Investing Trends for 2026: DeFi, Tokenization, Capital Formation, Speculation & AI | Ben Lakoff & Arnav from Bankless Ventures

Think the first and foremost thing that's been huge this year is you have this ultimate decline of not only career risk, but this acceptance from Wall Street. Obviously, we have people like Larry Fink writing the tokenization writing about tokenization in The Economist. We have BlackRock's highest grossing ETF product being Bitcoin. We have Hyper Liquid that actually just surpassed the Nasdaq in net income. So this is the first time I would say that crypto is no longer a contrarian thesis. It's no longer a contrarian thing. I would say it's a very consensus insight. Welcome to Bankless, where we explore investing on the frontier of crypto. This is David Hoffman, and I'm here with not only my co host Ryan Churn Adams, but we are also joined by two members of Bankless Ventures, fellow GP Ben Lakoff and investment partner Arnav Pagadeyala. Ben, Arnav, welcome to Bankless. Thanks for having us. Stoked to be here, guys. Broad question. Is there stuff to invest in in crypto in 2026? What do you guys think? This would be a short podcast if there wasn't. So, yes, is the short answer. And we're very excited about a lot of things. Yeah. We got over an hour, probably, of content to talk about. Arnoff, you are the youngest of the group. When you look at crypto investing in venture in the venture category in 2026, what excites you? What gets you going? Yeah. I mean, I think, unlike prior cycles, there is stuff in every single sector that's kinda broken out. I think DeFi is looking monstrous with the adoption of RWAs this year. Stablecoin payments, if you're into crypto fintech, is just monstrous. Prediction markets have just kind of hit escape velocity. I think it's the realm of opportunity is a 100 x more than I think it's ever been. So it's super exciting. Some big statements. We're definitely going to dive into why Arnab and the rest of the Bankless team think that that is true and the sectors that we are investing in. Now previously in Bankless, we have been very careful to not cross contaminate between media and ventures. These are two different organizations where only Ryan and myself cross the barrier. But also, at Bankless Media, we never let good content go to waste. And at Bankless Ventures, we've been working pretty hard developing our investment focused themes for 2026, the the categories, the trends that we want to focus our investments at Bankless Ventures for the next year. In this episode, that is what you are going to hear. We want to share what Bankless Ventures is looking to invest in in 2026 and why we've come to these conclusions. A fundamental part of the entire Bankless journey is learning to be investors in crypto. Every Bankless podcast episode has been in pursuit of learning how to effectively allocate capital in this industry. Answering the question, how do I effectively invest, is one of the …