Pantera Capital: How has Crypto as a Service affected us?

By: blockbeats|2026/03/08 05:00:04
0
Share
copy
Original Title: 2026: The Invisible Revolution
Original Author: Paul Veradittakit, Pantera Capital
Original Translation: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

2026 will be a pivotal year. We will see "crypto as an industry" evolve into "crypto as a service".

Over the past decade, the crypto world has been full of various gimmicks. The approval of the Bitcoin ETF in 2024 gave it mainstream financial recognition. In 2025, everyone was busy building the underlying infrastructure. By 2026, real value will belong to companies that use blockchain to solve entrenched problems in traditional industries while making users completely unaware of the presence of blockchain.

The future crypto unicorns will no longer rely on hype. They will be the kind of companies that use blockchain technology to significantly increase product efficiency, tap into multi-billion-dollar markets, and completely hide the complex technology.

Crypto Tech Beats "Weekend"

During the Iran conflict outbreak, the US stock market was closed for the weekend and unable to respond to sudden global risks. However, the crypto market did not stop, with Bitcoin briefly rising to $74,000. Commodities were the first to complete price discovery on the decentralized prediction market Hyperliquid, even before the traditional markets opened. This is not an isolated case—similar situations occurred last month when China announced policies.

Traditional hedge funds are increasingly pouring into this field. The crypto market's "24/7 non-stop" is no longer just a slogan but a structural advantage that traditional finance cannot match.

Nevertheless, the current valuation of the crypto market is still far below the level its fundamentals should reach. Without a doubt, we are once again in a bear market (the fourth one I've experienced), but this time is entirely different: regulations are becoming clearer, institutional funds have entered, and the infrastructure is improving.

This sentiment was particularly strong at the recent Hong Kong Consensus conference. The vibrancy of the Asian market contrasts sharply with the West. There, the support of both the incumbent and opposition parties, new institutional funds, and a strong focus on consumer applications are driving bullish sentiments.

Key Highlights for Asia in 2026:

· Cross-Border Payments through Stablecoins, especially in the B2B sector. For the more fragmented Asian economy, crypto payments are a natural choice.

· Tokenization of Gold, Stocks, and Real Estate. Asian banks and fintech companies are catching up to the U.S.

· Perpetual Contract Trading on DeFi. Fueled by retail investors, the development speed may surpass that of the West.

· Prediction Markets are expected to become a key track, although the form may differ from the West.

Core Trend: "Crypto as a Service"

The core theme of 2026 is transitioning from "Crypto as an industry" to "Crypto as a service." The goal is no longer to show users the blockchain but to make them completely forget about the existence of blockchain.

Over the past decade, we have been eager to create the "Crypto Wonder" — Gas Fee Wars, TPS Races, Modular Stacks, ZK Proofs. The ETF in 2024 was mainstream institutional acknowledgment. In 2025, we laid down all the underlying infrastructure. In 2026, it's time to turn the page.

Saying Goodbye to the "Casino" Era

The new generation of unicorns will not be the kind of "L3 network built for AI-NFT." They will be the ones leveraging blockchain to improve product efficiency tenfold, while completely hiding the technology and thus unlocking billion-dollar markets.

This perfectly explains our recent investment logic:

Pantera Capital: How has Crypto as a Service affected us?

-- Price

--

Novig: Farewell to the "Rake" Era ($75 Million Series B)

Traditional sports betting is a monopolistic distorted market. The house edge extracts high commissions from each bet, resulting in a user profitability rate of only 2%. Our $75 million lead investment in Novig is because they treat sports betting as a high-frequency financial product. Through a peer-to-peer trading model, Novig users have an average profitability rate of 23%. Most users don't care if there's a decentralized order book in the background; they only know they can get the best odds in the U.S. here. This is a vivid example of "Crypto as a Service."

Based: Consumer-Grade Super App ($11.5 Million Series A)

We recently led Based's Series A funding round. This is a composable Web3 consumer-grade super app built on the Hyperliquid ecosystem. In the past, "consumer-grade crypto" was often equated with "clumsy user experience." Based is changing that by making on-chain interactions feel as smooth as top-tier fintech apps. Cross-chain bridging, gas fees, and other complex operations have been abstracted away, making users unaware of the underlying complexities. They can simply focus on the social and financial value their assets bring.

Doppler: Default Asset Issuance Infrastructure ($9 Million Seed Round)

If Based and Novig are cool new cars, then Doppler is the high-performance fuel system. We led Doppler's $9 million seed round, aiming to become the default infrastructure for on-chain asset issuance. It allows developers to issue assets with institutional-grade security and compliance standards without having to build everything from scratch. Doppler is like the Stripe of on-chain assets—pure utility packaged behind a clean API.

Why "Invisibility" Is More Important Than "Viral Spread"

This trend of "invisibility" is also prevalent throughout our entire investment portfolio:

· Real-World Assets: Tokenized government bonds are no longer an experiment in the crypto world; they are becoming the backend liquidity cornerstone of global trade.

· AI Agents: Blockchain provides AI agents with a trusted "truth layer" through predictive markets and verifiable data, enabling them to autonomously and credibly interact with digital assets.

· Agent-Based Payments will accelerate all of this. Payment standards like x402 enable AI agents to transact directly using crypto assets. The gradual clarity in stablecoin regulation further smoothes this payment track.

Advice for Entrepreneurs

If you are planning to start a business in 2026, my advice is simple: Stop focusing solely on technology and talk more about the practical problems you can solve. If the page in your pitch deck explaining the consensus mechanism comes before discussing customer ROI, it means your mindset is still stuck in 2022.

What we are looking for are teams that are building the next Novig, Based, or Doppler — those who truly understand what “mass adoption” means: It is only when a technology becomes so seamless that people completely forget it exists that it truly enters the mainstream.

Original Article Link

You may also like

Circle CEO responds to OUSD's challenge: Stablecoins are a winner-takes-all business, and we will not slow down

OUSD was jointly launched by more than 140 giants, causing Circle's stock price to plummet in a single day. Circle's CEO personally wrote a response, clarifying USDC's moat from three aspects: network effects, liquidity, and regulation, and dismantling OUSD's three selling points of "free redemption...

Argentina vs Cape Verde: When a Record-Breaking Legend Meets an Unbreakable Underdog

WEEX exclusive pre-match analysis of Argentina vs Cape Verde, exploring Messi-led Argentina’s dominance and Cape Verde’s historic defensive breakout, with a breakdown of volatility, structure, and match dynamics.

How does Gate redo "buying and selling stocks" from the cryptocurrency world to the stock market?

The competition logic of exchanges has changed.

Former ByteDance employee's account: How I started with two Pinduoduo hard drives and made six times the profit with Seagate to achieve financial freedom?

A programmer from a big tech company bought hard drives on Pinduoduo and, following clues, managed to accurately capture the sixfold rising stock Seagate using the "finding daily anomalies + 13F institutional verification" framework, making a wild profit of $400,000 and achieving financial freedom.

Visa and Mastercard join 140 giants to launch a new stablecoin, but the impact on the market landscape may still be limited

As an important milestone event in the stablecoin landscape, OUSD is likely to change the existing stablecoin landscape and significantly increase the adoption rate of stablecoins in the global financial system.

WEEX Launches Depth Chart for Spot Trading

WEEX Spot now supports Depth Chart, helping users visualize buy and sell orders, spot liquidity walls, and understand market depth more clearly before placing trades.

Popular coins

Latest Crypto News

Read more
iconiconiconiconiconiconicon
Customer Support:@weikecs
Business Cooperation:@weikecs
Quant Trading & MM:bd@weex.com
VIP Program:support@weex.com