Fidelity Digital Assets is taking a surprisingly optimistic stance on where crypto is headed — and it has nothing to do with price charts. Their new 2026 outlook argues that the quiet tone of 2025 wasn’t stagnation at all, but a reset period where the industry rebuilt its plumbing, regulation, and institutional infrastructure.
Chris Kuiper, Fidelity’s VP of Research, highlights something many observers may have missed: nearly every major bank signaled plans to expand digital asset capabilities last year. It didn’t make headlines, but it signals a shift from “experimental” to “inevitable.” The sentiment around Bitcoin has also matured. For the first time in years, 2025 didn’t produce the usual wave of “Bitcoin is dead” obituaries. Instead, attention turned toward regulated ETPs, custody evolution, tokenization, and legal clarity.
Where things get especially interesting is the institutional side. Fidelity expects pensions, endowments, foundations, and corporate treasuries — the massive, slow-moving allocators — to begin taking measurable steps into digital assets. And in the advisory world, tens of trillions of dollars sit with RIAs and wealth managers who are finally gaining the tech and compliance frameworks to offer crypto in a streamlined, consistent way. As those channels mature, crypto may develop something the market has never truly had: a structural demand floor.
Fidelity is also looking ahead to emerging issues like quantum readiness, noting that custodians and blockchain developers are already working on the next generation of cryptographic security. And depending on how U.S. market structure legislation plays out, traditional finance may soon get the regulatory green light it’s been waiting for.
Their broader message is simple: the groundwork laid in 2025 could quietly set up 2026 to be transformative — not because of hype, but because the financial system is preparing to absorb digital assets at scale. For an industry used to dramatic cycles, that kind of slow, steady integration may end up being the real story.
