Crypto’s 2026: A Descent into Digital Madness 🚀

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In the shadowed corridors of digital finance, where the air reeks of volatility and the ghosts of failed altcoins whisper sweet nothings to the naive, one Rob Hadick, a general partner of Dragonfly Capital, emerged to proclaim a “constructive” outlook for 2026. With the gravitas of a man who has stared into the abyss of bear markets and returned, he declared that the recent crypto chaos was but a tempest in a teacup-though the teacup might be made of shattered glass. “Zoom out,” he intoned, as if channeling the spirit of Dostoevsky himself, “for within this madness lies the faint echo of progress, especially in stablecoins and prediction markets, which shall swell like a tide of madness by 2026.”

On CNBC’s Squawk Box, a stage more befitting a tragic monologue than financial discourse, Hadick dismissed the notion of a “crypto winter” as a mere whimper of recency bias. “The year has been… tragic,” he said, his voice trembling with faux solemnity, “but let us not confuse a single chapter in this epic with the entire novel. Bitcoin, that noble beast, has risen 26% since the election of ’24, while Nasdaq, that old relic, has clawed its way up 28%. Two years hence, Bitcoin doubled; Nasdaq, that dinosaur, has merely limped forward by 50%.”

“I am no chartist,” Hadick insisted, as if confessing a mortal sin, “I am a long-term investor, a VC fund, a philosopher-king of tokenized futures. My eyes are fixed on 2026, where innovation in prediction markets and stablecoins shall bloom like a garden of horrors, and scalability shall be our salvation-or our doom.”

2026 predictions: Another positive year for the industry (zoom out), where prediction markets, stablecoins, and tokenized assets shall reign supreme. Scalability and infrastructure for financial markets? A necessary evil, perhaps… or a divine providence. 🐉

– Rob Hadick ＞|＜ (@HadickM) December 24, 2025

When pressed on the meaning of a “good 2026,” Hadick waxed poetic about macroeconomic policy and the “compounding real-world usage” of tokens. “Bitcoin, Ethereum-ah, yes, their prices shall march onward,” he mused, “for we shall have better monetary policy, or so the prophets of central banks claim. And tokenized assets? They shall infiltrate every crevice of our existence, like a dragonfly in a teapot.”

He cited McKinsey’s revelation that 3% of cross-border payments now flow through stablecoins, a figure that had risen from “basically 0% a year ago.” “A tenfold increase?” he asked, as if to the stars, “Why, yes! For humanity’s thirst for convenience is insatiable, even if it leads us to perdition.”

Dragonfly, he claimed, was a firm “non-ideological” across chains and sectors, a rare beast in these polarized times. “We invest in every chain doing anything interesting in tokenized assets,” he declared, “for we are not ideological zealots. No, we are the architects of financial markets’ future-or perhaps its accidental co-conspirators.”

On stablecoins and prediction markets, Hadick’s enthusiasm bordered on the pathological. “Stablecoins are here to stay,” he proclaimed, “and they shall grow tenfold! Prediction markets, too! They are not mere sports betting dens, though many mistake them for such. Observe Polymarket: From $50 million a month to $4 billion! Only 35% of that is sports-unlike Kalshi, which is ‘more of a sports platform because they’re infrastructure for Robinhood.’”

He invoked Jeff Sprecher of Intercontinental Exchange, whose tokenization thesis, Hadick claimed, would see prediction markets converge with “broader financial infrastructure.” “Sprecher believes this could rival ICE itself,” Hadick said, “a vision as grand as it is terrifying. Imagine: Every risk, every outcome, every existential dread, programmable into a binary option. An insurance company once asked me how to hedge weather-related risks. That, dear reader, is the future.”

The Eternal Struggle: Ethereum vs. Solana

When asked to choose between Ethereum and Solana, Hadick scoffed at the “MySpace vs. Facebook” framing. “No, they are both Facebook!” he cried, “For if tokenization becomes mainstream, we shall need multiple settlement environments-like multiple religions vying for souls in a crowded cathedral.”

“Ethereum holds the stablecoin liquidity,” he explained, “while Solana, that speed demon, dominates trading volume. But mark my words: The platform layer is not frozen. We at Dragonfly have invested in Monad, a ‘Solana killer’ with a $2 billion valuation and a token price of $0.002. A bold gamble-or a fool’s errand?”

At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $2.92 trillion-a number so vast it could make Gogol himself weep into his satchel.

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2025-12-25 18:56