Presto Research Predicts $160K Bitcoin, $490B Tokenization in 2026
Crypto analytics platform Presto Research this week revealed its 2026 outlook, projecting Bitcoin (BTC) at $160,000, tokenized belongings nearing $490 billion, and confidential decentralized finance (DeFi) climbing previous $10 billion as crypto shifts deeper into institutional finance.
The report argued that after a messy however formative 2025, the market is shedding hype-driven development in favor of money circulate, regulation-ready merchandise, and infrastructure constructed for giant allocators reasonably than retail mania.
Institutional Maturation to Drive New Highs
In the great year-ahead report, Presto’s analysts projected that the overall worth of tokenized real-world belongings (RWAs) and stablecoins will method half a trillion {dollars} by the tip of 2026.
They see this development propelled by continued demand for U.S. Treasury payments and credit score devices on blockchain networks, alongside the regular rise of stablecoins for world funds. This pattern highlights a shift from speculative buying and selling to sensible monetary utility.
Central to their worth outlook is a $160,000 goal for Bitcoin. This projection depends on a framework evaluating the cryptocurrency’s on-chain adoption charge towards potential investor warning surrounding future quantum computing challenges.
The consultants utilized what they name a “30% quantum haircut” to account for investor uncertainty across the want for future-proof encryption upgrades.
“When a threat that was as soon as a obscure, distant ‘sometime’ out of the blue will get pulled ahead in the collective dialog, investor psychology can shift,” the report cautioned, pointing to quantum readiness as a brand new variable in valuation.
Separately, the market watchers forecasted a significant advance for personal monetary exercise on blockchain, forecasting confidential DeFi instruments to develop to carry $10 billion in belongings as regulatory and institutional demand for discretion will increase.
Underlying the Predictions: A Market Growing Up
Presto’s assessment of 2025 highlighted a 12 months of contradictions: landmark coverage wins just like the passing of the GENIUS Act and main public listings had been offset by tight financial coverage that restricted broad worth beneficial properties.
The agency famous that whereas fundamentals like protocol income turned a central speaking level, market efficiency typically ignored them, as a substitute favoring narrative and liquidity dynamics.
This setting, Presto’s analysts argued, is about to evolve. Their expectation for 2026 is that financialization will deepen, with conventional finance giants increasing crypto custody and buying and selling providers. Furthermore, they estimated that the rise of AI brokers able to executing microtransactions, facilitated by protocols like Coinbase’s x402, might doubtlessly generate properly over 300 million transactions month-to-month, turning experimental demos into practical companies.
A closing, telling projection is that “median altcoin funding charge ≤ 0% turns into a norm.” This shift from perpetual optimism to a default value for holding most speculative tokens can be a profound change. “Funding is lastly pricing in actuality,” the report concluded, suggesting a harsh however mandatory reckoning for belongings with out sustainable demand.
According to Presto, these mixed forces level to a market slowly outgrowing its risky previous, the place measurable worth creation and threat administration will begin to outweigh pure hypothesis in the brand new 12 months.
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