$300 billion stablecoins: AI agents and RWA reshape the 2026 financial floor

According to Woofun AI, imToken points out that the crypto industry is undergoing a critical transformation from speculative assets to the next generation of financial infrastructure in 2026. RWA, stablecoins, prediction markets, and Agentic payments are not isolated hotspots, but are the result of simultaneous maturity of assets, currencies, identities, transactions, and settlement capabilities.

This shift indicates that Crypto is growing an increasingly complete layer of infrastructure under the speculative market. According to data compiled by Woofun AI, most of the narratives of the crypto industry over the past ten years revolved around “what is the next asset that will rise”. Starting with DeFi Suumer, NFTs, public chain/L2, re-staking, memes, and even AI tokens appeared in turns. Despite various technical logic and market backgrounds, they all eventually returned to price performance. Even when stablecoins, wallets, and cross-chain bridges have clear instrumental properties, market attention is often limited to the scale of speculative activity they carry.

After entering 2026, the four major tracks made intensive breakthroughs within the same year window. The total market value of stablecoins reached about 300 billion US dollars, entering a high-ranking platform period that penetrated global payment networks; DTCC completed the first batch of tokenized conversion of production environment assets and plans to officially launch services in October; predicting the market from native Crypto products to brokerage firms and regulated exchanges; and AI Agent began to independently purchase data, model calls, and digital services through stablecoins. These changes reveal the full context: the crypto industry's accumulated issuance, escrow, transaction, payment, and settlement capabilities are gradually opening up from serving crypto assets themselves to broader financial activities and the machine economy.

The role of stablecoins is evolving from an on-chain dollar to a callable payment API interface. In the early days, stablecoins mainly undertook exchange pricing, on-chain safe-haven, and internal settlement tasks. Today, issuers, banks, and payment institutions use them for merchant collections, global payroll, corporate payments, capital collection, and cross-border settlement. The network has an annualized transaction volume of approximately $8.3 billion based on nearly 30 days of transactions, and partner Nium's payment network covers more than 190 countries and regions.

This means that stablecoins have become a form of currency that can be directly called by software. They can be transferred around the clock, embedded in programs, automatically released according to conditions, and directly become settlement assets after the transaction is completed. For internet applications, sending stablecoins is becoming as simple as calling a payment API. There is no need to understand correspondent banks, settlement times, and cross-border account systems, and only confirmation of the amount, address, and execution conditions. The RWA breakthrough was reflected in traditional financial institutions bringing securities registration, escrow, trading, and settlement to the chain. In the past, most RWA products focused on US Treasury bonds, money market funds, and private credit. The core value was to allow Crypto users to obtain benefits from off-chain assets.

But since last year, the TradFi infrastructure has actively moved links to the chain. On July 15, DTCC completed the tokenized asset transaction test in an actual production environment. More than 30 traditional financial institutions and digital asset companies participated, and plans to officially launch the service in October. Unlike ordinary asset mapping, DTCC plans to allow tokenized securities to preserve the ownership, investor protection, and equity arrangements corresponding to traditional securities. Earlier, the US SEC approved NASDAQ (NDAQ.US) in March to allow eligible listed securities to be traded in tokenized form. Tokenized stocks use the same CUSIP as traditional stocks, have the same substantive rights, and continue to trade under the existing market system and securities rules.

This is fundamentally different from the simple issuance of “stock mapping tokens,” which means that on-chain assets are beginning to try to connect with real ownership, escrow relationships, corporate actions, and legal rights, and carry part of the life cycle of traditional assets. The prediction market and AI agent complement the roles of information price discovery and machine economy actors, respectively. Robinhood (HOOD.US) revealed that in the first year of its forecast market business, more than 1 million users participated, traded approximately 9 billion contracts, and acquired CFTC-regulated exchange and clearing infrastructure. The prediction market provides an ability that is difficult for traditional financial markets to cover on a large scale, that is, to gather scattered information into a probability that can be read in real time.

AI Agents bring a new variable: who initiates economic activity. Traditional software can only execute according to a pre-set process, while agents can understand goals, find services, compare prices, and make decisions within their authority. When an Agent can buy its own APIs, it becomes a new economic actor. Large agent payments may be only a few cents or less, traditional bank card fixed fees are difficult to cover, and the settlement cycle and authentication process are not suitable for high-frequency, small-amount, automated machine payments. This is exactly the scenario where stablecoins and low-cost blockchains can come into play.

Coinbase (COIN.US) has connected x402 and stablecoin wallets to AWS Bedrock AgentCore, allowing companies to set budgets and governance rules for agents; Google (GOOGL.US)'s Payments Agent Protocol uses cryptographically signed authorization credentials to record what users are allowed to buy, how much the maximum amount is, and who initiated the operation. Infrastructure capability layers 1 and 2 focus on asset issuance mapping and round-the-clock payment and settlement. Today, native tokens are no longer the only ones that can enter the chain; stablecoins, treasury bonds, money market funds, private credit, gold, fund shares, and stocks have all appeared in various forms of on-chain products.

When assets can be recognized by smart contracts, they can directly enter collateral, borrowing, trading, fund management, and automated investment processes. Operations originally scattered across registration agencies, custodians, brokers, and clearing systems have the opportunity to be compressed into a more unified execution environment. Traditional cross-border payments usually require multiple agent banks and are limited by business hours, account systems, and regional networks, while stablecoins can complete near-real-time 24/7 value transfers under uniform asset standards. J.P. Morgan (JPM.US) said that since its launch, Kinexys's cumulative processing amount has exceeded 4 trillion US dollars, the average daily transaction volume has exceeded 7 billion US dollars, and has expanded blockchain deposit accounts to various currencies such as US dollars, euros, pounds, Japanese yen, Hong Kong dollars, Singapore dollars, and RMB.

On-chain settlement does not necessarily require all funds to be converted into publicly issued stablecoins. In the future, there may also be bank deposit tokens, regulated stablecoins, central bank digital currencies, and on-chain commercial bank currencies. What they all have in common is that funds can be read and dispatched by a program, and completed simultaneously with asset delivery. Infrastructure capability levels 3 and 4 cover continuous transaction price discovery and identity authorization. Crypto has proven that the market operates around the clock and automatically matches and manages liquidity through smart contracts.

This capability is being carried to more asset classes. Tokenized securities can shorten the time between transaction and settlement, while predicting the market provides probabilities for events that are difficult for traditional finance to directly price. In the future, an enterprise can not only hold on-chain money market funds, but can also predict market changes and automatically adjust cash positions based on interest rates; AI Agents may also read asset prices, event probabilities, and liquidity conditions at the same time to decide whether to execute transactions. At that time, the market will no longer provide just offers for people to view, but a set of real-time signals that can be directly called up by software. Financial activities don't just transfer assets; they also have to answer who initiated the transaction, who has authority, how long the authorization lasts, what the maximum amount is, and who is responsible for problems.

Early Crypto mainly used private keys to answer these questions, and holding a private key meant that you had full control. However, once enterprises, institutions, and AI agents enter the chain, it is clear that a single private key cannot meet complex rights management requirements. Google (GOOGL.US) AP2 uses verifiable authorization to record user intent; Visa (V.US) is establishing an agent identity directory, certificate, and scoring mechanism; and Mastercard (MA.US) Agent Pay for Machines is trying to provide machines with authentication, permission settings, transaction, and settlement capabilities. Account abstractions, passkeys, multi-signature wallets, session keys, and spending strategies also allow users to hand over limited permissions to an app or agent instead of directly handing over full account control.

This means that the role of wallets may also change. Future wallets will not only store assets and private keys, but will also need to manage user identities, agency credentials, agent permissions, consumption budgets, and authorization records, and become a layer of control interface for users to enter the on-chain economy. Infrastructure Capability Level 5 and regulatory challenges involve the end of the law, boundaries of responsibility, and fragmentation of mobility. In January 2026, the US SEC issued instructions on tokenized securities, clearly distinguishing between tokenized securities directly issued by issuers, tokenized rights formed by third parties hosting underlying assets, and on-chain products that only provide synthetic price exposure.

This distinction is important because several products look like “on-chain stocks,” but the actual legal rights of the holders may be completely different. The CLARITY Act seeks to further delineate the scope of SEC and CFTC regulations and establish more clear rules around digital asset issuance, trading platforms, software developers, DeFi, and investor protection. The bill is still controversial, and legislation has yet to be completed, but the regulatory focus has gradually shifted from “whether crypto should be allowed to exist” to “who can issue it, who is responsible for custodianship, and what rules apply to what assets.”

This transformation itself is an important signal of infrastructureization, because banks, brokerage firms, asset managers, and payment companies can only make long-term investments, rather than just carry out isolated pilot projects, if participants can roughly judge their legal responsibilities. Agentic payments also face boundaries of responsibility. When an AI agent performs an erroneous transaction due to an error message, prompt injection, or model illusion, whether the responsibility lies with the user, model provider, wallet, or merchant, there is still no mature processing mechanism. What wallets need to solve in the future is not only how to let agents pay, but also how to limit what assets it can use, who it can pay for, and how to suspend and revoke permissions after an exception occurs.

At the same time, the more assets and networks, the problem of fragmented liquidity may become more prominent. The same stablecoin, fund, or security can be distributed across different public chains, bank ledgers, and licensing networks, but they may not circulate freely. The next stage, which is more important than continuing to issue more assets, is to establish uniform asset standards, cross-network communication, and secure settlement mechanisms. Privacy is also a part of institutional adoption that cannot be circumvented. Public blockchains facilitate verification and auditing, but companies won't be willing to disclose all customers, suppliers, wages, and capital flows. How to use zero-knowledge proofs, selective disclosure, and on-chain certificates to maintain necessary privacy while meeting compliance requirements will directly determine how far on-chain finance can go. The more fundamental problem is that blockchain can improve transaction and settlement efficiency, but it cannot automatically create credit.

Credit loans, insurance, accounts receivable, default disposal, and liquidity support in a real financial system require complex risk control, laws, and liability systems. The forecast market will also naturally resolve issues such as insider information, insufficient liquidity, and rulings due to price disclosure. As a result, today's Crypto is more like having set up a basic framework for assets, currency, transactions, and settlement, yet ultimately, a complete closed loop of credit, privacy, responsibility, and law has not formed a complete closed loop. It's becoming infrastructure, but it's far from being an infrastructure that can be trusted unconditionally by all. After 15 years of evolution, Crypto has taken the most critical step, from sociological experiments with digital gold to high-frequency speculative casinos to frictionless global financial infrastructure. The industry will continue to witness this process over the next 15 years.