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- Crypto is entering its production era in 2026, with the push towards trusted infrastructure and a focus on utility, Ripple’s Monical Long says.
- She also believes it will be the year when stablecoins will become the foundation of global settlement and underpin services like Visa, Stripe and Mastercard.
2025 was a landmark year for the crypto industry. With the rise to power of Donald Trump in the US, enabling laws across Asia and Europe, and an acceleration of institutional adoption, crypto became a mainstream sector. In 2026, crypto will enter its production era, becoming part of the fabric of global commerce, says Ripple President Monica Long.
Long shared her predictions for 2026 on social media, describing this year as a “true inflection point for institutional adoption and the Internet of Value.”
After one of crypto’s most exciting years (and Ripple’s), the industry is entering its production era. In 2026 we’ll see the institutionalization of crypto — trusted infrastructure and real utility will push banks, corporates, and providers from pilots to scale — across…
— Monica Long (@MonicaLongSF) January 20, 2026
She believes that it will be a defining year for stablecoins. 2025 was a ready a big year for these fiat-referenced tokens, ending the year with a 50% year-on-year increase to $310 billion. Transaction volume hit $33 trillion, a 70% rise, and accounting for 30% of all on-chain crypto transactions. As we reported, many of the world’s largest financial and tech companies, from Western Union and YouTube to Visa and Trip.com, all integrated stablecoin payments.
Long believes that stablecoins still have massive room for growth, stating:
Stablecoins will be the foundation for global settlement, not an alternative rail. As Visa, Stripe and major institutions hard-wire them into payment flows, B2B is the growth engine – with corporates using digital dollars to unlock real-time liquidity and capital efficiency.R
Ripple joined the stablecoin wave with the launch of the RLUSD stablecoin. As we reported, RLUSD topped $1 billion on Ethereum in November, and Ripple is pushing users to capitalize on its yield-generating capabilities.
Ripple President: 2026 is a Defining Year for Institutional Crypto
This year will also take crypto to the mainstream circles, Long added. 2025 saw some of the world’s largest corporations dive deeper into crypto, with Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs becoming some of the best-performing in their class.
However, Long believes it was just the start. She cited a Coinbase survey that found 60% of Fortune 500 companies have active blockchain projects and that 200 public companies now hold BTC in their treasury. She stated:
In 2026, collateral mobility will emerge as a top institutional use case, with custodian banks and clearing houses adopting tokenization to modernize settlement. Expect 5–10% of capital markets settlement to move onchain, driven by regulatory momentum and the adoption of stablecoins by systemically important institutions.
AI has been the defining technology of the past three years, and Long expects its convergence with blockchain to take shape this year. With AI, treasuries can manage liquidity, optimize yield, and execute margin calls with minimal manual intervention. Asset managers will tap AI to define how their companies interact with tokenized assets, stablecoins, and other on-chain markets.
“The intersection of these two revolutionary technologies will unlock greater efficiency and give teams access to tools that operate at internet speed,” she noted.
With this comes the need for privacy, and Long believes that zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are the ultimate solution. As we reported, RippleX is developing ZKP tech for the XRP Ledger network.
Ultimately, 2026 will be remembered as the year crypto became foundational to the world’s financial infrastructure.
Meanwhile, XRP has dipped slightly over the past day to trade at $1.9 at press time as the general crypto market cap dipped nearly 2% to just over $3 trillion.
