ARK Releases 2026 Big Ideas: The Great Acceleration, AI, and Blockchain Step Change

Original Title: Welcome to Big Ideas 2026!

Original Source: ARK Invest

Original Translation: Felix, PANews

Every year, ARK Invest releases its flagship research report "Big Ideas." The report filters out short-term noise to identify and interpret the technologies reshaping the global economy. In this year's report, ARK explores 13 major ideas covering AI, robotics, energy, blockchain, space, and biology, which are generating compound effects and redefining productivity, capital allocation, and competitive advantage across industries. This article excerpts areas such as AI and blockchain. Here are the details.

In the Age of Great Acceleration, AI serves as the core engine, accelerating the development of five major innovation platforms and triggering a macroeconomic inflection point.

Technology convergence is accelerating. The five major innovation technologies (AI, public blockchains, robotics, energy storage, and multiomics) are increasingly interdependent, as performance improvements in one technology unlock new capabilities for another.

A reusable rocket launching an Autonomous Mobility AI chip into orbit could be key to extending next-generation cloud services. Multiomics data authorized in a digital wallet could power neural networks, driving the development of precision therapies to cure rare diseases.

The world is entering an unprecedented technology investment cycle. Each disruptive technology has the potential to have profound macroeconomic impacts.

AI Infrastructure

With the declining cost of inference, demand for AI is rapidly growing.

By some measures, the cost of inference has dropped over 99% in the past year. As native AI applications surge, the cost reduction is driving an explosive growth in the number of tokens for inference by developers, businesses, and consumers. Since December 2024, the computational demand for OpenRouter (a unified application programming interface (API) for accessing large language models) has grown 25-fold.

Since the "ChatGPT Moment," the growth rate of data center systems has accelerated from 5% to 29%, with the annual growth rate continuing to rise.

By 2025, annual investment in data center systems is projected to be around $500 billion, nearly 2.5 times the average level from 2012 to 2023. According to ARK Research, such investments are expected to continue growing and could double by 2030 to around $14 trillion.

Technology capital expenditures have reached levels seen during the tech and telecom boom, yet tech company valuations remain far below those levels.

ARK Research indicates that hyper-scale data center operators' capital spending in 2026 will exceed $500 billion, nearly three times the $135 billion in 2021 (pre-2022 ChatGPT frenzy). While information technology and communication services industry capital expenditures as a percentage of GDP have reached the highest level since 1998, the tech industry's price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio remains well below the peak of the tech and telecom bubble era.

NVIDIA is facing fiercer competition.

NVIDIA's early investments in AI chip design, software, and networking propelled its graphics processing unit (GPU) market share to 85% with a 75% gross margin. Today, competitors like AMD and Google have caught up in certain areas, such as small-scale language model inference. NVIDIA's Grace Blackwell rack-scale system leads in large-scale model inference, supporting cutting-edge base models.

AI demand will drive sustainable infrastructure growth.

As AI workloads proliferate in enterprise and consumer settings, AI infrastructure investments could exceed $14 trillion by 2030, with much of it aimed at accelerating servers. ARK Research suggests that ASICs designed by companies like Broadcom and Amazon's Annapurna Labs will continue to capture market share as AI labs and hyper-scale enterprises seek cost-effective compute capabilities.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin is gradually emerging as a leader in a new institutional asset class.

The total amount of Bitcoin held by US ETFs and publicly traded companies is 12%.

By 2025, the amount of Bitcoin held by ETFs has grown by 19.7%, from around 1.12 million BTC to around 1.29 million BTC; whereas the amount of Bitcoin held by publicly traded companies has grown by 73%, from around 598,000 BTC to around 1.09 million BTC. As a result, the percentage of Bitcoin held by ETFs and publicly traded companies has increased from 8.7% to 12%.

Bitcoin's annual risk-adjusted return (Sharpe Ratio) has consistently been higher than the overall crypto market.

Throughout most of 2025, Bitcoin's risk-adjusted return has outperformed most other large-cap cryptocurrencies and indices. Since the recent cycle low (November 2022), early 2024, and early 2025, Bitcoin's average annualized Sharpe Ratio has also exceeded the average of the other nine constituent coins in Ethereum, SOL, and the CoinDesk 10 Index.

In 2025, Bitcoin's price has shown a more moderate average decline from its all-time high.

As Bitcoin's role as a safe haven asset continues to strengthen, its volatility has decreased. Looking across 5-year, 3-year, 1-year, and 3-month timeframes, Bitcoin's declines in 2025 have been relatively more gradual compared to historical levels.

ARK's assumptions about Bitcoin's growth have evolved, but the predictions remain largely unchanged.

ARK's outlook for Bitcoin in 2030 has been quite stable, with only two key assumption changes: as digital gold, after a 64.5% surge in gold's market cap in 2025, its Total Addressable Market (TAM) increased by 37%; as an emerging market safe haven asset, its predicted penetration rate has decreased by 80% to reflect the rapid adoption of stablecoins in developing countries.

The total market cap of digital assets could reach $28 trillion by 2030.

The market size of smart contracts and pure digital currencies (the latter serving as a store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account on public blockchains) is expected to grow at an annual rate of about 61%, reaching $28 trillion by 2030. ARK believes Bitcoin may capture 70% of the market share, with the rest dominated by smart contract networks like Ethereum and Solana.

· According to ARK's forecast, Bitcoin is likely to lead the cryptocurrency market in the next five years with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 63%, growing from nearly $2 trillion to about $16 trillion by 2030.

· The market value of smart contracts is projected to grow at a rate of 54% per year, reaching around $6 trillion by 2030, with an annualized revenue of about $192 billion and an average fee rate of 0.75%.

· Two to three L1 platforms will capture the majority of the market share, but their valuation will be more driven by their currency premium (store of value and reserve asset characteristics) rather than discounted cash flows.

Tokenized Assets

Financial institutions are reassessing their stablecoin and tokenization strategies thanks to the "GENIUS Act."

Benefiting from the regulatory clarity brought by the "GENIUS Act," stablecoin activity has surged to all-time highs. Several companies and institutions have announced the launch of their own stablecoins, with BlackRock revealing plans for an internal tokenization platform. Major stablecoin issuers and fintech firms like Tether, Circle, and Stripe are actively introducing/supporting L1 blockchains optimized for stablecoins.

Stablecoin trading volume reached $3.5 trillion in December, far surpassing most traditional payment systems.

· In December 2025, the 30-day moving average of stablecoin trading volume hit $3.5 trillion, which is 2.3 times the value of Visa, PayPal, and remittances combined.

· Circle's USDC leads the stablecoin trading volume with a share of about 60%, followed by Tether's USDT at around 35%.

· By 2025, the supply of stablecoins is expected to grow by about 50%, rising from $210 billion to $307 billion, where USDT and USDC hold 61% and 25% respectively.

· Sky Protocol is the only stablecoin issuer, among others, to reach a market capitalization of over $10 billion by the end of 2025.

· Notably, PayPal's PYUSD has grown over sixfold to reach a $3.4 billion market capitalization.

Driven by the dominance of U.S. Treasury bonds and commodities, the tokenized asset market doubled in size in 2025, reaching $19 billion.

· RWA's market capitalization grew by 208% in 2025, reaching $18.9 billion.

· Blackrock's $1.7 billion BUIDL money market fund is one of the largest products, representing 20% of the $90 billion U.S. Treasury market.

· Tokenized gold products from Tether (XAUT) and Paxos (PAXG) lead the tokenized commodity market, with market capitalizations of $1.8 billion and $1.6 billion, accounting for a total of 83%.

· Public equities' tokenization size is close to $750 million.

Ethereum remains the preferred blockchain for on-chain assets.

· The total value of assets on Ethereum has now surpassed $4 trillion. Among the top eight most popular blockchains, 90% of the market value on seven chains is supported by stablecoins and top 50 tokens.

· Outside of Solana, meme coins represent approximately 3% or less of the market capitalization. On Solana, meme coin assets represent around 21%.

· RWA tokenization is poised to be one of the fastest-growing categories. As most of the world's value remains off-chain, off-chain assets still present the largest growth opportunity for on-chain adoption.

By 2030, the global tokenized asset market could exceed $11 trillion. Our research indicates that the tokenized asset market could grow from $190 billion to over $11 trillion, representing approximately 1.38% of all financial assets. While sovereign debt currently dominates the tokenization space, within the next five years, the on-chain value of bank deposits and globally listed equities may surpass current levels.

ARK believes that the widespread application of tokenization will depend on regulatory clarity and the maturation of institutional-grade infrastructure.

Traditional enterprises are expanding their on-chain footprint by building proprietary infrastructure. These enterprises are constructing their own on-chain infrastructure. Companies like Circle (Arc), Coinbase (Base, cbBTC), Kraken (Ink), OKX (X Layer), Robinhood (Robinhood Chain), and Stripe (Tempo) are rolling out company-branded L1/L2 networks to support their core products such as Bitcoin-backed loans, tokenized stocks and ETFs, and stablecoin-based payment channels.

DeFi Applications

The capture of digital asset value has shifted from the network to applications. The network is evolving into a public utility, transferring user economic value and rent-seeking to the application layer. Led by Hyperliquid, Pump.fun, and Pancakeswap, total application revenue in 2025 hit an all-time high of around $3.8 billion.

One-fifth of all application revenue in 2025 came in January, the highest monthly revenue in history. Currently, 70 applications and protocols have a Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) of over $1 million.

The asset sizes of DeFi and stablecoin issuers are catching up with many fintech firms. The asset size gap between traditional fintech platforms and crypto-native platforms is narrowing, indicating a convergence of traditional and on-chain infrastructure. DeFi protocols like liquidity staking or borrowing platforms are attracting institutional capital and rapidly expanding.

The TVL of the top 50 DeFi platforms has all entered the billion-dollar club, with the top 12 protocols each surpassing $5 billion in scale.

The world's most revenue-efficient companies include Hyperliquid, Tether, and Pump.fun. By 2025, Hyperliquid, with only 15 employees, generated over $800 million in annual revenue. Through its positioning in on-chain verticals such as perpetual contracts, stablecoins, and meme coins, Hyperliquid is attracting users and capital at a remarkable scale, with a clear product-market fit.

On-chain business and protocols are redefining productivity, as a dozen or so individuals can create revenue and profitability on par with world-class enterprises.

Under Hyperliquid's leadership, DeFi derivatives are poised to take market share in perpetual swaps from Binance.

L1 networks are transitioning from revenue-generating networks to monetary assets. If calculated based on a 50x revenue multiple, over 90% of Ethereum's market cap is attributed to its role as a monetary asset. Solana, which has generated $1.4 billion in revenue, has demonstrated that 90% of its valuation comes from network utility.

According to ARK Research, only a few digital assets can maintain monetary attributes and become a liquid store of value.

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