São Paulo-based crypto alternate Mercado Bitcoin (MB), one of many largest buying and selling platforms in Latin America, has launched a report outlining six key traits anticipated to outline the crypto market in 2026.
The report factors to the numerous growth of stablecoins, tokenization, altcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and AI-driven buying and selling as key elements shaping the subsequent part of the business.
Modifications within the ratio of Bitcoin and gold
MB estimates Bitcoin as BTC$90,566.73 It might attain 14% of gold’s market capitalization by the tip of 2026. That ratio is at the moment 5.65%, which suggests, all else being equal, the value of Bitcoin will greater than double.
The report notes Bitcoin’s rising function as a retailer of worth, particularly in comparison with gold, which faces logistical challenges relating to transportation and storage. The corporate mentioned the cryptocurrency’s adoption by institutional buyers, who’ve accrued greater than 1.09 million Bitcoins up to now, reveals that Bitcoin is now not a distinct segment asset.
Bitcoin’s digital, borderless, and self-custodial nature has helped it entice curiosity from buyers searching for an alternative choice to conventional secure property, the report added.
MB added that the 14% determine will not be a guess, however the results of an analysis methodology developed in collaboration with researchers on the College of California (UCLA).
“The Bitcoin Valuation Framework makes use of, amongst different methods, the Whole Addressable Market (TAM) strategy to estimate the theoretical worth of Bitcoin,” the report mentioned. “As a substitute of imposing conventional money movement fashions on monetary property, we begin with the worldwide retailer of worth market, use gold as the first benchmark, and predict what portion of this market Bitcoin will seize beneath completely different adoption eventualities.”
The agency’s analysts wrote that the framework results in a base case wherein Bitcoin reaches 14% of gold’s market capitalization this 12 months.
Stablecoins enhance to five trillion
MB predicts that the stablecoin sector, which already varieties the core of crypto infrastructure, will develop to achieve a market capitalization of $500 billion by 2026. This may partially outpace the expansion of stablecoins that aren’t depending on the US greenback.
In keeping with MB, stablecoins have advanced from transaction instruments to cost strategies throughout nations and sectors. “[Stablecoins]play an essential function as a supply of liquidity for the sector, facilitating the short and safe motion of assets with out publicity to the volatility of different digital property,” the report provides.
The corporate notes that in 2025, stablecoin market capitalization elevated by practically 50% year-over-year, a pattern the corporate attributes to rising adoption and regulatory readability, significantly in the US.
In keeping with information from DeFiLlama, the stablecoin sector is at the moment price $307 billion, with Tether’s USDT accounting for 60.5% of that. It began at about $205 billion in 2025.
Altcoin ETFs stand out
Funds tied to altcoins like XRP, Solana, and Chainlink started attracting capital after U.S. regulators started approving ETFs for crypto property apart from Bitcoin and Ether in late 2025.
The XRP ETF alone at the moment manages about $1.47 billion in property, with the Solana ETF including one other $1.09 billion, in line with SoSoValue information. MB expects this market phase to develop to no less than $10 billion by the tip of 2026, with XRP and SOL accounting for about 80% of recent inflows.
This evaluation considers altcoin ETFs that don’t embrace Bitcoin or Ether and are listed on regulated markets.
Tokenized asset market triples
The worldwide quantity of tokenized real-world property is anticipated to extend by 200% to over $54 billion.
In 2025, MB argued that this progress was made doable by regulatory advances throughout key markets. The European Union has allowed a considerable amount of tokenized transactions on permissioned blockchains, whereas the US has acknowledged blockchain-based information of asset transfers.
Main institutional buyers resembling BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and WisdomTree are launching their very own tokenized funds, whereas others are additionally beginning to contemplate the opportunity of launching one.
MB factors to those developments as proof that tokenization is changing into a viable path to bringing conventional property into blockchain-based methods, growing effectivity and accessibility for each issuers and buyers.
Prediction market expands 25 instances
The report highlights prediction markets resembling Polymarket and Kalshi because the quickest rising phase within the crypto area. These platforms enable customers to commerce the chances of future occasions, resembling election or sports activities outcomes.
MB predicts that the capital locked up in these markets might attain $20 billion by the tip of 2026, from a present estimate of lower than $1 billion.
The report attributes this growth to international occasions such because the 2026 World Cup and presidential elections in main nations, in addition to the rise of prediction markets associated to leisure and climate-related eventualities.
For MB analysts, the peer-to-peer mannequin of those markets and aligned incentives between customers and platforms can even contribute to progress.
AI-powered brokers drive on-chain exercise
MB additionally expects AI brokers built-in into blockchain to play a bigger function within the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
These brokers are designed to make autonomous selections and execute transactions, and are starting to leverage new expertise requirements resembling x402 and ERC-8004 to satisfy calls for for transparency, traceability, and micropayments.
The report estimates that the transaction worth of those AI brokers will exceed $1 million per day by 2026, a fourfold enhance from present ranges.
