TL;DR
- Coinchange forecasts tokenized funds and short-term Treasuries reaching $30B by end 2026; stablecoins exceed $300B and institutional penetration stays below 1%.
- Catalyst is settlement: shift from T+2 to T+0, 24/7 liquidity, and DTCC-led efforts toward real-time settlement for Russell 1000 equities and Treasuries.
- Yield and rules: staking plus private credit at 6% to 12% APY, with GENIUS Act and MiCA Phase II enabling tokenized collateral at scale.
Coinchange is positioning 2026 as the year tokenization moves from pilots into production. It forecasts tokenized money market funds and short-term Treasuries will reach a $30 billion market cap by the end of 2026, turning blockchain rails into a cash-management channel. The outlook frames this as “structural maturation,” noting stablecoins exceed $300 billion, while institutional penetration across advised wealth and balance sheets remains below 1%. In that gap, the firm spots the next migration: financial primitives, including money market funds such as BlackRock’s BUIDL and JPMorgan’s MONY, becoming programmable instruments.
Coinchange: What would make $30B plausible
The first growth lever is settlement modernization rather than token price action. Coinchange’s case is that shifting from T+2 legacy workflows to T+0 on-chain settlement, with 24/7 liquidity, delivers material efficiency gains that treasury teams can quantify and scale. It points to DTCC-led initiatives aimed at enabling real-time settlement for Russell 1000 equities and Treasuries in the second half of this year. The same playbook extends to collateral, where tokenized collateral can be moved, settled, and reconciled faster if custody standards evolve toward bank-grade MPC and institutional controls.
Yield is the second lever, framed as “yield convergence” rather than a DeFi bet. The outlook argues that institutional yield stacks will blend protocol staking with tokenized private credit offering 6% to 12% APY, creating governed income products that can clear risk committees. It also flags that crypto ETPs have attracted over $87 billion in net inflows since 2024, but says the bigger story is operational adoption. By combining AI-driven risk management with automated yield pipelines, institutions start treating “sovereign block space” like a procurement input, similar to energy or cloud capacity.
Regulation is the gating item, and Coinchange is calling an inflection across jurisdictions. It highlights clearer frameworks, including the U.S. GENIUS Act and Europe’s MiCA Phase II, as the legal green light for G-SIB prime brokers to accept tokenized collateral at scale. The report also expects trading and liquidity to migrate on-chain, reshaping market making, execution, and portfolio construction in continuous global markets. CEO Maxim Galash sums up the ambition: “2026 marks the definitive shift from digital assets as a speculative asset class to the backbone of modern financial infrastructure.”
