Perpetual contracts daily trading volume reaches $340 billion. The new landscape of the crypto market in 2026 is shaped by these 7 trends.

2025 just concluded, and for many crypto practitioners, this year has been both the “Year of Slaughter” and the “Year of Maturity.” Altcoins experienced crashes of 80%-99%, Bitcoin regained market dominance, but what truly caught the eye was the astonishing growth in perpetual contract trading—weekly trading volume has soared to $340 billion, and monthly trading volume hit a record high of $1.3 trillion. Behind these numbers lies the deeper logic of the crypto market quietly transforming.

As we approach 2026, we need to understand what is driving these changes and how they will influence future investment strategies.

Market Prediction and Derivatives Trading: Opportunities from 3.8 Billion to 340 Billion

Prediction markets became the fastest-growing vertical in 2025, with weekly nominal trading volume reaching $3.8 billion for the first time, with Polymarket, Kalshi, and Opinion leading the industry. Meanwhile, the trading volume of perpetual contracts far exceeded that of prediction markets—peaking at $340 billion weekly—demonstrating the market penetration of different types of derivative instruments.

The CFTC views prediction markets as contract tools based on real-world events, and its innovation-friendly stance has accelerated development in this field. This regulatory clarity provides market participants with operational space. From a trading perspective, these tools offer diversified risk management options: you can execute delta-neutral strategies to earn profits or use leverage for directional bets in any market.

For conservative investors, cash-backed put options and covered call strategies offer the possibility of high annualized returns (APR). Although funds are locked for 3-5 weeks, the immediate premiums from options compensate for this liquidity restriction. Perpetual contracts, due to their precise betting on asset price movements, have attracted a large number of traders. The weekly trading volume of $340 billion fully proves that market demand for these products has reached a critical point.

Return to Fundamentals Amid Narrative Fatigue

The speed of market narrative rotation has reached unprecedented levels—hot topics that once lasted weeks or months now last only a few days. The crypto community is experiencing a painful shift from chasing narratives to focusing on fundamentals. Substantive indicators such as user numbers, revenue, and growth metrics have become the main dimensions for project evaluation, and the market is beginning to clearly distinguish the value transfer relationship between business and tokens.

However, 2025 saw many chaotic situations in equity and token distribution. When Pumpfun acquired the trading tool Padre, it completely ignored the interests of Padre token holders, causing the PADRE token to plummet 50%-80%, sparking strong community backlash. Pumpfun was later forced to promise future airdrops of PUMP tokens to quell dissatisfaction. The same story repeated when Circle acquired Axelar, with AXL tokens dropping sharply and community anger mounting.

These conflicts reveal a deeper issue: how to fairly treat token holders and equity investors.

The Rise of Ownership Tokens: How MetaDAO Is Reshaping Crypto Financing

MetaDAO launched a fair, transparent, and manipulation-proof ICO startup platform, featuring high liquidity, a relatively low fully diluted valuation (FDV) structure, and mechanisms that exclude venture capital and private allocations. Additionally, it introduced performance-based team unlocking and potential capital recovery functions, allowing token holders to truly own, control, and align interests.

Colosseum, an independent organization accelerating the Solana ecosystem, recently launched “STAMP” (Simple Token Agreement)—a new investment contract designed to integrate private equity funding with public MetaDAO ICOs, ensuring investor rights and on-chain governance alignment.

This model has given rise to a new category: “ownership tokens.” Projects launched via MetaDAO have performed strongly—for example, Umbra, Omnipair, and Avici saw high demand during fundraising and significantly outperformed the market in 2025. In this model, token holders’ importance is greatly enhanced—they truly have a say and ownership of the project. Project revenues and expenses no longer flow to equity holders but directly benefit token holders. This trend is very likely to continue into 2026.

The Era of Security Tokenization Begins: DTC Pilot Signals Traditional Finance Integration

As enterprises adopt stablecoins and institutional capital continues to flood into crypto, security tokenization has become easier and more feasible than ever.

On December 11, 2025, the SEC issued a “No Action Letter,” explicitly stating it would not take enforcement action against the DTC’s security tokenization pilot project by its subsidiary DTCC. The pilot covers tokenization of Russell 1000 index components, U.S. Treasuries, and major ETFs.

This pilot mechanism (starting in the second half of 2026 for a three-year period) enables compliant centralized tokenization operations through DTC, directing activities toward regulated infrastructure rather than fully decentralized alternatives. This means that from 2026 onward, the number of security tokenization projects will increase significantly, and demand for tokenized stocks will accelerate the integration of traditional finance and decentralized finance.

Consumer Products and Perpetual Contracts: The Heart of the Crypto Industry

In 2025, consumer-grade crypto products and perpetual contracts became the core drivers of the industry. Pumpfun peaked in 2024-2025, Virtuals integrated AI-powered narrative agents, Zora experimented in content tokens, and collectibles, fantasy football, and prediction markets gained popularity.

These are consumer-oriented products that allow crypto natives to enjoy the experience while attracting non-crypto users to earn profits alongside entertainment. Crypto trading is essentially a game, and innovative consumer products that combine entertainment and trading tend to stand out.

Perpetual contracts offer a precise way to bet on asset prices. The key indicators for prediction markets and perpetual contracts hit record highs in 2025: prediction markets’ weekly nominal trading volume reached $3.8 billion, and weekly perpetual contract trading volume soared to $340 billion (monthly volume $1.3 trillion). This fully demonstrates that the product-market fit (PMF) in the crypto space has already emerged.

This explains why platforms like Hyperliquid, Lighter, Aster, Polymarket, and Opinion are so popular—massive activity, demand, and capital flows directly translate into higher valuations and airdrop yields.

Despite the promising outlook for consumer-grade crypto products, we have yet to see truly sustainable consumer products in 2025. Sportsdotfun (SDF) showed strong early growth and is currently conducting community funding through Legion and Kraken. If you want to find an advantage in this market, either invest in platforms (prediction markets, perpetual contracts, consumer products) or actively participate in these categories.

The Age of Storytellers Has Arrived

The Wall Street Journal, Silicon Valley, and tech professionals are increasingly emphasizing the role of “Storytellers,” with many startups opening related positions.

In the crypto space, this has long been commonplace—from “Yappers” to key opinion leaders (KOLs) and storytellers—they have been helping build crypto communities for years. But many existing “Yappers” simply copy and paste content to “show presence,” without truly learning or understanding the topics discussed.

This creates opportunities for those who genuinely understand the industry, possess expertise, or are curious to learn. Skilled storytellers can expand brand influence and ultimately gain the freedom of choice—develop independently or be acquired and employed by startups aligned with their brand.

2025 has already seen successful cases of this dynamic: Kalshi recruited well-known crypto community figures, and many projects successfully shaped their brand image through close partnerships and ambassador programs.

Building Competitive Advantages: Five Paths from Fundamentals to Personal Branding

The crypto market of 2024-2025 is like a “Monopoly” game, but 2026 will be more like the arena for enterprises, startups, and financial professionals—losing the game mechanics, losing the easy money, and losing the narrative of simply “rising numbers.” The future will focus more on fundamentals, aligned interests, value accumulation, and compound leverage.

If you cannot cultivate a genuine competitive advantage, even seasoned players may become “bagholders” for others. Your advantage can be any of the following:

• Having a clear mind, not blinded by delusions
• Being good at storytelling
• Creating high-quality products that people truly need
• Insight into market trends
• Rational trading, not driven by emotions

Persist, find your own advantage, and you will reap rewards. The $340 billion weekly trading volume of perpetual contracts, $3.8 billion prediction market scale, the rise of ownership tokens, and the advancement of security tokenization—these are not the end of opportunities but the starting point for you to discover your own positioning.