Trend Research: 2026 Beyond Paradigms, WLFI Opens a New Era in Financial Ecology

2026 will be a key year for the large-scale adoption of blockchain by institutions, with stablecoins being the most fundamental and largest blockchain application. Trend Research believes that WLFI (World Liberty Financial) and its launched USD1 stablecoin will become one of the fastest-growing and most widely applicable blockchain projects, possessing comprehensive advantages in compliance, branding, users, and liquidity, serving as the infrastructure for the tens of trillions of financial on-chain market in the era of financial blockchain.

I. The Surge of Stablecoins is Imminent

"In the entire history of fintech, we have rarely seen a global project start at this level; the business model of stablecoins is giving rise to a new generation of founders, builders, and products that are no longer constrained by geopolitical barriers, aiming for the global market from the moment they are launched."

1. Growth Trend of Stablecoins

Stablecoins experienced rapid growth in 2025, with the scale increasing from $130.553 billion at the beginning of the year to $308.585 billion, an annual growth rate of 136%. Even after the 1011 incident, the scale of stablecoins quickly returned to new highs. U.S. Treasury Secretary Yellen predicts that after the stablecoin bill is passed in the U.S., the market value of stablecoins will rapidly grow to over $2 trillion in the coming years.

We believe that thanks to favorable U.S. regulations, pilot programs and adoption by tech and AI companies, and the ongoing integration of Wall Street into blockchain, stablecoins will experience "explosive growth" in 2026.

2. U.S. Regulatory Policies

The Genius Act, passed in 2025, fills the regulatory gap for stablecoins, establishing the first comprehensive federal regulatory framework for stablecoins, clarifying the qualifications of issuers, reserve requirements, and operational norms. It mandates that stablecoins be pegged to the U.S. dollar at a 1:1 ratio, promoting the penetration of the dollar into the global crypto economy and cross-border payment sectors, thus consolidating the dollar's dominance in international finance. Additionally, through mandatory reserve rules (requiring reserve assets to be short-term U.S. Treasury bonds or cash), it creates structural demand for the U.S. Treasury market and alleviates U.S. fiscal pressure.

With the passage of the Genius Act in 2026, more participants will enter the development of stablecoins, accelerating institutional adoption and blockchain integration.

3. Layout of Tech and AI Companies

Traditional Web2 tech and AI companies are piloting stablecoins to prepare for large-scale adoption when the time is right.

Among traditional Web2 tech companies, PayPal has expanded its PYUSD stablecoin to enterprise applications, including a partnership with YouTube that allows creators to receive payments in stablecoins; Stripe acquired Bridge for over $1 billion and partnered with Visa to launch a stablecoin-linked card product, allowing users to spend stablecoin balances at Visa-accepting merchants. In 2025, Visa expanded its support for multiple stablecoins (such as USDC) and reported a shift in stablecoin usage from holding to spending, indicating that stablecoins are becoming mainstream payment tools.

In the AI sector, 2025 is a year of accelerated AI development, and further advancements in AI will inevitably create demand for machine-to-machine transactions and micropayments, with blockchain potentially becoming the foundational infrastructure for AI and machine interactions. The emergence of the x402 protocol represents the integration of AI and crypto, driven by adopters including Coinbase, Google, Cloudflare, Circle, Visa, and AWS, which have large customer bases and consumption scenarios, signaling a new narrative around AI and payments is visibly heating up.

Companies outside the U.S. are also seizing stablecoin application scenarios; Trip.com, the overseas version of Ctrip, has launched stablecoin payment functions for global users, currently supporting two U.S. dollar stablecoins: USDT and USDC. Companies like Ant Group, JD Group, and Grab have also clearly entered the stablecoin field.

4. Financial On-Chain in Wall Street

Stablecoins are the most important foundational element for traditional finance to integrate into the blockchain; they make currency programmable and decentralized, serving as the basis for the circulation and settlement of all on-chain financial assets. A significant motivation for Wall Street to promote the development of stablecoins is to drive "everything on-chain" after completing the infrastructure. SEC Chair Paul Atkins has declared, "The next step will be digital assets, market digitization, and tokenization… all U.S. markets will be on-chain within two years." BlackRock CEO Larry Fink stated, "The tokenization of all financial assets is the future trend, and we have already entered this phase… ETFs are the first step in the technological revolution of financial markets. The second step will be the tokenization of all financial assets."

BlackRock has launched and operates the BUIDL fund, tokenizing U.S. Treasury bonds into blockchain assets, achieving 24/7 instant settlement and institutional-level liquidity; JPMorgan conducts on-chain trading and settlement through the Kinexys platform, having processed over $15 trillion in transactions; Goldman Sachs operates a digital asset platform, issuing and trading tokenized bonds; and the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) has received SEC approval to provide tokenization services, handling on-chain versions of over $35 trillion in securities transactions. These operations utilize blockchain technology for asset tokenization, on-chain trading, and settlement, representing the trend of traditional finance transitioning to on-chain. They are based on institutional pilots and production-level deployments, aiming to enhance liquidity, efficiency, and global access.

Currently, the total market value of traditional finance exceeds $400 trillion, the total market value of the crypto market is $3.3 trillion, the total market value of stablecoins is $0.3 trillion, and the total market value of RWA is $0.02 trillion. According to industry forecasts from Standard Chartered Bank, Redstone, RWA.xyz, etc., by 2030-2034, 10%-30% of global assets may be tokenized, amounting to $40-$120 trillion, with the total market value of RWA expected to expand to over 1000 times its current value.

II. WLFI Opens a New Era of Comprehensive Finance

In the future, every company globally must have a blockchain and AI strategy; otherwise, they will not be able to adapt to the competitive efficiency of new technologies and achieve new scalable development. Stablecoins will become the intersection for finance, the internet, AI companies, cross-border trade, and local payments. With stablecoins on the verge of explosive growth, Trend Research believes that WLFI and USD1 will be the most beneficial crypto companies in this wave, surpassing past paradigms and becoming the fastest-growing blockchain projects.

1. USD1 Will Become the Fastest-Growing Stablecoin

After the WLFI TGE, USD1 has entered a new phase of rapid growth, increasing from $2.462 billion to $3.438 billion in three months, a growth rate of 40%, making it the fastest-growing mainstream stablecoin in the past three months. It ranks seventh among stablecoins and is about to surpass PYUSD (PayPal USD), with an average daily trading volume of approximately $1-3 billion, primarily distributed on BNB Chain (55.61%) and Ethereum (37.38%).

Trend Research expects that the scale of USD1 will rapidly exceed $10 billion in 2026, becoming the fastest-growing stablecoin and eventually reaching a trillion-dollar scale.

2. USD1 Will Become the Most Orthodox Stablecoin

USD1 complies with the requirements of the Genius Act, being 100% backed by real U.S. dollar-equivalent assets in terms of reserves and collateral, including U.S. dollar cash or deposits, short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, and other cash equivalents (such as money market funds), ensuring that every USD1 corresponds to an equivalent U.S. dollar asset, theoretically achieving 1:1 redemption and payment.

In terms of reserve proof and auditing mechanisms, the USD1 team publishes regular reserve reports/audits, transparently disclosing the quantity and distribution of reserves to the public, with U.S. dollar reserves subject to regular review by an independent third-party company.

For custody, the reserves of USD1 are managed by BitGo Trust, which manages over $100 billion in reserve assets, processes transactions worth over $30 trillion, and serves over 1,500 institutional clients in more than 50 countries, including handling 20% of the on-chain Bitcoin transaction value. BitGo Trust's custody clients include Circle, Paxos, WBTC, Bitstamp, Fidelity Digital Assets, Vanguard, and others.

Compared to other projects, WLFI and USD1 are backed by the currently most powerful presidential family. Trend Research believes that USD1 will further advance on the path of compliance, becoming one of the most orthodox stablecoins.

3. The Wave of Adoption for USD1 is Starting

Since the WLFI TGE, the wave of adoption for USD1 has gradually begun, with Binance successively listing nearly 20 USD1 trading pairs. Trading platforms like StableStock are expanding the trading adoption of USD1 to U.S. stocks. As the scale and compliance of USD1 further strengthen, it is foreseeable that in 2026, USD1 will expand from crypto to traditional finance, internet trading, offline payments, and other application scenarios.

4. WLFI is Building a Comprehensive Financial Ecosystem

WLFI is starting with the USD1 stablecoin to build a comprehensive financial ecosystem, aiming to bring 6 billion people onto the blockchain and integrate with technology and financial services.

In the future, WLFI will also develop the WLFI App as a wallet entry point that gathers various scenarios and launch DeFi products such as lending to achieve efficient asset circulation and yield, introducing a series of RWA products to form a complete blockchain financial ecosystem, and expanding the adoption of WLFI through native methods such as investment returns, points systems, and governance voting.

Trend Research predicts that blockchain will experience an explosive year of institutional adoption in 2026, and WLFI will start with USD1, surpassing the development paradigms of past blockchain projects, and ushering in a new era of integration between blockchain and finance with astonishing speed, scale, and a comprehensive ecosystem.