"Trend Research: Beyond Paradigms by 2026, WLFI Ushers in a New Era for the Financial Ecosystem"

2026 will be a pivotal year for large-scale institutional adoption of blockchain, with stablecoins serving as the foundational and largest blockchain application. Trend Research believes that WLFI (World Liberty Financial) and its USD1 stablecoin will become one of the fastest-growing and most widely adopted blockchain projects. In the era of future financial on-chain transformation, it possesses comprehensive advantages in compliance, branding, user base, and liquidity, positioning itself as the infrastructure for a multi-trillion-dollar financial on-chain market.

I. The Stablecoin Explosion is Imminent

"Throughout the history of fintech, we have rarely seen a project of this scale that is global from its inception. The stablecoin business model is giving rise to a new generation of founders, builders, and products that are no longer constrained by geographical barriers. From the moment of launch, their target is the global market."

1. The Growth Trend of Stablecoins

Stablecoins experienced rapid growth in 2025, with their scale increasing from $130.553 billion at the beginning of the year to $308.585 billion, representing an annualized growth of 136%. Even after the 1011 incident, the stablecoin market quickly recovered to new highs. U.S. Treasury Secretary Besant predicts that after the passage of the U.S. stablecoin bill, the market capitalization of stablecoins will rapidly grow to over $2 trillion in the coming years.

We believe that, driven by favorable U.S. regulations, pilot programs and adoption by technology and AI companies, and the on-chain transformation of Wall Street finance, stablecoins will experience "explosive growth" in 2026.

2. U.S. Regulatory Policies

The "Genius Act" passed in 2025 fills the regulatory gap for stablecoins. It is the first comprehensive federal regulatory framework for stablecoins, clearly defining issuer qualifications, reserve requirements, and operational standards. It mandates a 1:1 peg between stablecoins and the U.S. dollar, promoting the penetration of the dollar into the global crypto economy and cross-border payments through stablecoins, thereby 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, alleviating U.S. fiscal pressure.

In 2026, following the passage of the "Genius Act," more participants will enter the stablecoin development space, accelerating institutional adoption and blockchain integration.

3. The Strategic Layout of Technology and AI Companies

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

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

In the AI field, 2025 was a year of accelerated AI development. Further AI advancement will inevitably drive demand for machine-to-machine transactions and micropayments, with blockchain potentially becoming the ultimate infrastructure for AI and machine interaction. The emergence of the x402 protocol represents a fusion of AI and Crypto, backed and adopted by entities including Coinbase, Google, Cloudflare, Circle, Visa, and AWS, which themselves possess vast customer bases and consumption scenarios. The new narrative around AI and payments is visibly warming up.

Companies outside the U.S. are also vying for stablecoin application scenarios. Trip.com, the overseas version of Ctrip, has launched stablecoin payment functionality for global users, currently supporting two dollar-denominated stablecoins: USDT and USDC. Tech and payment companies including Ant Group, JD Group, and Grab have explicitly entered the stablecoin space.

4. Wall Street's Financial On-Chain Transformation

Stablecoins are the most fundamental layer for integrating traditional finance onto the chain. They make money programmable and decentralized, serving as the basis for the flow and settlement of all on-chain financial assets. A key motivation for Wall Street to promote stablecoin development is to advance the "tokenization of everything" after completing the infrastructure. SEC Chair Paul Atkins once 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 stage... 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, enabling 24/7 instant settlement and institutional-grade liquidity. JPMorgan conducts on-chain trading and settlement business through the Kinexys platform, having processed over $1.5 trillion in transactions. Goldman Sachs operates a digital asset platform for issuing and trading tokenized bonds. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC), after receiving SEC approval, provides tokenization services, handling on-chain versions of securities transactions exceeding $3.5 trillion. These businesses, through blockchain technology, achieve asset tokenization, on-chain trading, and settlement, representing the trend of traditional finance moving on-chain. Based on institutional pilots and production-level deployments, they aim to enhance liquidity, efficiency, and global access.

Currently, the total market capitalization of traditional finance exceeds $400 trillion, the crypto market is $3.3 trillion, stablecoins are $0.3 trillion, and 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, representing a scale of $40–120 trillion. The total market capitalization of RWA is expected to expand to over 1000 times its current size.

II. WLFI Ushers in a New Era of Panoramic Finance

In the future, every global company must have a blockchain and AI strategy; otherwise, it will not be able to adapt to the competitive efficiency of new technologies or achieve new scale development. Stablecoins will become the intersection for finance, internet, AI companies, cross-border trade, and local payments. Given that stablecoins are poised for an explosive year, Trend Research believes that WLFI and USD1 will become the most benefited Crypto company in this wave, surpassing past paradigms to become the fastest-growing blockchain project.

1. USD1 Will Become the Fastest-Growing Stablecoin

Following WLFI's TGE, USD1 experienced a new round 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 major stablecoin in the past three months. It ranks seventh in stablecoin size and is poised to surpass PYUSD (PayPal USD). Its average daily trading volume is approximately $1-3 billion, currently mainly distributed on BNB Chain (55.61%) and Ethereum (37.38%).

Trend Research expects USD1's scale to rapidly exceed $10 billion in 2026, becoming the fastest-growing stablecoin, and in the long term, to become a trillion-dollar-scale stablecoin.

1. USD1 Will Become the Most Legitimate Stablecoin

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

In terms of reserve proof and audit mechanisms, the USD1 team releases periodic reserve reports/verifications, transparently disclosing reserve quantities and asset distribution to the public. Dollar reserves will be regularly reviewed by an independent third-party company.

Regarding custody, USD1's reserve custodian is BitGo Trust, which manages over $100 billion in reserve assets, processes transactions worth over $3 trillion, and serves more than 1,500 institutional clients in over 50 countries worldwide, including handling 20% of on-chain Bitcoin transaction value. BitGo Trust's custody clients include Circle, Paxos, WBTC, Bitstamp, Fidelity Digital Assets, Vanguard, etc.

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

1. The Adoption Wave for USD1 is Beginning

Since WLFI's TGE, the adoption wave for USD1 has gradually begun. Currently, Binance has successively listed nearly 20 USD1 trading pairs. Trading platforms like StableStock are expanding USD1's trading adoption to U.S. stocks. As USD1's scale and compliance further strengthen, it is foreseeable that in 2026, USD1 will expand from Crypto to traditional finance, internet transactions, offline payments, and other multi-scenario adoptions.

4. WLFI Builds a Panoramic Financial Ecosystem

Starting with the USD1 stablecoin, WLFI is building a panoramic financial ecosystem aimed at bringing 6 billion people onto the blockchain, integrating with technology and financial services.

In the future, WLFI will also develop the WLFI App as a wallet entry point aggregating various scenarios, launch DeFi products such as lending to achieve efficient asset flow and yield, introduce a series of RWA products to form a comprehensive blockchain financial ecosystem, and expand WLFI's adoption through native methods such as wealth management returns, point systems, and governance voting.

Trend Research expects blockchain to experience a year of explosive institutional adoption in 2026. Starting with USD1, WLFI will surpass the development paradigms of past blockchain projects, ushering in a new era of blockchain and financial integration with astonishing speed, scale, and a panoramic ecosystem.