Tiger Research: What Will the Crypto World Look Like in 2036?

This article was written by Tiger Research. In 2026, blockchain has not yet changed the world, but what about a decade from now? This article uses the stories of four ordinary people to depict possible changes by 2036: stablecoins replacing fiat currencies, 24/7 asset trading, major public chain consolidation, and the restructuring of content monetization mechanisms. These are not science fiction, but technological evolutions already underway.

"Does Anyone Still Use Paper Money?"

In 2036, at a currency exchange point in the fictional country of Zutopia. Judy, who has worked here for 34 years, takes out a counterfeit bill detector from a drawer and begins counting the national currency, Bucks.

"Can't believe someone still uses Bucks."

It's only natural. In this inflation-prone country, the currency's value shrinks daily. It still exists legally, but practically no one uses it anymore. Everyone uses a dollar-backed stablecoin for daily life.

Rattle, rattle, rattle.

Listening to the sound of the bill counter, Judy reflects on the past years.

In 2002, a 22-year-old Judy experienced her country's default. Bank doors were locked tight, and people couldn't withdraw a lifetime of savings.

"We need to exchange it right away," her father said. Salaries had to be converted to dollars immediately upon arrival. Wait a day, and Bucks would visibly depreciate. People watched the black-market dollar exchange rate more diligently than the front-page news.

"What's the dollar rate today?"

This question started every day. You simply couldn't buy dollars at the official exchange rate. The government set a monthly foreign exchange quota per person, and no one knew when banks might freeze dollar deposits.

In the mid-2020s, younger customers started asking questions she couldn't understand.

"Can I exchange for USDT?"

Initially, only a few freelancers and exporters used it to receive money from overseas. No banks, no queues. With just a phone, they could convert Bucks to stablecoins and back again when needed.

Back then, Judy never imagined it would replace her job. The elderly still needed cash, and many businesses still did too. But the lines slowly got shorter. The younger customers disappeared first, then the middle-aged.

By 2030, no one queued even on payday. Once businesses had no reason to hold Bucks, they started paying salaries directly in stablecoins. Bucks became a currency needed only for paying taxes and utility bills.

In 2033, the tax authority changed its stance. The calculation was simple: collecting stablecoins was more reliable than collecting Bucks. A brief notice was posted on the website.

"Accepting USDC and USDT as alternative payment methods for taxes."

Bucks still existed, but the state itself declared it preferred accepting someone else's money.

In 2034, the Ministry of Finance followed suit. After repeated failed auctions for bonds issued in Bucks, the Ministry ultimately issued new bonds denominated in dollar stablecoins. Civil servant salaries followed shortly after. By 2035, some local governments began paying half of civil servant salaries in stablecoins—because those paid only in Bucks were hit first and hardest by inflation.

Printing money, collecting taxes, paying wages—these powers once exclusive to the state have, piece by piece, shifted into the hands of stablecoins.

As of May 2026, the total market capitalization of stablecoins was approximately $320 billion, with an annual transaction volume of $2.8 trillion. Compared to the over $2 trillion processed daily by the U.S. wholesale payment network, this represents only about three weeks' worth. Excluding wash trading and fake volume, less than 6% is actually used for payments. The remaining 88% circulates only within exchanges—trading, collateralizing, and returning.

The question is where that 6% actually happens. It may originate in New York and Silicon Valley, but the places truly using this money are not in the U.S. Americans have credit cards and bank accounts, and that's enough. Those who desperately need stablecoins are the people in countries where their currency shrinks every day.

Judy puts the bill counter back in the drawer. Will there still be customers tomorrow?

At 2 AM, a Liquidation in Ten Minutes

In 2036, a small rented room in Singapore.

2 PM. A notification sound goes off, and Lia glances at her phone. A NVIDIA limit-order alert.

At 2 PM in Singapore, the New York stock market isn't even open. But on Lia's screen, the NVIDIA chart is still moving. She clicks buy without hesitation. On the same screen, next to NVIDIA, are government bonds, real estate REITs, and data center infrastructure funds—all in one interface.

By 2036, you're not just trading stocks—you can trade everything in the world.

"Investing never stops, no matter where you are."

That's something Lia often says. To her, the world has always been this way.

In 2021, a 9-year-old Lia watched U.S. retail investors push the stock price of physical video game store GameStop to the moon. It was an investment where participation itself became the focus, surpassing the asset's value—and the organization behind this participation wasn't a broker, but an online community.

According to a 2025 World Economic Forum survey of 13 countries, 30% of Gen Z began investing as soon as they reached adulthood—far higher than Gen X (9%) and Baby Boomers (6%). Gen Z's interest runs so deep that 86% learned to invest before entering the workforce, compared to only 47% of Baby Boomers.

In a Coinbase Q4 2025 survey, 73% of young respondents said it's hard to build wealth through traditional means—higher than the 57% of older generations.

For this generation, investing is simply a given—they want exposure to everything.

June 2025. Tokens backed 1:1 by major U.S. stocks—Apple, Tesla, NVIDIA—flood into decentralized exchanges (DEXs). No nationality restrictions, no strict KYC. With just a wallet address, U.S. stocks are within reach, and leverage is practically unlimited.

Try again tomorrow.

Lia logs into Lemming Brothers, a borderless trading platform, and buys a tokenized product tracking the Korean real estate index. Ten minutes later, her phone vibrates—a liquidation alert. She swipes the warning off her screen as if nothing happened.

For Lia, the phone notifications of 2036 are like background noise in daily life. She scans the endless signal stream of trading apps and picks up her phone again. This is a stark contrast to her parents, who dollar-cost average into so-called "safe assets" on regulated exchanges.

In Lia's world, every form of value is converted into assets, operating 24 hours a day. This massive, never-stopping market tempts her into the next trade every day—today, and every day.

The Day $2.2 Billion Evaporated

In 2036, at a startup office in Pangyo Techno Valley.

Do-hyun, an infrastructure engineer with 12 years of experience, pauses his hand as he scrolls through the network status dashboard on his monitor. Looking at the list of chains now visible on a single screen, he mutters.

"Ten years ago, you had to keep scrolling. Now there aren't even ten left."

In 2024, the year Do-hyun began his engineering career, it truly was the golden age of discovery 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 massive infrastructure, setting up validator nodes.

The chain was named Allchain. In June 2024, fueled by airdrop expectations, its total value locked (TVL) surged to $2.2 billion. He can still vividly recall the clinking of glasses and cheers in the conference room.

"At this rate, aren't we the next Ethereum?"

But the joy of the launch was fleeting. After the token listing and airdrop rewards dried up, the token price and chain usage plummeted. The projects and users chasing rewards left as soon as Allchain stopped paying, and within a year, 97% of deposits had evaporated.

Allchain's brutal ending was no exception. The countless independent networks that sprouted like mushrooms back then all collapsed in similar fashion. They attracted development teams with the sweetener of incentives, but once the money dried up, the ecosystem was emptied in an instant, leaving behind only silent, hollow infrastructure shells.

The astronomical fixed costs of running an independent chain exceeded what any single project could bear. Unable to sustain skyrocketing infrastructure maintenance costs, the Allchains of the world announced closures one after another, fading into history.

Only a select few survived the cold scrutiny of capital. Hundreds of chains that once seemed poised to change the world carved up just over 10% of the market share's ruins before silently heading toward extinction.

"Back then, we all thought we'd survive and build our own massive ecosystem..."

Around 2026, people mistook the number of chains for blockchain scalability itself. But fragmented chains only fractured the user experience and drove up security costs. What people truly wanted wasn't hundreds of complex networks—but a few massive pieces of infrastructure offering unbreakable liquidity and optimized speed.

Do-hyun lets out a long sigh, silently turns off his monitor, picks up his bag, and heads home.

The "Human Eyes" That Once Clicked Are Gone

In 2036, at a media startup office in Sangam-dong.

Jae-hoon happens to be browsing another platform when he sees a banner ad in the bottom-right corner and chuckles.

"Can't believe companies still stick banner ads on screens, waiting for readers."

Jae-hoon had a point. That platform's daily traffic hit new highs every month, yet traditional banner ad revenue just wouldn't come. The entire advertising model had become a thing of the past.

In the early 2020s, when Jae-hoon first entered the media industry, the formula for the web economy was clear. Write good articles, and readers would come. Readers come, and advertisers pay to hang banners.

"How many page views today?"

This question, asked at every morning meeting, determined the fate of media companies at the time.

But this peaceful formula began to erode in the late 2020s. By 2029, more than half of global web traffic no longer came from people, but from AI agents and bots. AI could scrape articles and summarize them in a second—but machines simply had no "eyes" for banner ads.

Initially, like most media companies, they blocked the bots. Server costs exploded and couldn't keep up. But the cost of blocking was brutal. Completely buried outside the AI search and recommendation ecosystem, brands were forgotten. Media companies at the time faced a painful choice: block bots and lose traffic, or open the doors but earn nothing.

"Who exactly are we selling our content to now?"

This desperate question filled the office. The answer wasn't advertising boards—but pricing the content itself.

The catalyst for change was the x402 standard launched by Coinbase in May 2025. It technically resurrected the HTTP 402 response code—the "payment required" signal—that had been abandoned for 30 years in the corner of web standards.

By 2029, the focus was on building infrastructure: Know Your Agent (KYA) verification, settlement rails, and more. The real explosion began in 2030, when a media company started selling data directly to AI systems through x402. Once validated, other media and data companies immediately adopted x402, jumping into data sales.

At first, there was only some ridicule—pocket change, a few dozen won per transaction, hardly worth the effort. But as tens of thousands, and even millions, of machine calls piled up daily, real money started flowing into accounts, far exceeding what banner ads had ever brought in.

"No more worrying about what advertisers think—machines pay full price, and the company runs on that."

The old web advertising model, selling ads by attracting human eyeballs, slowly drew to a close, while the machine economy—AI agents transacting via APIs—unfolded in full swing.

Jae-hoon turned off the dashboard and picked up his coffee cup. The visitor curve still showed that strange, almost vertical climb, which made no sense by old standards—but this was now the norm. He no longer checked how many people visited, but how many AI agents paid today.

Tomorrow, hundreds of thousands of agents will knock on his server's door again, and that honest record of transactions won't get shorter—no longer.