Tiger Research: Four Stories Imagining the Crypto World in 2036

Author: Tiger Research

Compiled by Deep潮 TechFlow

Shenchao Overview: In 2026, blockchain has not yet changed the world—but what about ten years from now? This article tells the stories of four ordinary individuals to illustrate potential changes by 2036: stablecoins replacing fiat currencies, 24/7 asset trading, major consolidation of public blockchains, and the restructuring of content monetization mechanisms—these are not science fiction, but ongoing technological evolutions.

In 2036, at a currency exchange booth in the fictional country of Zutopia. Judy, who has worked there for 34 years, takes out a banknote validator from a drawer and begins counting the local currency, Bucks.

Some people still use Bucks.

It’s perfectly normal. In this highly inflationary country, the currency’s value shrinks every day. Legally, it still exists, but in practice, no one uses it anymore. Everyone uses USD-stablecoins in their daily lives.

Rustling rustling.

Listening to the sound of the bill validator, Judy reminisced about the years gone by.

In 2002, 22-year-old Judy experienced a national default. Bank doors were shut, and people couldn't access their lifetime savings.

You need to exchange it now.

My father said, “As soon as your salary hits, immediately exchange it for dollars. Wait a day, and the value of bucks will visibly drop. People check the black-market dollar exchange rate more often than the front-page news.”

How much is the U.S. dollar today?

This phrase starts every day. You simply cannot buy U.S. dollars at the official exchange rate. The government sets a monthly foreign exchange quota per person, and no one knows when the bank might freeze U.S. dollar deposits.

In the mid-2020s, young customers began asking her questions she didn’t understand.

Can I exchange for USDT?

Initially, only a small number of freelancers and exporters used it to receive payments from abroad—no banks, no waiting in line. With just a smartphone, users could convert Bucks into stablecoins and convert them back when needed.

At the time, Judy never thought it would replace her job. Seniors still needed cash, and many businesses still required it too. But the line gradually grew shorter. Younger customers disappeared first, followed by middle-aged ones.

By 2030, no one will be lining up for payday. Once businesses have no reason to hold Bucks, they’ll start paying salaries directly in stablecoins. Bucks will become currency needed only for taxes and utility bills.

In 2033, the tax authority changed its position. The logic was straightforward: accepting stablecoins is more reliable than accepting bucks. A brief notice was posted on the website.

Accept USDC and USDT as alternative payment methods for taxes

Bucks still exist, but the country itself has announced that it prefers to accept other people's money.

In 2034, the Treasury followed suit. Bonds issued in Bucks repeatedly failed to sell, prompting the Treasury to finally issue new bonds denominated in dollar-stablecoins. Government employee salaries soon followed. In 2035, some local governments began paying half of their employees’ salaries in stablecoins—since civil servants paid solely in Bucks were the first and hardest hit by inflation.

Printing money, collecting taxes, paying salaries—powers once exclusive to nations—are gradually shifting into the hands of stablecoins.

As of May 2026, the total market capitalization of stablecoins is approximately $320 billion, with annual trading volume reaching $2.8 trillion. In comparison, the U.S. wholesale payment network processes over $2 trillion daily—equivalent to just three weeks of stablecoin trading. Excluding wash trading and fake transactions, less than 6% are actually used for payments. The remaining 88% circulate solely within exchanges—traded, collateralized, and returned.

The question is, where exactly did that 6% go? It may have started in New York and Silicon Valley, but the real users of this money are not in the United States. Americans already have access to credit cards and bank accounts. The people who truly need stablecoins are those in countries whose currencies are shrinking every day.

Judy put the bill validator back in the drawer. Will there be customers tomorrow?

In 2036, a small rental apartment in Singapore.

2:00 PM. The notification sound rang, and Lia checked her phone—a NVIDIA limit order alert.

At 2 p.m. in Singapore, the New York stock market hasn’t even opened yet. But on Lia’s screen, NVIDIA’s chart is still moving. She clicked buy without hesitation. Beside NVIDIA on the same screen are government bonds, real estate REITs, and data center infrastructure funds—all displayed in a single interface.

By 2036, you won’t just be trading stocks—you’ll be trading everything in the world.

Investing never stops, no matter where you are.

This is something Lia often says. To her, the world has always been this way.

In 2021, 9-year-old Lia saw how U.S. retail investors pushed the stock price of the brick-and-mortar game store GameStop to unprecedented heights. It was an investment where participation itself became the focus, surpassing the asset’s intrinsic value—and this participation was organized not by brokers, but by online communities.

According to a 2025 World Economic Forum survey of 13 countries, 30% of Gen Z begin investing as soon as they come of age—far higher than Gen X (9%) and Baby Boomers (6%). Gen Z’s interest is so profound that 86% learn investing before entering the workforce, compared to just 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 generations.

For this generation, investing is a given—they want to engage with everything.

June 2025. Tokens backed 1:1 by major U.S. stocks—Apple, Tesla, NVIDIA—flood decentralized exchanges (DEXs). No nationality restrictions, no strict KYC. Just a wallet address is needed to access U.S. stocks with effectively unlimited leverage.

Just try again tomorrow.

Lia logged into the borderless trading platform Lemming Brothers and purchased a tokenized South Korean real estate index product. Ten minutes later, her phone vibrated with a liquidation alert. She swiped away the warning on her screen as if nothing had happened.

For Lia, phone notifications from 2036 are like the background noise of daily life. She scrolls through the endless stream of alerts from her trading app, then picks up her phone again. This stands in stark contrast to her parents, who regularly invest in so-called “safe assets” through regulated exchanges.

In Lia’s world, every form of value is converted into an asset, operating 24 hours a day. This relentless, massive market tempts her with the next trade—today, just like every day.

In 2036, a startup office in Banqiao Tech Valley.

Do-hyun, an infrastructure engineer with 12 years of experience, paused his hand as he scrolled through the network status dashboard. Looking at the now compact list of chains visible on a single screen, he murmured.

Ten years ago, you had to keep rolling. Now you’re down to less than ten.

In 2024, the year Do-hyun began his engineering career, was a golden era for Layer 2 rollups. Anyone could copy and paste a few lines of framework and stack code to launch their own blockchain under their own name. Do-hyun’s company also rode the wave of large-scale infrastructure, setting up validation nodes.

The chain is called Allchain. In June 2024, fueled by airdrop expectations, its total value locked (TVL) surged to $2.2 billion. He can still vividly recall the scene of clinking glasses and cheering in the conference room.

If things continue like this, won’t we become the next Ethereum?

But the joy of the listing was fleeting. After the token listing and airdrop rewards were exhausted, the price and chain usage plummeted sharply. Projects and users chasing the rewards left as soon as Allchain stopped paying, and 97% of deposits vanished within a year.

Allchain’s grim end was not an isolated case. Countless independent networks that sprouted like mushrooms back then met the same fate—luring development teams with the lure of incentives, only to collapse into hollow, silent infrastructure the moment funding dried up.

The astronomical fixed costs of running independent chains exceeded the financial capacity of individual projects. Unable to afford the soaring infrastructure maintenance expenses, Allchains announced closures one after another, fading into history.

Only a tiny fraction survived under capital’s cold scrutiny. Hundreds of chains that once seemed poised to change the world divided up the wreckage of just over 10% market share, then faded into obscurity.

Back then, we all thought we would survive and build our own vast ecosystem...

By 2026, people mistook the number of chains for blockchain scalability itself. But fragmented chains merely disrupted user experience and increased security costs. What people truly wanted wasn’t hundreds of complex networks—but a few massive infrastructures offering unbreakable liquidity and optimized speed.

Do-hyun let out a long sigh, quietly turned off the monitor, and picked up his bag to go home.

In 2036, an office of a media startup in Sangam-dong.

Jae-hoon happened to see a banner ad in the bottom-right corner while browsing another platform and smiled.

Some companies are still placing banner ads on screens, waiting for readers.

Jae-hoon is right. The platform's daily visits hit new monthly highs, but traditional banner ad revenue just isn't coming in—the entire ad model has become outdated.

In the early 2020s, when Jae-hoon first entered the media industry, the formula for the online economy was clear: write good articles, and readers will come; when readers come, advertisers will pay to display banners.

How many page views today?

This question, raised during morning meetings every day, determined the survival of the media company at that time.

But this peaceful formula began to disappear by the late 2020s. By 2029, more than half of global web traffic no longer came from humans, but from AI agents and bots. AI would scrape articles and summarize them in a second—but machines have no “eyes” to see banner ads.

Initially, like most media companies, they blocked bots. Server costs skyrocketed, making it impossible to keep up. But the cost of blocking was severe: by being completely excluded from AI search and recommendation ecosystems, brands were forgotten. At the time, 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?

This desperate question filled the office. The answer isn’t a billboard—it’s pricing the content itself.

The gate to change was opened by Coinbase’s x402 standard, launched in May 2025, which technologically resurrected the HTTP 402 response code—“Payment Required”—a signal long abandoned in the corners of web standards for 30 years.

By 2029, the focus will be on building infrastructure: Know Your Agent (KYA) verification, settlement rails, and more. The real explosion begins in 2030, when a media company starts selling data directly to AI via the x402 system. Once validated, other media and data companies immediately adopt x402 and jump into data sales.

Initially, there was only some mockery—it was just small amounts, tens of won at a time, not worth the effort. But as hundreds of thousands, even millions, of machine calls accumulated daily, real money began flowing into accounts, far surpassing the revenue generated by banner ads in the past.

Stop worrying about what advertisers think—machines pay full price, and that’s how the company runs.

The old model of online advertising, which relied on capturing human attention to sell ads, is gradually coming to an end, while the machine economy—where AI agents transact via APIs—is fully unfolding.

Jae-hoon turned off the dashboard and picked up his coffee cup. The visitor curve still showed that strange, nearly vertical spike, which made no sense by old standards—but now it was the norm. He no longer checked how many people visited; instead, he checked how many AI agents paid today.

Tomorrow, hundreds of thousands of agents will knock on his server’s door again, and that honest transaction record won’t get any shorter—it won’t.

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