Source: Tiger Research
Author: Ekko an, Ryan Yoon
Compiled and organized by BitpushNews
Translator's note / TL;DR
From a fictional perspective in 2036, this article reveals the core evolution of blockchain over the next decade: no longer telling grand stories, but fully permeating and taking over the underlying infrastructure.
Extreme pragmatism (stablecoins): Move beyond speculation to become an underground hard currency replacing fiat in high-inflation regions, even eroding state fiscal and tax authority in reverse.
Everything is tradable (RWA): Stocks, real estate, and bonds fully tokenized—high-leverage trading, borderless and around-the-clock, has become a daily investment practice for the younger generation.
Infrastructure purge (L2 bankruptcy wave): 99% of redundant blockchains surviving solely on airdrops and subsidies have been completely eliminated, leaving only a tiny number of dominant, top-tier blockchains in the market.
Reimagining internet commerce (the machine economy): AI traffic surpasses human traffic, rendering traditional advertising obsolete; micropayment protocols (x402) are rising, with AI agents paying on demand becoming the primary source of revenue for online content.
The following is the main text:
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By 2026, blockchain technology has not yet changed the world. But by 2036, will it bring significant transformation?
Everyone on board—the time machine is about to depart for 2036.
1. "Do people still use paper money?"
In 2036, in Zutopia—a fictional, highly inflation-prone country—a currency exchange office. Judy, now in her thirty-fourth year on the job, pulls out a bill counter from a drawer and begins counting Buck notes.
Still using Buck, huh?
That makes sense. The buck—the currency of this highly inflationary country—is depreciating daily. It still exists legally, but in practice, no one uses it anymore. People now use dollar-backed stablecoins in their daily lives.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Judy listened to the cash counter rustling through the bills, recalling these past years.
In 2002, Judy was twenty-two years old. That year, Zutopia declared a national default. Banks locked their doors, and people were unable to access their life savings.
We need to replace it right now.
Judy's father said: As soon as your salary is deposited, you must immediately exchange it for U.S. dollars. Even waiting one day will cause Buck's purchasing power to visibly shrink. People monitor the black-market dollar exchange rate more actively than they read the front page of the newspaper.
What is the dollar rate today?
This question arises every day. Buying U.S. dollars at the official exchange rate is nearly impossible. The government sets monthly foreign exchange purchase limits per person, and no one knows when the bank will freeze dollar deposits.
Then, in the mid-2020s, young customers began asking her a question she didn’t understand.
Can I also exchange USDT?
Initially, only a few freelancers and exporters used it to receive international payments—no bank needed, no long lines at currency exchange counters. With just a phone, you could turn bucks into stablecoins and convert them back when needed.
At the time, Judy never imagined this would replace her job. Seniors still needed cash, and many businesses still required it. But the line gradually grew shorter. Younger customers disappeared first, followed by middle-aged ones.
By 2030, no one lines up for payday anymore. Once companies have no reason to hold bucks, they begin paying part of their salaries directly in stablecoins. Bucks become a currency you only need to use for taxes and utility bills.
In 2033, the tax authority changed its position. The calculation was simple: collecting taxes in stablecoins was more cost-effective than collecting cash. A brief notice was posted on the website:
USDC and USDT can be used as alternative payment methods for tax reporting.
Buck still exists, but the country itself has just announced that it would rather accept others' money than its own currency.
In 2034, the Treasury followed suit. Auctions of bonds denominated in bucks repeatedly failed, and the Treasury ultimately issued new bonds denominated in dollar-stablecoins. Government employees’ salaries soon followed. In 2035, some state governments began paying half of their employees’ salaries in stablecoins—since those receiving pay in bucks were the first and most severely affected by inflation.
Printing money, taxation, paying government employees—these have always been exclusive powers of the state. These powers are gradually shifting into the hands of stablecoins.
As of May 2026, the total market capitalization of stablecoins is approximately $3.2 trillion, with annual trading volume reaching $28 trillion. This is less than three weeks of trading volume compared to the U.S. wholesale payment network, which processes over $2 trillion daily. After excluding wash trading and fabricated volume, less than 6% is actually used for real payments. The remaining 88% merely circulates within exchanges—traded, used as collateral, and cycled back again.
The issue is where exactly that 6% is occurring. It may have started in New York and Silicon Valley, but the places where that money actually changes hands are not in the United States. Americans are doing just fine with credit cards and bank accounts. Those who truly need stablecoins are the people in countries whose currencies are slowly evaporating every day.
Judy put the bill counter back in the drawer. Will there be customers tomorrow?
2. At 2 a.m., liquidated within ten minutes
In 2036, a small rented apartment in Singapore.
2 p.m. A notification chimed; Leah glanced at her phone—a limit order alert for NVIDIA.
2 p.m. in Singapore is still before the New York Stock Exchange opens. But on Leah’s screen, NVIDIA’s candlestick chart continues to move. She clicked buy without hesitation. Beside NVIDIA on the same screen lay government bonds, real estate REITs, and data center infrastructure funds—all visible at a glance.
By 2036, you won’t just be trading stocks—you’ll be able to trade everything in the world.
Investing never stops, no matter where you are.
This is something Leah often says. To her, the world has always been this way.
In 2021, when Leah was nine years old, U.S. retail investors drove the stock price of the brick-and-mortar game retailer GameStop to unprecedented heights. This was an investment behavior in which the act of participation mattered more than the asset’s intrinsic value—and the organization behind this participation was not a brokerage, but an online community.
According to a 2025 World Economic Forum survey of 13 countries, 30% of Gen Z began investing as soon as they became adults—far higher than Gen X (9%) and Baby Boomers (6%). Gen Z’s interest in investing is so strong that 86% learned how to invest before entering the workforce, compared to only 47% of Baby Boomers.
In Coinbase’s Q4 2025 survey, 73% of younger respondents said it is difficult to build wealth through traditional means—higher than 57% among older groups.
For this new generation, investing has become a given—they want access to a broader range of assets.
June 2025. Tokens backed 1:1 by major U.S. stocks—Apple, Tesla, NVIDIA—flood decentralized exchanges (DEXs). No nationality restrictions, no strict KYC. All you need is a wallet address, and U.S. stocks are within reach, with theoretically unlimited leverage.
Just try again tomorrow.
Leah logged into Lemming Brothers—a borderless trading platform—and purchased a tokenized South Korean real estate index product. Ten minutes later, a settlement notification popped up on her phone. She dismissed the alert on her screen as if nothing had happened.
For Leah, phone notifications in 2036 were like the background music of daily life. She scanned the endless stream of signals in her trading app and picked up her phone again. This stood in stark contrast to her parents, who regularly invested fixed amounts in so-called "safe assets" only through regulated exchanges.
In Leah’s world, every form of value is transformed into an asset, flowing continuously, 24 hours a day. This relentless, vast market tempts her toward her next trade—today, just like every other day.
3. The day $2.2 billion vanished
In 2036, in the office of a startup company in Banqiao Tech Valley.
Dao Xian, now an infrastructure engineer with twelve years of experience, was scrolling through the network status dashboard on his monitor when his hand suddenly stopped. Gazing at the blockchain list that now fits entirely on one screen, he muttered under his breath:
Ten years ago, you had to scroll all the way down. Now there aren’t even ten left.
In 2024, the year Do Hyun began his engineering career, was the golden age of Layer 2 (L2) Rollups. Anyone could copy and paste a few lines of framework and stack code to launch their own blockchain. Do Hyun’s company also rode this wave of infrastructure growth, heavily investing in validator node construction.
The chain was called Allchain. In June 2024, fueled by expectations of an airdrop, its total value locked (TVL) surged to $2.2 billion. He still vividly remembers raising glasses in the meeting room and cheering with his team.
At this rate, aren't we going to become the next Ethereum?
But the joy of the launch was fleeting. After the token listing and airdrop rewards were exhausted, the token price and on-chain usage plummeted sharply. Projects and users who had flocked in for the rewards left the moment Allchain stopped "throwing money," and within just one year, 97% of deposits vanished.
The tragic end of Allchain was not an isolated case. Countless independent networks that sprang up like mushrooms after rain met the same fate. They lured development teams with generous incentives, but once funding ran out, their ecosystems instantly hollowed out, leaving behind only silent and empty shells of infrastructure.
The enormous fixed costs of running an independent chain are unsustainable for a single project. Unable to bear the ever-rising infrastructure maintenance expenses, Allchains have been shutting down one by one, quietly fading into history.
Only a tiny handful of survivors endured the harsh test of capital. Hundreds of blockchains that once seemed poised to change the world now split less than 10% of the remaining market share before fading into extinction.
Back then, we all thought we would survive and build a vast ecosystem...
Back in 2026, people mistook the number of public blockchains for blockchain scalability itself. But fragmented chains only degrade user experience and drive security costs to astronomical levels. What people truly wanted wasn’t hundreds of complex networks—but a few massive, foundational infrastructures offering unbreakable liquidity and optimal speed.
Dao Xian let out a long sigh, gently closed the monitor, picked up his bag, and set off on the way home.
4. The human eyes that were once used to "click" are gone
In 2036, in the office of a media startup in Sangam-dong.
While browsing another platform by chance, Zai Hao saw a banner ad in the bottom-right corner and smiled.
Some companies also post banner ads on screens, waiting for readers to see them.
Shuo is right. The platform's daily traffic has been setting new monthly records, but traditional banner ad revenue just isn't coming in—this entire advertising model has become outdated.
In the early 2020s, when Hao Gang first entered the media industry, the formula for the internet economy was crystal clear: write good articles, and readers will come; when readers come, advertisers will spend money on banner placements.
How many page views today?
This question, raised every morning in the meeting room, determined the survival of a media outlet at the time.
But that tranquil formula began to unravel in the late 2020s. By 2029, more than half of global internet traffic no longer came from humans, but from AI agents and bots. AI would scrape an article and summarize it in a second—but machines have no "eyes" to see banner ads.
Initially, like most media companies, they blocked these bots. Server costs skyrocketed, and they simply couldn’t afford it. But blocking came at a steep price: once completely excluded from the AI search and recommendation ecosystem, their brand was instantly forgotten. Media companies faced a painful choice: block bots and lose traffic, or open the doors and earn nothing.
Who are we actually selling this content to?
That desperate question filled the office. The answer wasn’t a billboard—it was putting a price on the content itself.
The gate to change was opened by Coinbase’s x402 standard, released in May 2025, which, through technology, resurrects the HTTP 402 response code—the "payment required" signal abandoned in the corners of web standards for thirty years.
Until 2029, the focus remained on building foundational infrastructure: KYA (Know Your Agent) verification, settlement rails, and more. The real explosion began in 2030, when a media company started selling data directly to AI via the x402 system. After this model proved successful, other media and data companies eagerly adopted x402 and joined the data sales market themselves.
Initially, there was ridicule—tiny amounts, a few won at a time, not worth the effort. But once hundreds, thousands, or even millions of machine calls piled up daily, real money began flowing into accounts steadily, far surpassing the revenue from past banner ads.
No more relying on advertisers—machines pay full price, and that’s how the company runs.
The old web model of capturing attention with human eyes to sell ads is slowly fading away. The machine economy, where agents trade via APIs, is fully coming into its own.
Hao turned off the dashboard and picked up his coffee cup. The visitor curve still displayed that strange, nearly vertical upward trajectory—completely irrational by old standards—but now it was routine. He no longer checked how many people visited. He checked how many AI agents paid today.
Tomorrow, hundreds of thousands of agents will knock again on his server’s door, and that honest stream of transactions—will no longer grow shorter, never again.
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