2026 Crypto Predictions: Why It All Gets Boring (EP. 302)

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Do you understand in five years
that crypto is going to be

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extremely boring?
It would be really sad that

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we're creating a technology or
giving a technology to try to

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fight to just benefit the same
guys that have been actually

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making the whole financial
systems really fair.

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Money never sleeps, pal.
Welcome to Money Never Sleeps.

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Sharp riffs, big ideas and real
insights from smart people.

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I'm Pete Townshend.
Let's go.

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So listen folks, I'm thrilled to
welcome back Alejandro Gutierrez

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to the show for a 2026
predictions episode.

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This is his 11th appearance
overall on Money Never Sleeps.

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Through the years, Alejandro is
the leader of Solana Super team.

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He is a crypto D5 fintech
veteran, been in the space for a

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while and but this is his first
episode in the new era of money

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ever sleeps given we just
started last week with Garrett

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Cassidy, sharper, faster video
and audio.

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So if you like this format,
please subscribe wherever you're

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watching or listening, but it's
YouTube, Spotify, Apple,

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whatever, so that you can keep
running right alongside us.

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So, Alejandro, welcome back.
Pete, thank you very much for

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having me again.
Always a pleasure.

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Awesome, wonderful.
So listen.

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This is our 2026 predictions
episode.

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You and I revisited our 2025
predictions recently when we did

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episode 300 live in Dublin.
So check out the back catalog if

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you want to see if we were
right.

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The first one for me is that
what looked like boring on chain

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infrastructure will turn out to
be the primitive that enables

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the next big wave, the next
breakout on chain product

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doesn't always start as an app.
It starts as utility.

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And if you want to look at a few
different examples, right, like

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stable coins, those look like
faster crypto dollars.

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They enabled payments, treasury
settlement machine money.

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Now that there are $305 billion
asset class, OK?

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And they're driving Triadfi on
chain being one of the core

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components of that, right?
Tokenized T-bills, you know, it

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looked like crypto recreating
Triadfi, but now it's enabling

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on chain collateral yield 24/7
liquidity, right?

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And so I think that's what we're
going to see happen.

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Is that 345678910 of them will
start to unveil themselves in

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2026 that people point to and
say, well, is this kind of like,

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you know, the Stripe 8 lines of
code that enabled developers to

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put credit cards online really
easily, You know, which sounded

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really boring?
Look at Stripe now.

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Infrastructure sometimes has to
be boring, right?

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Yeah, yeah.
And I think all of this stuff is

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going to become very basic
foundation level rather than,

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hey, shiny new toy level.
Like we'll see tokenized

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treasury show up in cash
management policies rather than

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pitch tax.
I was chatting to someone who

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told me like, do you understand
in five years that crypto is

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going to be extremely boring?
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally.

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And I can, I can see it
happening.

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I can see it happening.
So on the on the anti pouring

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side, right, If this was
something that I took away from

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my time in Amsterdam two weeks
ago at the Tech stars ABN Amro

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Future Finance Accelerator demo
day, where and I wrote about

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this recently, just actually, it
was published this morning and

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I'm calling it the geometry of
fintech.

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But one of the things that
clicked in my head is that I

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think in 2026, we're going to
see the world will realize that

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block chains weren't built for
humans, right?

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That they were actually built
and make more sense for machines

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rather than people.
And so, you know, the, the

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questions I ask is what if basic
crypto UX wasn't meant to get

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much better?
What if it was just, hey, the

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machines are going to take over?
What if we just misidentified

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the user?
Let's optimize it for AI to move

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digital assets, crypto, stable
coins, real world assets on

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chain, whatever you want to call
it, to be able to move those

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just through an AI agent.
That food agree.

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That food agree.
So I see that happen.

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What's your first one for 2026,
Alejandro?

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First one is we'll have a big
wave of privacy that we already

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seen.
But, and this might be a little

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bit how to say inflammatory is
not for the right reasons.

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I think this is going to be
driven by big institutions

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instead of actually the
consumers, which is a shame,

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right?
Because there has been a lot of

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people fighting for privacy.
Suddenly institutions demand

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privacy and everybody says, OK,
we need privacy.

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The big push frontier are going
to be regulators uninstitutional

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demanding actually or shaping
this narrative, right, which is

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pretty unfortunate, right, Like
because at the end of the day,

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there has been a subsection and
cohort of people that have been

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just advocating for the rights
of privacy that sometimes is

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needed, right, But it has been
always seen as a negative

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context in the crypto space.
Yeah, Yeah.

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Well, I mean Alex Prudent from
Aleo, I chatted with him years

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ago about this and that Aleo was
an L1 chain that is privacy

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infused, right?
And his statement was that

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listen on law, on chain, with
blockchain, privacy is not the

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default.
In your day-to-day human life,

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privacy is the default.
Correct.

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So how do we bring that for
humans and that I one of the

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first things now that is on
their list a Leo now that they

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are, I think, going to test net
is payroll, right?

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That their blockchain enables
payroll to be distributed on

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chain with privacy.
Now that feels like a pretty

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good reason to do it, right?
Nobody wants to disclose

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publicly disclose how much they
are earning on a monthly basis,

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right?
That's the simple, there's so

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many different applications for
like a white privacy should be

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just a normal standard, right?
And I, I believe that they're

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going to be a big bunch of
private tools and frameworks are

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going to be exploding in 2026.
But as I say, unfortunately, I

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don't think this is going to be
because that consumers are

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pushing.
It is because the regulators and

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because of institutions are
forcing this to happen.

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Is traditional finance
integrating on chain or

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infiltrating on chain?
Oh, I, I hope it's not the

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latter because it has been
saying for all these years, it

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would be really sad that we're
creating a technology or giving

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a technology to Trapify to just
benefit the same guys that have

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been actually making the whole
financial system so unfair.

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But you can't turn it off.
That's the best thing.

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You can't put those back in the
box.

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And so I can live my sovereign
monetary life on chain without

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ever touching an institution.
Correct.

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Right.
But for the institutions to come

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on and do this, they need to do
it a certain way.

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And I, you know, I've spoken
with a few folks recently who

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were kind of dismayed at the
thought of Tri Triadfi moving on

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chain.
And they're coming at it from a

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pure crypto native example in
the background.

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And I said, well, listen, I
think we're going through this

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bridge moment of we needed to
build this bridge so Triadfi

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could move on chain.
And then I think once we get

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them all over to the other side,
they'll start to adapt.

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And I think we'll see kind of a
middle ground develop in the

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years to come beyond 2026 that
will get us to the right context

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for how to have individuals and
institutions operating on the

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same rails with the right degree
of privacy that they may or may

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not want, you know?
Fingers crossed.

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Fingers crossed.
Absolutely.

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All right, your second one.
This one's super interesting.

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Yeah, it's quantum and
blockchain convergence.

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I started seeing it now and I
believe that 2026 is going to be

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a big explosion out of it
because suddenly the threat of

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quantum computing is kind of
past that phase of being

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completely theoretical.
And now it's just becoming a

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little bit more real.
And we are seeing some hints out

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of Dalla, let's say in Solana
Joe's released his net post

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quantum signatures, which is a
big, a big push into that

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direction.
But also we that there were some

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comments actually made by, by
Anatoly in these regards and

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things that need to be done
right now.

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So in that case, we are not
going to use these big scarce in

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the next 5-6 years, right?
I, I, I believe this one is, is

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just have been under the radar.
But in 2026 it's going to be a

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big explosion because there's a
lot of people talking about in

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the, in the grassroots level.
When you starting hearing those

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conversations, I can tell you a
year ago I wouldn't hear a

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single conversation about this.
And so there's a lot of people

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talking about it.
So I think that's a, that's a

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great thermometer.
Do you see what's going to come?

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And, and I, I now have clarity
on the problem and thanks to

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Nick Carter from Castle Island
Ventures and on the Brink

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podcast, because he wrote about
this recent and the fear is OK,

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if someone can work backwards
from those known public keys

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that belong to Satoshi, you can
work backwards through quantum

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computing back to the private
key and you can take Satoshi's

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coins.
That's the problem and we need

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to address that.
Yeah.

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You have also the brute force
component that would like taking

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over some of the chains and
there's some other possibilities

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as well on to predictions for
for passwords etcetera,

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etcetera.
Yeah, But that this one that you

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describe is the one that is more
applicable into the crypto

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space.
And I I believe it's good to see

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a protocol sign looking in this
direction and no waiting until

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OK, we have finally a quantum
proper hardware, a proper

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computer that can do it.
I think we need to stop

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preparing from now and seeing
the industry taking taking this

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threat seriously is I think it's
important.

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Absolutely, absolutely can't
wait to see what's going to

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happen on the bat in 2026.
All right, so you've done your

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two.
I've done my 2, We have one more

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because we got to get to 5,
right?

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Any crazy ideas that you think
you're going to see happen in

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2026?
And I'll see if I can overlay

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any of mine on top of that.
I don't know you're crazy, but

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one that probably should have
been here is X4 O to properly

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apply and implement it into
day-to-day payments.

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Yeah, like using using what?
Using stable coins for

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day-to-day payments.
That is not the case right now

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probably.
I believe X4 O2 could be the the

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channel for this to happen.
Yeah, absolutely.

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For those who don't know, HTTP
four O 2 was something that was

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created back in the early days
of the Internet in the 90s,

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which was payments online, and
it was enabling payments online,

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but it was just tagged.
The four O 2 protocol, whatever

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you want to call it, was tagged
as reserve for future use

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because people just couldn't get
to terms with how we're going to

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actually move money online.
And we've had what's been

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created on top of that through
fintech has been kind of an

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significant abstraction away
from the very core of being able

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to move money online, right?
And so X4 O2 was then created.

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Few people have worked on that
over the years, but then

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Coinbase now have and Google, I
think we're working on that to

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get it to a they were.
Able to.

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Very simply, use the X4O2
protocol to send money on chain.

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A few startups here in in
Ireland as well working on it.

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They guys from latinum and have
chat they working on it as well.

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Yeah.
All right.

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Well, listen, Alejandro, thank
you for jumping in and doing

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this with me.
Let's revisit them probably come

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September like we did this year.
And don't forget, everybody,

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please subscribe on your
favorite platform.

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We have more short sharp
episodes coming fast and we will

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see you next year.
Thank you much bitch.

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Thanks, Alejandro.