Author: Deep Tide TechFlow
As the year draws to a close, it is foreseeable that various institutions will release their 2026 crypto predictions and outlooks over the next month.
However, before looking at the new predictions, it's worth reviewing what these institutions said last year; after all, anyone can make predictions, but accuracy is the real skill.
Looking back to the end of 2024, market sentiment was high, BTC had just broken through $100,000, and predictions were generally optimistic:
For example, BTC was expected to hit 200,000, stablecoins were expected to double in size, AI agents were expected to ignite on-chain activity, and crypto unicorns were expected to IPO in droves... Now, a year later, have those predictions come true?
We selected several representative institutions and individuals from various forecast reports last year and reviewed them one by one to see whose predictions had a higher accuracy rate.
1. VanEck: 10% accuracy rate, only correctly predicted the establishment of a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
VanEck made 10 predictions at the end of 2024, the only one of which came true: Bitcoin as a strategic reserve.
The remaining nine predictions all failed to come true, and most of them were not minor deviations but orders of magnitude errors. For example, the prediction that crypto would peak in Q1 and Bitcoin would reach $180k and then hit a new high at the end of the year was completely wrong. In reality, the timing and price targets were completely opposite.
Secondly, the market size forecasts are overly optimistic. Tokenized securities were predicted to reach $50 billion, but the actual figure was around $30-35 billion; DeFi TVL was predicted to reach $200 billion, but the actual figure was around $120-130 billion; and NFT transaction volume was predicted to reach $30 billion, but the actual estimate was $5-6.5 billion.
Overall, VanEck's judgment on policy trends is quite accurate, but it has a systemic overestimation of the size of the on-chain economy.
2. Bitwise: 50% accuracy rate, generally correct in direction but incorrect in price prediction.
Bitwise made 10 predictions, and 5 of them came true, mainly in the areas of regulation and institutional adoption; the price and size predictions were also systematically overestimated.
Policies and institutional adoption were fully accurate. Coinbase and MicroStrategy were included in the US stock index; the first year of crypto IPOs materialized, with multiple crypto companies going public; the number of countries holding BTC increased from 9 to nearly 30.
Price targets all failed to materialize: projected prices for BTC, ETH, and SOL far exceeded their actual performance this year. Coinbase's stock price at $250 is 65% below its $700 target. The estimated $50 billion tokenization of RWA is also clearly an overestimation.
Overall, Bitwise has demonstrated keen policy insight and accurately grasped the pace of regulatory shifts and institutional adoption.
3. Coinbase: Almost 100% accurate, only predicts direction, not price.
Coinbase's predictions fall into two main categories: "macro" and "disruptive." They are mostly directional judgments rather than precise figures, and are considered trend forecasts.
Some key verifiable predictions are as follows:
Other predictions were generally correct, but difficult to quantify:
You'll notice that this company's forecasts clearly avoid specific price targets, focusing instead on policy turning points and industry trends. Naturally, the core forecast directions are all correctly predicted.
The regulatory shift has been fully validated: predictions of a "most pro-crypto Congress in history" bringing benefits and the approval of more asset ETFs have indeed come true.
Stablecoins and DeFi are on the right track: the prediction that stablecoins would "explode and expand into commercial payments" has indeed come true this year, with Mastercard announcing support for USDC/PYUSD/USDG in June, Coinbase integrating Shopify into its own payment platform, and Stripe launching USDC subscription payments;
The prediction of a DeFi recovery has been followed by a DeFi TVL reaching 120 billion, approaching a three-year high since May 2022.
This strategy of "only stating the direction and not the specific points" may lack buzz, but in hindsight, it is the most stable and less likely to be proven wrong.
4. Galaxy Research: 26% accuracy, almost all data-based predictions were wrong.
Galaxy's researchers collectively provided 23 predictions, making it the most quantitative and comprehensive report among all institutions.
Looking back, the policy forecasting team performed exceptionally well (100% accuracy), but their price and market size forecasts were almost entirely wrong. In particular, their prediction of DOGE breaking through $1 seems overly optimistic in hindsight.
Furthermore, Galaxy's predictions regarding ecosystem development are quite accurate. For example, it predicted that most mining companies would transform into AI and high-performance computing, which is indeed a significant trend in this year's AI boom.
When there are many forecasts with fine granularity, even professional research institutions cannot always get things right; the market does not move in the way everyone expects.
5. Hashkey: 70% accuracy, price predictions are overly optimistic.
Overall, HashKey's predictions are accurate in assessing regulatory compliance progress (ETFs, stablecoin legislation) and changes in ecosystem structure (the rise of DEXs, L2 differentiation), but it remains overly optimistic about the price cycle.
Interestingly, this prediction also reflected the sentiment within the crypto community at the time.
When HashKey Group released its top 10 market predictions for 2025, nearly 50,000 community users voted on the 16 most popular predictions summarized by HashKey researchers, analysts, and traders.
The results showed that 50% of voters were optimistic about the prediction that "Bitcoin will break through $300,000, Ethereum will exceed $8,000, and the total market capitalization of the crypto market will reach $10 trillion."
Ironically, the prediction with the highest probability of being voted on is the least likely to come true by the end of this year.
6. Delphi Digital: 40% accuracy rate, consumer-grade DeFi predictions are a highlight.
Delphi Digital's predictions regarding technology infrastructure and consumer applications are quite accurate; their exact wording regarding consumer applications is:
"2025 will be a significant milestone for the development of consumer-grade DeFi, with more and more crypto users embracing on-chain financial services."
This year we have indeed seen the emergence of various U-cards and US stock tokenization, and traditional financial applications such as Robinhood are also gradually embracing on-chain technology.
7. Messari: 55% accuracy, no specific price points mentioned.
Although Messari is a data analytics platform, its predictions tend to focus on "trend direction" rather than "specific numbers," and in retrospect, its judgments on major trends have been relatively accurate.
8. Framework Co-creation: 25% accuracy rate, giving more confidence to invested projects.
Next, we've selected some of the more representative personal predictions from last year to see how they turned out.
First, we've compiled the predictions from Vance Spencer, co-founder of the Framework, focusing on his cryptography-related points:
Vance clearly has high expectations for its invested projects, such as Glow, Daylight, and Berachain, which represent the energy and public blockchain sectors, respectively.
In addition, some quantitative targets are too aggressive, such as the daily inflow of $1 billion into the ETH ETF.
9. Blockworks co-creator: 48% accuracy, highest number of predictions.
Mippo (X: @MikeIppolito_), co-founder of Blockworks, made the most predictions among the institutions and individuals we reviewed, but his prediction accuracy was quite good, almost half of them were correct.
One highlight is that the predictions about Robinhood's rise were completely accurate, and the investment opportunities in L1, such as Hyperliquid and SUI, both of which have had outstanding performances this year.
10. Alliance DAO Wang Qiao & Imran: 50% accuracy rate, overly optimistic about BTC price.
Alliance DAO's two founders, Wang Qiao and Imran, also made predictions about its development over the next 25 years in a podcast chat.
We have compiled the encryption-related viewpoints as follows:
As we can see, the two founders were overly optimistic about BTC's performance. Even with the lowest prediction of 150K, BTC's highest price this year is still some distance away.
However, their predictions about the market were remarkably accurate; they could be said to have foreseen this key trend a year in advance.
Summarize
Looking through last year's predictions, several patterns are quite clear:
The number of predictions is negatively correlated with the accuracy rate; the more you predict, the more mistakes you make.
Attempts to predict specific price points and numbers almost always backfire.
The policy predictions were highly reliable; the improvement in the regulatory environment and the US’s friendliness towards crypto were predicted correctly by almost all institutions and individuals.
Finally, I believe the value of these institutions' annual forecasts lies not in "telling you what to buy," but in "telling you what the industry is thinking." We can treat these forecasts as indicators of industry sentiment; however, if you use them as an investment guide, the results could be disastrous.
At the same time, maintain a good habit: be skeptical of any prediction with specific numbers, regardless of which KOL, organization, or industry leader it comes from.
This is not to say that we should criticize these industry elites, but rather that even incorrect predictions can have value.
It tells you what the market once believed, but no one can predict the future.
