Coinbase Says Prediction Markets, RWAs And AI Will Drive Crypto’s Next Boom
US crypto exchange Coinbase says prediction markets, real-world assets (RWAs) and AI are now some of the hottest emerging sectors in crypto and are primed to boom in the next cycle.
Those categories, the exchange said in a blog post, are where it believes “the next big breakout companies and protocols will emerge, and where we’re looking to actively invest.”
Prediction Market Aggregators Will Be Needed As Momentum Continues
Prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi have gained substantial traction in the market this year, with both platforms announcing a series of major partnerships. These include partnerships with Google, X, Yahoo Finance, and UFC.
Several trading venues, including Gemini and Robinhood Markets, have disclosed plans to expand deeper into the booming prediction markets space.
Coinbase highlighted the growth the market has seen, and said that prediction markets platforms have “emerged as one of the leading consumer crypto applications, crossing the chasm into mainstream adoption.”
The exchange said, however, that prediction markets “suffer from the same fragmentations that plagued early DeFi,” as users must navigate multiple interfaces with “limited tooling and isolated liquidity pools.”
As such, Coinbase believes that prediction markets aggregators will emerge “as the dominant interface layer” that will consolidate the $600M+ in fragmented liquidity and provide “a unified view of real-time event odds across venues.”
RWAs Will See Increased Exposure Through Perpetuals
Coinbase said there has been “renewed interest” in RWAs, which has led to investors “seeking new forms of exposure” to these tokenized assets.
Top RWA projects by market cap (Source: CoinGecko)
It said perpetuals will be among the preferred ways for investors to gain that exposure due to the quicker and more flexible path they offer compared to tokenisation. Coinbase also called perpetuals “crypto’s most proven trading product.”
Coinbase predicted that growth in RWA perpetuals will happen through two vectors.
The first of will see “exotic asset exposure onchain.” Since perpetuals don’t require securing an underlying asset, Coinbase said that markets can “form around virtually anything,” from private companies to economic data prints.
The second vector will be driven by demand from sophisticated traders seeking macro asset exposure. Coinbase predicts that traders will use onchain RWAs to hedge or position through instruments tied to oil, inflation breakevens, credit spreads, and volatility.
DePINs To Benefit From AI Boom
Another category that Coinbase is bullish on for 2026 is AI. The exchange said that as AI models and robots become more advanced, the need for vast amounts of trading data will surge.
It said that current datasets used to train AI models are still “limited and fragmented.” It highlighted “fine-grained physical interaction data such as grip, pressure, or multi-object manipulation” as particularly scarce.
“Incentivized data-collection models similar to decentralized physical infrastructure networks (i.e., DePIN) could offer a viable framework for scaling the collection of high-quality physical interaction data, enabling faster development and deployment of advanced robotic systems,” it said.
Related Articles:
About Author
About Author
