Bankless
Investing Trends for 2026: DeFi, Tokenization, Capital Formation, Speculation & AI | Ben Lakoff & Arnav from Bankless Ventures
29 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What are the key investing trends in crypto for 2026?
I think the first and foremost thing that's been huge this year is you have this ultimate decline of not only career risk, but there's acceptance from Wall Street. Obviously, we have people like Larry Fink writing about tokenization in The Economist. We have BlackRock's highest grossing ETF product being Bitcoin. We have Hyperliquid that actually just surpassed the NASDAQ in net income.
So this is the first time I would say that crypto is no longer a contrarian thesis. It's no longer a contrarian thing. I would say it's a very consensus insight. Welcome to Bankless, where we explore investing on the frontier of crypto.
This is David Hoffman, and I'm here with not only my co-host, Ryan Tron Adams, but we are also joined by two members of Bankless Ventures, fellow GP Ben Lakoff and investment partner Arnav Pagadiala. Ben, Arnav, welcome to Bankless. Thanks for having us.
Chapter 2: How is DeFi evolving and what opportunities exist?
Stoked to be here, guys. Broad question. Is there stuff to invest in in crypto in 2026? What do you guys think? This would be a short podcast if there wasn't. So yes, is the short answer. And we're very excited about a lot of things. Yeah, we got over an hour probably of content to talk about. Arnav, you are the youngest of the group.
When you look at crypto investing in venture, in the venture category in 2026, what excites you? What gets you going? Yeah, I mean, I think unlike prior cycles, there is stuff in every single sector that's kind of broken out. I think DeFi is looking monstrous with the adoption of RWAs this year. Stablecoin payments if you're into crypto fintech is just monstrous.
Prediction markets have just kind of hit escape velocity. I think it's, The realm of opportunity is 100x more than I think it's ever been. So it's super exciting. Some big statements. We're definitely going to dive into why Arnav and the rest of the Bankless team think that that is true and the sectors that we are investing in.
Now, previously in Bankless, we have been very careful to not cross contaminate between media and ventures. These are to different organizations where only Ryan and myself crossed the barrier. But also at Bankless Media, we never let good content go to waste. And at Bankless Ventures, we've been working pretty hard developing our investment focus themes for 2026.
Chapter 3: What does tokenization mean for the future of finance?
The categories, the trends that we want to focus our investments at Bankless Ventures for the next year. In this episode, that is what you are going to hear. We want to share what Bankless Ventures is looking to invest in in 2026 and why we've come to these conclusions. A fundamental part of the entire Bankless journey is learning to be investors in crypto.
Every Bankless podcast episode has been in pursuit of learning how to effectively allocate capital in this industry. Answering the question, how do I effectively invest, is one of the main motivations behind creating the Bankless podcast all the way back in 2020 when the industry was far more naive and unsophisticated. Now, Ryan, myself, and Ben here, we've all been in crypto since 2017, 2016.
We've seen different investing metas come and go. And while each cycle has its own characters, the thematic common denominators of every cycle are about the same. DeFi, tokenization, capital formation, and speculation. These themes are persistent across cycles, but generating outsized returns in each of these themes requires some level of precision rather than broad capital allocation.
It's not enough to just invest in DeFi. You must match the theme with the current market fitness of the era. Investing in DeFi in 2025 is just not the same as investing in DeFi in 2019, obviously.
Chapter 4: How is capital formation changing in the crypto landscape?
So in this episode, we are going to go through each category I just mentioned and share how Bankless Ventures is allocating capital inside of these broad themes in pursuit of outsized returns for our LPs. You can now borrow USDC against your Ethereum and Bitcoin on Coinbase. Crypto-backed loans on Coinbase make assessing liquidity seamless for crypto hodlers.
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Chapter 5: What role does speculation play in crypto markets?
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Chapter 6: How could AI influence the future of crypto investing?
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Chapter 7: What characteristics should founders have in the crypto space?
token launches are making a comeback but things have changed since the 2017 ico era now we have eight years of research on how to fairly distribute tokens to the market all that progress culminates in the uniswap continuous clearing auction no sniping no timing games no whale advantages just fair transparent on-chain price discovery here's how it works
A project sets aside an allotment of tokens. The continuous clearing auction sells them continuously, block by block, over a customizable window, typically a few days. Supply is fixed across the auction, and as demand comes in, the clearing price adjusts. If new bids arrive, the price moves up. If they don't, it holds steady.
Since bids are filled gradually over the entire window, early participants often end up with a lower average price, while still giving everyone time to place orders. When the auction ends, the proceeds concede a Uniswap V4 pool, giving you day one liquidity without exchange fees or market maker contracts.
But while the Uniswap continuous clearing auction is perfect for launching new tokens, it's also an extremely flexible protocol and can be leveraged for price discovery, bootstrapping and auctioning of existing low liquidity assets as well.
Chapter 8: What are the implications of new investment strategies in crypto?
If you're launching a token and want an on-chain transparent sale that gets tokens into the hands of real believers, the Uniswap continuous clearing auction is the way to do it. Check it out at cca.uniswap.org. I think one thing that's important to mention before we get in is some of the particular ways that capital formation forms inside of crypto and what that means.
A lot of bankless listeners will notice that crypto happens in these waves, right? People have called these four-year cycles before. There's usually some sort of proof of concept stage followed by
People see early traction and they get exuberant about something happening in crypto and then narrative runs far ahead of the fundamentals and price goes out of control and then things bubble and they pop and then we get kind of the bear market. We go back to despair. Folks like A16Z have pointed this out, that this really follows builder waves too, right?
So capital forums and builders have ideas and they pursue these narratives in these approximately like four year waves, right? And one thing that I actually appreciate about crypto, this is a benefit to anyone who's investing in the space, is during the bear phase, during that despair part, the bad projects are called and the good projects survive.
So it allows you to like re underwrite your ideas and your theses for the space gives you kind of a clean slate. So you can just be like, OK. What happened last cycle? What's still real about this industry? I have a sober mind now and we can consider what's going to be important moving forward. And you can rebuild and then you can reload. And builders do this as well. And so do investors.
It's kind of like... You know the idea of a forest, right? If a forest gets too dense, if it doesn't have a fire every once in a while, then kind of the new growth can't actually flourish and grow. And so every once in a while, a healthy forest needs a fire to clear out all the underbrush and create renewal so we can have something new. You got to roll the seven on the craps table.
Yeah, you totally do. Or to get like another metaphor basically is just kind of this is survival of the fittest. This is like an evolutionary process and you have some maybe dominant organisms on the earth and every once in a while an asteroid comes, destroys them all and we get a chance to see what can persist through these cycles and what can grow anew and we get all of these new life forms.
For me, and I think for a lot of venture investors, a lot of this starts, I guess you could say Bitcoin, but then after Bitcoin. So Bitcoin is kind of the original store of value use case. We uncovered the original use case for blockchains.
But then Ethereum and the idea of programmable finance, that's kind of birthed all of the other investment categories, and particularly the investment themes that we're going to talk about today. Since Ethereum, since the birth of the smart contract platform and programmable finance, there's been roughly four waves. I'll give the dates and I'll measure this by the crest.
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