentobler offered the example of NYDIG, which became a leader by offering custody solutions for Bitcoin but hasn’t really advanced its offerings since then. Meanwhile, other companies are offering custody solutions for at least the top 100 tokens, if not more.
“Coinbase is clearly the leader in this, offering a whole trading suite for futures,” Hugentobler said. “They bought out Darabit, which is an options platform, so people can trade to hedge or speculatively option contracts. They’re starting to integrate solutions with their base Layer 2, called Base Network. They’re definitely ahead of everybody else, but there are others, like Fireblocks, starting to get involved on the tokenization side.”
Digital asset treasury companies (DATS) are imitating Micro Strategy, loading up on Bitcoin and Ethereum and Solana to put on their balance sheet. The new accounting rules let them hold crypto as an appreciable asset. They have become able to send and receive digital assets, although most of their transactions are to and from custody.
The Rocketship Moment
Despite the crypto-friendly nature of the regulatory apparatus, Hugentobler thinks some reputational risk remains for more established financial institutions.
“It’s a newer technology,” he said. “There are a lot of challenges when you introduce new technology. But I think toward the end of next year, if we were to have this same conversation, I would say the reputational risk concerns are all in the past.”
If the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act passes, that will not only help with the reputational issues but also pave the way for even more growth. The draft currently circulating would establish a comprehensive, top-down regulatory framework for digital assets. It’s part of a growing bipartisan desire for clear oversight of the digital asset industry, one that should accelerate the participation of mainstream financial institutions in this market.
“The Clarity Act is all about market structure and consumer protections,” Hugentobler said. “Once that’s passed, that’s going to be the rocketship point, when a lot more financial institutions get involved.”
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