Author: Tiger Research
Compiled by: DeepChain TechFlow
DeepChaotrend: In 2026, blockchain has not yet changed the world—but what about ten years from now? This article paints a picture of potential changes by 2036—such as stablecoins replacing fiat currency, 24/7 asset trading, major public chain consolidation, and the restructuring of content monetization mechanisms—through the stories of four ordinary individuals. These are not science fiction, but real technological evolutions already underway.
Does anyone still use paper money?
In 2036, at a currency exchange in the fictional country of Zutopia. Judy, who has worked for 34 years, takes out a banknote validator from a drawer and begins counting the local currency, Bucks.
Someone still uses 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.
Listening to the sound of the bill validator, Judy reminisced about these years.
In 2002, 22-year-old Judy experienced a national default. Bank doors were locked, and people couldn't access their lifetime savings.
You need to exchange it now.
My father said, “As soon as your salary hits, convert it to dollars immediately. Wait a day, and the bucks will visibly depreciate. People check the black-market dollar exchange rate more often than the front-page news.”
How much is the US dollar today?
This statement kicks off the 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 overseas—no banks, no waiting in line. With just a smartphone, they could convert Bucks into stablecoins and back again when needed.
At the time, Judy never imagined 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 lines up for payday anymore. Once businesses have no reason to hold Bucks, they begin paying salaries directly in stablecoins. Bucks become currency needed only for taxes and utility bills.
In 2033, the tax authority changed its position. The logic was simple: collecting stablecoins is more reliable than collecting bucks. A brief notice was posted on the website.
Accept USDC and USDT as alternative payment methods for taxes
The bucks still exist, but the country itself has declared 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 salaries soon followed. In 2035, some local governments began paying half of their employees’ salaries in stablecoins—since civil servants paid only in Bucks were hit first and hardest by inflation.
Printing money, collecting taxes, paying salaries—these 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 that 6% is going. 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 enough 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?
2 a.m., liquidated within ten minutes
In 2036, a small rental apartment in Singapore.
2:00 PM. The notification sound rang, and Lia checked her phone. A limit order alert for NVIDIA.
At 2 p.m. in Singapore, the New York stock market hasn’t even opened. But on Lia’s screen, the NVIDIA chart is still moving. She clicked buy without hesitation. Next to NVIDIA on the same screen are government bonds, real estate REITs, and data center infrastructure funds—all displayed in one 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 what Lia often says. To her, the world has always been this way.
In 2021, 9-year-old Lia saw how American retail investors pushed the stock price of the physical gaming store GameStop to the moon. It was an investment where participation itself became the focus, surpassing the asset’s intrinsic value—and the organization behind this participation wasn’t a brokerage, but an online community.
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 to invest 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 pegged 1:1 to 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 in 2036 were like background noise in daily life. She scrolled through the endless stream of signals from her trading app, then picked up her phone again. This stood in stark contrast to her parents, who dollar-cost averaged into so-called "safe assets" on regulated exchanges.
In Lia’s world, every form of value is converted into an asset, operating nonstop 24 hours a day. This relentless, massive market tempts her with the next trade—today, just like every day.
The day $2.2 billion vanished
In 2036, an office at the Banqiao Tech Valley startup.
After 12 years as an infrastructure engineer, Do-hyun paused his hand as he scrolled through the network status dashboard, quietly saying as he looked at the now compact list of chains visible on a single screen.
Ten years ago, you had to keep rolling. Now you don't even have ten left.
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 meeting room.
If things continue like this, won't we be the next Ethereum?
But the joy of listing faded quickly. After the token listing and airdrop rewards were exhausted, the price and chain usage plummeted. Projects and users chasing rewards left as soon as Allchain stopped paying, and 97% of deposits vanished within a year.
The grim end of Allchain was not an isolated case. Countless independent networks that sprouted up like mushrooms back then met the same fate. They lured development teams with the lure of incentives, but as soon as funding dried up, their ecosystems were instantly emptied, leaving behind only silent, hollowed-out infrastructure.
The astronomical fixed costs of running independent chains exceeded the capacity of individual projects. Unable to afford the soaring infrastructure maintenance costs, Allchains shut down one by one and vanished into history.
Only a tiny fraction survived under the cold scrutiny of capital. Hundreds of chains that once seemed poised to change the world divided up the wreckage of slightly more than 10% of the 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 unbroken liquidity and optimized speed.
Do-hyun let out a long sigh, quietly turned off the monitor, and picked up his bag to go home.
The previously clicked "eye" has disappeared.
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 still put 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 entered the media industry, the formula for the online economy was clear: write good articles, and readers will come; when readers come, advertisers pay to display banners.
How many page views today?
This question, raised during the daily morning meeting, 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 and simply couldn’t keep up. But the cost of blocking was brutal: by being completely excluded from AI search and recommendation ecosystems, their brands were forgotten. At the time, media companies faced a painful choice: block bots and lose traffic, or open the doors and make no money.
Who are we actually selling this content to?
This desperate question filled the office. The answer is not 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 abandoned in the corners of web standards for 30 years.
By 2029, the focus is 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 the account, far surpassing the revenue generated by past banner ads.
No need to worry 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 trade 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—never again.
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