2026 Predictions: Stablecoins, Tokenization and RWAs

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Joining our hosts Simon Taylor and Cuy Sheffield for this special predictions episode:

Rob Hadick - General Partner at Dragonfly, one of the leading crypto-focused venture funds, making his third appearance on the show. Rob brings an investor's perspective on infrastructure developments and market dynamics across stablecoins and tokenization.

Tyler Moebius - CEO and Co-Founder of Smart Media Technologies, a company focused on tokenized loyalty programs. Tyler brings deep expertise in the intersection of loyalty point infrastructure and blockchain-based financial products.

🎙️Listen to the full episode here on your favorite podcast app or 📷 watch on YouTube.

The Predictions 

After grading last year's predictions (verdict: a self-assessed "C" for being directional rather than quantifiable), the Tokenized team committed to putting real numbers on the board for 2026.

As Cuy Sheffield put it: "We have to be better this year at putting a number out that we can then go back and measure a year from now."

The result: 16 predictions spanning Visa settlement volumes, bank infrastructure, loyalty tokenization, regulatory outcomes, and the AI-crypto intersection - each with a measurable outcome.

1. Visa Stablecoin Settlement Exceeds $100 Billion Annualized

Rob Hadick | Metric: $100 billion

Visa's stablecoin settlement business has grown from $250 million annualized in May to $3.5 billion today. Rob predicts it will surpass $100 billion annualized by year-end 2026 and become "the fastest growing part of Visa's business."

He also expects Visa to break out stablecoin settlement as a separate line item in earnings reports.

Cuy Sheffield added context on why banks are adopting: "They're now recognizing that moving settlement volume on chain is a more efficient way for them to manage the business and to scale these programs."

Simon took the under, suggesting 10x growth (to ~$35-50 billion) is more realistic - though still significant.

2. A GSIB Announces a Stablecoin-Backed Card

Rob Hadick | Metric: Binary (Yes/No)

A bonus prediction from Rob: "I think we'll actually see a large bank, potentially a GSIB, do a stablecoin backed card next year and announce that publicly. The train has left the station and this is going to move quicker than anybody realizes right now."

3. Tier-Two Banks Do $100B in Closed-Loop Stablecoin Settlement

Simon Taylor | Metric: $100 billion

Simon predicts tier-two and smaller banks will move more than $100 billion through closed-loop stablecoin settlement rails (like Qivalis, the European bank consortium) as an alternative to correspondent banking.

"Especially in the European context, there's actually no instant settlement despite there being a separate incident, because of the nature of each country having different central banks, you cannot easily settle across all of the regions."

Rob framed the urgency: "This is an existential moment for the tier two banks...There are 5,000 banks in the US, probably only 500 of them need to exist. And so the rest are figuring out how do I digitize?"

The panel took the under on timing, noting Qivalis won't go live until back half of 2026.

4. US CLARITY Act Passes

Simon Taylor | Metric: Binary (Yes/No)

Simon believes the CLARITY Act will pass in 2026. Rob is less confident: "It still feels like from conversations we're having in DC to be a bit of a coin flip. It really depends on who you talk to and the time that you talk to them."

Rob noted that even without legislation, rulemaking will provide comfort - but the risk is post-2028: "If you only have rulemaking, there's a potential snapback and potential change in the way that the regulators think about it post a 2028 election."

5. UK Stablecoin Regime Fully Passes

Simon Taylor | Metric: Binary (Yes/No)

"I think the UK will pass fully its stablecoin regime. And we saw in parliament, the draft bill is now complete. So it would take about another 12 months-ish to go. So that one will be pretty tight."

6. JP Morgan's MONY Surpasses BlackRock's BUIDL

Simon Taylor | Metric: AUM comparison

Simon predicts JP Morgan's newly launched tokenized money fund (ticker: MONY) will overtake BlackRock's BUIDL in assets under management.

"JP Morgan moved a trillion dollars through Kinexys...If this is the central pillar of your biggest payments business and corporate treasurers are your customers...why wouldn't I want an instant 24/7 swap for a money market fund?"

Cuy noted BUIDL's current challenges: "BUIDL got up to close to three billion in supply and then over the past month or so it's now dropped quite a bit down to like 1.8 billion. There's still only a hundred holders...It doesn't seem like BUIDL has gotten meaningful traction with institutions that are non crypto native."

Rob disagreed: "The second that BlackRock sees that happening, they'll just do the same thing. And they are a more incredibly neutral player relative to the other banks."

7. Major Corporate Collapses Existing Loyalty Program into Stablecoin/Tokenized Program

Rob Hadick | Metric: Binary (Yes/No)

Rob expects "a major corporate will announce that they're changing their loyalty program, which exists on balance sheet and traditional loyalty points today. And they'll collapse that into maybe some sort of stablecoin powered or tokenized asset powered program this year - not just a POC and call it a new thing that exists to the side, but collapsing an existing program."

He believes the driver will be cashback: "63% of consumers today say they prefer cashback to any other type of loyalty on their credit cards. And I think more and more, there's an expectation that other types of loyalty assets are devaluing and cash is king."

8. $1 Billion in Tokenized Collateral Generating Yield Against Loyalty Points

Cuy Sheffield & Tyler Moebius | Metric: $1 billion

Tyler framed the opportunity: "It's estimated that there's nearly a trillion dollars of unused point liability trapped on corporate balance sheets. When you look at the reserves that are backing that, that would make loyalty points as a currency the third largest currency in the world behind the dollar and the euro."

He added: "There is $300 billion worth of point liability issued every single year. I think this is the year we'll see a billion dollars of tokenized collateral that's generating yield that is paid specifically against loyalty points."

Cuy noted the interoperability advantage: "If your loyalty program runs onchain and it could be accepted with anyone who could accept an ERC-20, that's much easier than if they're in proprietary databases."

9. Pay-with-Stablecoin Widget on Almost Every Major E-Commerce Site

Rob Hadick | Metric: Qualitative

Rob predicts widespread adoption of stablecoin checkout options: "By the end of next year there will be a pay with stablecoin or pay with crypto widget on almost every major e-commerce marketplace and website."

He pointed to Klarna USD as a signal: "More and more of these fintechs wanting to push their marketplace of merchants and users on stablecoin and tokenized rails...people will just see this as a cash equivalent."

10. $2 Billion Annualized Merchant Pay-with-Crypto Volume

Rob Hadick | Metric: $2 billion

Accompanying the widget prediction, Rob forecasts $2 billion in annualized merchant stablecoin payments by year-end.

Cuy pushed back with hard data on Shopify's USDC acceptance: "Does anyone have any guesses of how much in total volume Shopify has accepted in USDC since they launched in June?...600k."

"We have not seen demand for consumers to switch how they pay right now in e-commerce and pay with a stablecoin," Cuy observed.

Rob's counterargument: "The long pole here is are they actually holding stablecoins?...If you give people and you incentivize people, you give them wallets and incentivize them to hold the stablecoins, and then it looks like cash is accepted like cash, then they will use the stablecoins at the merchant."

11. OnChain RWA/Non-Dollar Stablecoin Collateral Grows 5x to $10 Billion

Cuy Sheffield | Metric: $10 billion (5x growth)

"The collateral for onchain stablecoin denominated loans that is a tokenized real-world asset or non-dollar stablecoin is going to grow 5x in 2026."

Currently, of $250 billion in stablecoin-denominated loans originated onchain, 75% use crypto assets as collateral, with only 1.8% ($1.5 billion) using tokenized RWAs.

Cuy highlighted an emerging use case: "You can lock up a local currency stablecoin or local tokenized treasury and borrow dollars, pay your supplier in dollars through a stablecoin. And then when you get paid back, you repay the loan."

Simon noted the implication: "Do we even need [non-dollar stablecoins] for anything other than collateral for moving dollar stables around?"

12. 2-3 Neobanks Get Into Collateralized/OnChain Lending ($1B+ RWAs Each)

Simon Taylor | Metric: $1B+ each

A bonus prediction from Simon: neobanks will enter onchain lending as an alternative to balance sheet lending, with each doing more than $1 billion in real-world assets.

Tyler expressed support: "As we're looking at how we're holding collateral...I'm seeing a lot more of the tokenized assets that are coming on that just have higher yield. So I'm going to go with the over on Cuy's prediction."

13. DTCC Goes Live with US Stock Entitlements OnChain

Simon Taylor | Metric: Binary (Yes/No)

Simon predicts the DTCC will go live with all US stock entitlements onchain in 2026.

Rob suggested private equity may move faster: "There is actually no central clearing for private equity...if the DTCC offered tokenized private equity, you'd see that grow really quickly. I think that might happen at a faster rate than the public equity side."

14. Robinhood Announces Plan to Go Token-Native

Simon Taylor | Metric: Binary (Yes/No)

Simon's boldest bet: "Robinhood announces a plan to go token native following this shift and gradually remove all of their infrastructure from traditional clearing and settlement towards using token native clearing and settlement."

Rob disagreed, citing Robinhood's relationship with Citadel: "Citadel and Robinhood are in bed together so deeply and Citadel has been so publicly anti-clarity. And they're very publicly anti a lot of the tokenization efforts that actually their competitors have been supportive of."

15. X402 Volume Grows 5x to $10 Million

Cuy Sheffield | Metric: $10 million

Despite skepticism on AI-crypto crossover, Cuy offered a measured prediction on X402: "At least 5x growth, so maybe we have $10 million of real volume going through X402."

He estimated current non-meme coin activity at perhaps $2 million, with crypto data services being the primary use case, after meme coins.

Rob acknowledged the potential: "The one thing I will definitely give AI generally is that it continues to move at a quicker pace than anybody could ever have imagined three years ago."

16. Major Tech SaaS Provider Sells Product on X402 Server

Cuy Sheffield | Metric: Binary (Yes/No)

"My prediction is that in 2026, there will be some major big tech SaaS provider that will actually sell a product on an X402 server...something that's very developer-facing."

Cuy described the use case: "If I'm vibe coding in Cursor and I want to buy some service that I need to finish my project, instead of having to leave Cursor, go create an account, go grab an API key, put a payment method on file, wouldn't it be great if inside Cursor, I could have a wallet that I could then pay for some developer tool without leaving the environment."

Wildcard to watch: CloudFlare has discussed building on X402. Rob called this "a feather in Cuy's cap" , and Simon noted: "If CloudFlare turns this on, let's see." Given CloudFlare's position as infrastructure for a significant portion of the web, this could be the catalyst that makes prediction #16 a clear "yes."

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