I have repeatedly read the a16z 2026 forecast and found one thing: they are describing a whole new set of game rules.

Stablecoins are no longer "coins," but the settlement layer of the internet. When your AI agent can automatically handle payments, call APIs, and settle GPU computing power in the background for you, money becomes a network protocol—routed like data packets. This is not a financial upgrade; it’s a sign that finance is being swallowed by the internet.

Privacy is becoming the strongest moat. Performance has become similar across the board, but privacy states cannot be easily migrated. Once users enter, it’s very hard for them to leave. This means that future public chain competition will focus not on who is faster, but on who can carry real institutional funds and commercial scenarios.

Another easily overlooked signal: KYC is evolving into KYA—Know Your Agent. When non-human identities outnumber human employees by 96 times, who is acting, who is responsible, and where the authority boundaries are will become the core issues of the next-generation infrastructure.

What this report is really saying is: crypto is no longer just an asset network; it is evolving into the underlying layer of trusted computing networks, identity networks, and payment networks.