A Big Tech company will integrate a crypto wallet by 2026, and more Fortune 100 companies will start their own blockchains, the managing partner of crypto VC firm Dragonfly, Haseeb Qureshi, has predicted.
He also hinted that fintechs that launch L1s to compete with public chains like Ethereum and Solana will fail to attract enough users.
In a message to The design would allow these networks to become more private and permissioned, while remaining connected to a public blockchain.
Source: Haseeb Qureshi
A number of Fortune 100 financial services companies have already built private blockchains, including JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and IBM – although many of these solutions are still in the testing phase or have only been used in limited ways.
Earlier this month, crypto investment firm Galaxy Digital predicted that at least one Fortune 500 bank, cloud provider or e-commerce platform would launch a layer 1 blockchain that would settle more than $1 billion in real economic activity by 2026 and build a bridge for decentralized financial access.
Qureshi also believes that one of the Big Tech companies dominating online life – possibly Google, Meta or Apple – will launch or acquire a crypto wallet in 2026 – a move that has the potential to bring billions of users into crypto.
Public fintech chains will not threaten Ethereum’s dominance
However, Qureshi is not optimistic about new L1 blockchains built by fintech companies – arguing that they will not attract enough users or capture enough network activity to challenge crypto-native networks like Ethereum and Solana.
“Despite the excitement surrounding the recent crop of fintech chains, their numbers will be disappointing.” Daily active addresses, stablecoin flows and RWAs – Tempo, Arc and Robinhood Chain will under-deliver, while Ethereum and Solana will over-deliver.”
“The best developers will continue to build on neutral infrastructure chains,” Qureshi added.
Bitcoin reaches $150,000, but is losing market share
When it comes to price predictions, the Dragonfly director expects Bitcoin to trade above $150,000 by the end of 2026, but he points out that Bitcoin’s dominance will decline.
Galaxy Digital has made a harsh prediction, saying 2026 would be “too chaotic” to even guess, as the price could be anywhere between $50,000 and $250,000 by the end of next year.
Meanwhile, Qureshi expects the $312 billion stablecoin market to grow 60% by 2026, with current market leader Tether (USDT) seeing its dominance fall from 60% to 55%.
Source: Milky Way digital
Qureshi is optimistic about the prediction markets, but not about AI in crypto
The prediction markets will continue to grow next year, but AI won’t find a use case in crypto beyond security, Qureshi said.
“AI agents will still not ‘pay each other’ or spend any meaningful money in 2026,” Qureshi said, while also predicting that there will be no effective solution to combat the spread of spambots on social platforms.