2029 Final Prediction: When Cryptocurrencies Completely "Disappear," Who Will Remain in This Financial Upheaval?

Written by: Luke

Compiled by: Saoirse, Foresight News

You are on the eve of the biggest transformation in cryptocurrency history, and if you want to continue to work in this industry, you must keep a close eye on everything that is happening right now.

Currently, the industry faces three core problems:

What determines the value of a token?
How can various cutting-edge technologies be applied to the blockchain ecosystem?
What will happen to the market when cryptocurrencies cease to be a separate asset class and instead become the underlying infrastructure of traditional finance?

I could analyze these three questions theoretically, one by one—and countless people do this every day—but empty theoretical discussions will never yield definitive conclusions. Therefore, I intend to take a different approach: a phased analysis of the actual changes the industry will undergo from now until 2029. The article will clearly indicate specific entities, data, and timelines, making the content sufficiently concrete. Three years later, everyone can review my predictions to verify their accuracy. This is just one of many possible future scenarios, and some inferences will inevitably be flawed. However, vague and empty future predictions cannot be disproven, and unfalsifiable viewpoints are worthless. I would rather give a clear but potentially flawed judgment than utter ambiguous, infallible statements.

This prediction is based on my work experience: I have long been deeply involved in the intersection of crypto startups, industry regulation, and venture capital, and I have in-depth discussions with alternative asset managers and fund allocators every week. This does not mean that my judgment is necessarily correct, but my deductions fully consider various real-world constraints.

Mid-2026: High-quality assets will no longer be various tokens.

By mid-2026, before the market had a unified standard for defining token value, the market for privately placed corporate perpetual contracts had already found a product-market fit.

This transformation began with the Hyperliquid platform. SpaceX's privately placed perpetual contracts, initially criticized for malicious liquidation and market manipulation by Ventures, later became the most closely watched price benchmark in both primary and secondary markets. By July, major banks and hedge funds were using the contract to price their privately held assets, and trading software for ordinary users like Robinhood was using it to predict the opening price of companies after their IPOs. In the weeks leading up to a major company's IPO, the price of this perpetual contract would precisely match the final opening price, a level of accuracy that left investment banking underwriting teams, who charged seven-figure service fees and were responsible for pricing, utterly humiliated. OpenAI and Anthropic's perpetual contract holdings reached record highs. For a period, this native crypto exchange became the most reliable channel globally for obtaining real-time valuations of leading unlisted companies.

Meanwhile, a fundamental question arises in the minds of ordinary traders: why can other cryptocurrencies on the blockchain continue to be traded? The altcoin market has been in a bear market for 18 consecutive months, with project founding teams and investment institutions continuously exiting the market through large-scale split trading and time-sharing algorithms. In contrast, $HYPE, the only token to have built a complete value capture loop, has seen its price increase far surpass all other tokens in the market. The industry has launched more than ten token value capture mechanisms, but the vast majority have failed to form a positive cycle, the root cause being that the projects these mechanisms rely on themselves have no asset value. The industry has instead solved the technical problem of how tokens capture value before looking for tangible assets worthy of carrying that value.

This topsy-turvy industry situation is the underlying driving force behind the craze for privately placed perpetual contracts. What the market truly craves has never been the perpetual contract products themselves, but rather high-quality assets; and by mid-2026, the only high-quality assets that could be traded on-chain were synthetic yield certificates from physical enterprises that had no connection to the crypto industry.

End of 2026: The AI sector will not require cryptocurrency.

Anthropic and OpenAI have achieved technological breakthroughs, intensifying competition in the basic large-scale modeling field, and the market is beginning to price general artificial intelligence (AI) in advance. The ensuing chain reaction is that all non-leading basic large-scale modeling companies are experiencing continuous capital outflows from their related businesses. Capital is beginning to view general AI as a core asset held on corporate balance sheets, rather than a standardized tool for industry-wide adoption.

In this environment, the "AI + Crypto" sector has quietly declined. It's not that the logic has been disproven, but rather that the industry has run out of time to refute it. The x402 payment protocol officially launched, yet no one has paid for it; the industry's envisioned on-chain smart agent economy has failed to achieve large-scale implementation, with existing smart agents all settling in USD via APIs—no different from the traditional software industry's established model. Venture capitalists have reached a consensus: the AI industry itself does not need cryptocurrency as support, and investors are no longer pushing this sector.

Currently, the only "AI + crypto" product that has truly achieved a successful product-market fit is the prediction market. The trading volume based on predictions of various fundamental models is growing rapidly, and it has become the most accurate financial tool used to bet on the core variable that can attract massive amounts of capital—which company will have the best-performing model in the next month.

Beyond the noise of the trading floor, another quiet transformation is underway: When the Clarity Act passed the Senate in mid-2026, most traders considered it insignificant, and the market didn't see a surge. However, by the end of the year, various asset tokenization projects were rapidly being implemented. Large asset management institutions transitioned from pilot phases to full-fledged operations, maintaining a low profile and avoiding publicity—the core task of compliance departments is to prevent projects from generating excessive hype. Tokenized assets are concentrated in unremarkable intermediary categories on balance sheets, such as money market funds and private lending. These assets lack KOLs promoting them on social media and have no price charts to speculate on.

By the end of 2026, the crypto industry had split into two almost entirely independent economic entities: one bustling and vibrant, profiting from betting on AI-related trends; the other quiet and low-key, gradually being absorbed into the traditional financial system through a series of compliance documents. The vast majority of industry professionals were focused on the former market.

Early 2027: Major public blockchain foundations clarify their development roadmaps

General-purpose public blockchains can no longer be both versatile and vaguely defined.

For years, major foundations have consistently presented two completely separate narratives: publicly proclaiming their vision for large-scale deployment to ordinary users, while privately promoting complementary services tailored to specific institutions during negotiations. These two narratives have never intersected. By early 2027, the contradiction between these two development paths had become fully apparent.

The retail investor market is highly concentrated, with the only retail product having genuine user demand, and trading volume concentrated on a few trading platforms. Institutional business, on the other hand, is currently the only sector capable of generating stable paying customers. Major foundations have successively finalized their core development directions, exhibiting a high degree of consensus: building corporate sales teams, providing supporting compliance services, launching a universally applicable compliance development toolkit for tokenized asset transfers and brokerage license applications, expanding cooperation channels with Wall Street, and improving privacy trading features.

Media outlets and encrypted social platforms interpret each strategic shift as a trade-off: prioritizing institutional clients, abandoning retail investors, choosing serious financial clients, and discarding speculative casino attributes.

However, those within the foundation disagree with this interpretation. Instead, the team is ramping up its efforts to develop crypto services for ordinary users, albeit with a different implementation strategy. Over the years, the criteria for qualified investors have been continuously lowered, and the number of eligible individuals has been expanding. The foundation's underlying infrastructure will soon be open to ordinary users who are not yet classified as "qualified investors." The infrastructure team is fully aware of this but will not publicly announce it. The compliance infrastructure team only discusses bank clients externally, simply because banks are currently the payers.

The low-profile institutional market that emerged at the end of 2026 is now seeing unprecedented growth: a massive influx of ordinary, compliant investors. The two previously separated economies are finally being connected through "qualified investor verification."

Mid-to-end of 2027: Triple Development Ceilings

A new generation of tech startups has reignited the private equity market: funding rounds in the AI-biofusion, physical AI, and humanoid robot sectors were all oversubscribed, with company valuations skyrocketing, though all are still years away from IPO. Perpetual contract platforms launched corresponding assets within just a few weeks, and the open interest of these synthetic contracts from companies with meager revenues repeatedly broke records. The market patterns of 2026 are repeating themselves, but on a larger scale: the world's most sought-after high-quality assets are all concentrated in the primary private equity market, and the only corresponding assets users can trade on-chain are synthetic perpetual contracts with funding rates settled every 8 hours.

However, each of the three market segments has hit its own growth ceiling, constraining the industry's growth rate:

The ceiling for privately placed perpetual contracts : Real private equity assets grow steadily through traditional private equity channels, with their scale continuously expanding compounded quarterly, yet they have no presence on crypto social platforms that only focus on explosive price increases. The growth rate of perpetual contracts lags far behind that of real private equity assets. The core limitation is that private securities cannot publicly solicit investors, and the crypto industry's most effective traffic-generating model—showing off market trends to attract retail investors—cannot be legally applied to this type of asset. Furthermore, perpetual contracts have structural shortcomings: they require near-IPO events to drive price, only covering mature late-stage companies; mid-stage startups like those in bio-artificial intelligence and humanoid robots, with no exit channels in sight, cannot launch corresponding synthetic contracts. For the vast majority of primary market targets, regulated, real shareholding channels are not the second-best option, but the only compliant and feasible trading tool, only legally prohibited from public promotion.

Stablecoin ceiling : The total circulating supply of stablecoins continues to steadily increase and has never stopped expanding, but major institutions are quietly scaling back their expansion plans. The midterm elections have changed the power structure of congressional committees, and the list of candidates for the 2028 presidential election is gradually being finalized, with several leading candidates publicly opposing the issuance of private USD tokens. While the relevant legislation to be enacted in 2025 and 2026 has not been repealed, the power to implement it rests with the new government. When formulating ten-year settlement plans, finance directors of major banks must incorporate the risk scenario of stricter regulatory attitudes from the next government. The industry will not completely halt stablecoin projects; it will only lengthen the implementation cycle and reduce the scale of pilot programs. Everyone is watching the results of the November 2028 election. The velocity of on-chain USD circulation is entirely tied to policy uncertainty, and policy uncertainty will be high by mid-2027.

The ceiling for asset tokenization : This conservative sentiment has spread throughout the institutional crypto market. Tokenized private lending and fund share products continue to be launched and have all achieved compliance, but institutions are deliberately controlling the size of projects, as no one wants to become a negative example at the Senate hearings the following year.

The commonalities among the three types of tracks are very clear: the product logic itself is sound, and market demand has been fully validated, but external policy forces from outside the industry severely restrict the speed of development. Putting aside the standard of wild price fluctuations in cryptocurrencies, 2027 was actually a year of steady growth for the industry. It's just that the crypto industry has become accustomed to the fact that only straight-line price increases are considered successful over the past decade.

2028: Compliance entry barriers will no longer be scarce.

(Since then, the accuracy of forecasts has decreased: previous forecasts were detailed down to the quarterly level, but after 2028, they are only projected on an annual basis, thus widening the range of prediction errors. This article clarifies a core assumption: the Democratic candidate will win the November 2028 election. If the election result is opposite, the timing of various events in the industry will shift, but the overall development framework will not change.)

The speculative casino nature of the crypto market is gradually fading, and almost no one can accurately pinpoint the turning point. The market's capital harvesting mechanism is too efficient; each round of new liquidity in 2026 and 2027 was less than the previous round, and funds were withdrawn more quickly by a few top players. No landmark crash event has occurred, and meme coin hype will continue intermittently, with daily price surges. However, after a certain point in the first half of 2028, speculative trading will no longer be the core focus of the industry; trading volume will only exist as statistical data and will no longer dominate the industry's ecosystem. Some traders will shift to prediction markets that capitalize on hype; some will remain in the continuously shrinking speculative sector; and many others will have accomplished something no one anticipated in 2026—obtaining qualified investor certification.

The panic surrounding policy decisions gradually dissipated as market pricing took hold throughout the year. Both leading candidates from the two major political parties accepted industry donations, albeit with differing wording, but their core stance remained consistent: the crypto industry needs regulation, not a complete ban. Those who had previously exploited the previous administration's lax regulations for profit-taking were subsequently investigated. The industry is slowly realizing that regulatory cleanup is actually a positive sign: the government's distinction between speculative profit-taking and financial infrastructure allows for more secure capital investment in the latter. Finance executives at major banks, who planned to scale back pilot programs in 2027, quietly resumed expansion plans before the election; by the time the election results were announced, most of the policy risk premium had been priced in.

The most profound lesson of 2028 came from the closely watched trading market: at the beginning of the year, a large position, large enough to shake up the market, was liquidated on several popular privately placed perpetual contracts on leading trading platforms. The chain reaction of liquidations, a risk the market had been fearing since the Ventures manipulation incident, fully erupted. Within hours, billions of dollars in open positions were wiped out, the system automatically forced liquidation, losses were shared by the market, and profits for those who profited were significantly reduced. Afterwards, it was impossible for any party to determine whether the volatility stemmed from malicious manipulation or a simple market accident. This ambiguity itself is the core conclusion: a market lacking an underlying spot anchor has no fair benchmark price; even "market manipulation" cannot be defined, let alone proven. While listed companies' perpetual contracts are constrained by spot prices, privately placed perpetual contracts lack an underlying anchor. While genuine privately placed shares do have compliant trading channels, large-scale public access and widespread pricing are not permitted. The price of each perpetual contract is merely a platform's own estimate, leaving significant room for human intervention. This chain reaction of liquidations was not due to the failure of the synthetic contract market itself, but rather an inevitable result of the market mechanism operating without the support of underlying real assets.

For the past decade, the ban on public solicitation of securities by private investors has been packaged as an investor protection policy. However, the recent market crash proves that this rule merely shuts ordinary investors out of legally protected trading channels, instead drawing them into the highly leveraged, unprice-anchored synthetic contract market. The real dividing line is never between synthetic and real assets, but whether the trading rights have legal enforceability.

Following the financial scandals, regulators introduced new rules, which are less of a reform and more of an improvement to the underlying financial mechanisms: Regulatory guidelines allow for the public promotion of privately placed securities transactions on the secondary market (limited to secondary market units, excluding initial rounds of financing) to qualified investors who have completed verification. The pool of qualified investors has been steadily expanding over the years. The underlying logic is straightforward: the synthetic contract market needs an underlying price anchor, and the lowest-cost solution is to open up public channels for genuine privately placed assets. A ninety-year-old regulation restricting the promotion of such transactions has been significantly broadened simply to improve the derivatives market.

The new regulations generated as much buzz in their first week as new meme coins, the only difference being that the underlying asset is equity in real-world companies. The listing, sharing of screenshots, and promotion within communities of privately placed secondary shares are all legalized—a first in the history of this asset class. Opinions on social media are polarized: half see it as a new financial tool, while the other half worry that retail investors will become the exit bagholders for venture capital firms. The latter's intuition is correct, but their judgment is outdated: this concern holds true when the asset is merely a token with no real backing; but now the underlying asset is the revenue rights of real-world companies that the perpetual contract market has proven to be highly sought after over the past two years.

Funds initially flowed into mature companies in the later stages of the market, where the popularity of perpetual contracts had already been proven. However, due to the absence of funding fees and listing time constraints associated with actual shareholding, funds further flowed into mid-stage startups that perpetual contracts could not cover. Perpetual contracts have not disappeared; they have transformed into a supplementary sector for trading in later-stage companies, no longer dominating the entire core market flow.

As December arrives, the industry is ushering in a new bull market, supported by the oldest underlying assets in the financial sector, which have finally gained legal circulation channels.

2029: The market becomes the sole core theme of the industry.

The first year of this fully realized bull market has seen a stark contrast to previous crypto bull markets, and this difference is precisely where the core value lies. The stocks experiencing sustained price increases are all innovative technology companies with tangible real-world businesses that can genuinely create social value. A new fundamental asset class for ordinary users is private equity: biotech companies that have completed multiple rounds of clinical trials, humanoid robot manufacturers whose live demonstrations have been seen by everyone, and AI labs whose perpetual contracts were traded in 2026—now users can directly hold real shares in these companies.

Over the past decade, the threshold for qualified investors has been gradually lowered, cultivating a new group of retail investors. Assets that were only accessible to institutions five years ago can now be traded by ordinary compliant investors, and most people would not even classify such transactions as "cryptocurrency investment".

The token market has fundamentally diverged along the lines of the core issues raised at the beginning of this article: Successful public chains that transform into new market-issuing and settlement infrastructure, capturing real business revenue, will have platform tokens equivalent to proof of business cash flow. All other tokens will face extremely realistic market rules: tokens lacking legally enforceable revenue rights and a complete value capture loop will not experience the continuous 18-month decline seen in 2026, but will instead completely lose their trading liquidity. The token value capture mechanism, which was hotly debated throughout the industry in 2026, did not yield a victorious solution; the circulation and implementation of privately placed real assets directly renders this debate meaningless.

Stablecoins follow the development pattern observed throughout the cycle: maintaining steady compound growth without explosive price increases. The total circulating supply by the end of 2029 will roughly double compared to mid-2027, with a stable annual growth rate of approximately 20%. This growth ceiling is not due to insufficient market demand, but rather a policy choice reached through bipartisan consensus: the moderate development of private USD tokens to meet practical needs while avoiding competition with the sovereign currency system. The velocity of on-chain USD circulation is tied to policy certainty, and the policy environment in 2029 is stable and sustainable in the long term.

Speculative sectors still exist, but have shrunk to specific niche areas, occasionally experiencing short-term hype, but their overall influence is only equivalent to a sub-segment of the entertainment industry. Speculative traders are diverting to prediction markets, the new private equity secondary market, and there's another path that no one predicted in 2026: obtaining qualified investor certification.

The third core question raised at the beginning of this article—how cryptocurrencies can transform into traditional financial infrastructure—is ultimately answered in a silent way: this question becomes utterly meaningless to discuss. Clearing and settlement functions rely on customized payment channels, public blockchains, or a hybrid of both. Only the operations team understands the underlying architectural details; ordinary participants neither understand nor care, just as ordinary people wouldn't delve into the clearing institutions behind securities firms. The industry integration that gradually began at the end of 2026 ultimately achieved its implementation through "complete disappearance." The ultimate victory of financial infrastructure is becoming mundane and unnoticed. What remains in the public eye is the core product that the crypto industry has truly been building through rounds of speculative cycles—the asset trading market.

Thus, the answers to all three core questions have been derived through this set of deductive logic:

What determines the value of a token? The core principle remains unchanged: having a legally enforceable claim to the proceeds from a real asset. Today, the market eliminates all tokens that do not meet this condition.
How can cutting-edge technologies be implemented on blockchain? Implementation can be achieved through the private equity primary and secondary markets: Technological innovation companies themselves don't need tokens, only trading and circulation channels; once these channels obtain legal and public promotion rights, the cutting-edge companies naturally complete on-chain transactions.
What will happen when cryptocurrencies become part of traditional financial infrastructure? There will be no landmark events, the underlying functions will be completely abstracted, and the public will no longer discuss this topic separately.

Some of the inferences in this article are bound to contain biases, as stated at the beginning. The entire deductive logic has a core verification standard: if by the end of 2028, ordinary investors still do not have a legal channel to participate in private equity assets, and all funds still rely on offshore synthetic perpetual contracts and encapsulated products for circulation, then the core argument of this article that "the industry bottleneck lies in law rather than technology" is invalid, and the credibility of the entire deduction needs to be significantly reduced.

We only need to focus on this one core variable, and then fully verify the rest of our judgments by 2029. I would rather give a clear and falsifiable prediction than make vague and empty statements that will never be wrong.