So much of crypto is not even real—but that’s starting to change

We spend a lot of time on the road meeting with LPs, fellow investors, and founders. No matter where the conversation starts – whether it’s in Singapore, Abu Dhabi, London, or anywhere else – it often drifts to a simple, sometimes rhetorical question: Is any of this real?

It’s a fair question. Crypto has become a strange reflection of our economy and society more broadly: part financial spectacle, part social experiment, part collective delusion. For every breakthrough in cryptography or blockchain infrastructure, there are ten new ways to speculate. The mood across the ecosystem has shifted. It’s not outrage or denial anymore…it’s fatigue.

Over the past few years, crypto has rotated through one speculative narrative after another: Layer 1 blockchains that quickly traded to huge valuations; NFTs that promised culture and delivered cash grabs; Metaverse real estate in the clouds; “Play-to-earn” games that collapsed before they even shipped. The most recent cycle brought us a flood of memecoins, which grew the universe of tokens from 20,000 in 2022 to over 27 million today, and now represent as much as 60%+ of daily application revenue on Solana. Then there are perpetual futures platforms that offer 100X leverage to largely retail traders.

Each cycle creates a new form of entertainment and a new way for speculative capital to churn. To date, the current era’s three most successful crypto retail applications – Pump.fun, Hyperliquid and Polymarket – have all fed this speculative bubble. One reality has become perfectly clear. The casino always finds a new table.

And yet, buried under all the speculative noise, something real is taking shape.

The most obvious sign is stablecoins bursting into the mainstream with a host of real-world use cases. Already, stablecoin circulation has reached more than $280 billion, and led financial incumbents to scramble for a response. The stablecoin boom reflects how institutional investors and asset managers are becoming less focused on the speculative nature of crypto and toward what can actually be built now that the pipes actually work and the advantages of faster, cheaper, and more secure rails are becoming clear.

AI, meanwhile, is accelerating the cognitive part of the equation. Where blockchain builds verifiable systems of record, AI introduces adaptability, reasoning, and speed. These two technologies complement each other in powerful ways: verifiable and immutable data for intelligent models, intelligent models for decentralized networks. Together, they create the architecture for products that address real-world use cases that couldn’t exist before – autonomous systems that transact, coordinate, and learn in real time.

This convergence is where the next chapter begins. Founders with deep domain expertise are building in financial infrastructure, global payments, AI compute networks, media, telecom, and beyond – massive sectors where the combination of trustless systems and intelligent automation can unlock entirely new markets. These aren’t speculative casino plays; they are fundamental rewrites of how value and data move through the economy.

The question has never been about available capital or interest. It has been about why investors should feel enough conviction to allocate to an industry with a history of prioritizing the casino. The consensus has been that despite blockchain’s potential, too many projects are chasing the same users, while too many teams are designing for each other instead of the broader market. The result has been a landscape full of potential energy waiting for its moment of release – a release that institutional investors finally realize is coming soon.

So, is any of this real?

The truth is that most of it still isn’t, but it is becoming more real everyday. For the first time in our 10+ years in the digital asset space, institutional investors are now acknowledging that this technology has the potential to touch industries far beyond crypto in ways that can reshape finance, trade, media, data, and beyond. And much of this potential is not far off.

That’s why we believe 2026 will mark the most meaningful shift we’ve seen in this space. The casino might still churn, but the builders who survive it will drive lasting innovation.

We’re betting on them and we’re more bullish on the future of this technology than ever.

Pete Najarian is Managing Partner of Raptor Digital who operates in both the digital asset space and traditional finance. Joe Bruzzesi is a General Partner at Raptor Digital and serves on the boards of Titan Content and Nirvana Labs. Their views do not necessarily reflect those of Fortune.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com