Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan says the market is mispricing blockchain's tokenization and AI agent boom, forecasting 50x to 100x on-chain volume growth. OCC stablecoin rules due Nov 2026.
Bitwise Asset Management CIO Matt Hougan said the financial industry is underestimating how much blockchain adoption will expand as tokenization and artificial intelligence agents converge.
In a market report published Tuesday, Hougan argued that the combination of real-world assets on decentralized networks and autonomous transactions by AI agents will push on-chain activity far above current forecasts.
Traditional stock exchanges operate 33 hours a week, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on business days. Blockchain networks run 168 hours a week, every day. Hougan said that structural difference alone could allow a tenfold increase in tokenized stock transactions without straining network capacity.
He projected that overall on-chain transaction volume could expand 50 to 100 times from what it was in 2026. The crypto sector's market capitalization stood at roughly $2 trillion in August 2026, the report noted. Global bond markets total $350 trillion, and global equity markets another $150 trillion.
Hougan said most analysts value decentralized applications purely within the crypto ecosystem. He argued that protocols like Uniswap, Aave, Hyperliquid, and Chainlink are designed to support debt and equity instruments. Real estate tokenization is also a growing use case, he added. He pointed out that five individual publicly traded companies today exceed the combined valuation of the entire crypto asset industry.
On competition with traditional finance, the Bitwise report said decentralized firms hold the lead in derivatives and custody despite BlackRock's dominance in spot ETF issuance. Tether and Circle control 88% of stablecoin supply. PayPal holds about 1%. International perpetual futures markets and Coinbase also command majority market shares compared to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, according to the report.
Hougan's timeline aligns with U.S. regulatory developments. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is scheduled to finalize the stablecoin framework under the GENIUS Act in November 2026. That date gives a concrete marker for when the infrastructure shift could accelerate.
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