Trying to map out what I actually want to sit on into 2026 with market volume dying, I don’t wanna be guessing narratives at the top.

Stuff I’m lining up bags for is what actually feels under-owned and already shipping things

1️⃣Robotics / machine economy

Governments openly courting robot CEOs, trillion-dollar TAMs thrown around for industrial + service robots, and yet the entire robots-onchain bucket still sits under a billion mcap.

Crypto is the identity, payments, and reputation layer for all of that. Machines need wallets, DIDs, pay-per-task rails, and a scoreboard.

This narrative is the one I’m most obsessed with.

– $PEAQ: L1 for machines, cheap high-throughput txs, machine IDs + payments + access baked in

– $TAO: intelligence + models side, now with halving + ETP + treasury demand stacking on top

– $CODEC / $ROBOT: pure-play exposure to tokenized robotics ecosystems, higher risk but fat upside if the narrative catches real industrial pilots

2️⃣Prediction market

Prediction markets already doing $3.6B+ weeks and ~$1T+ annualized across Kalshi / Polymarket…, with volumes up ~5x YoY and platforms valued in billions.

That’s the onramp for the next millions of users who’d never touch DeFi but will happily bet on elections and CPI prints.

Right now it’s mostly equity / private rounds, so the liquid angle is:

– place bets on @Polymarket / @Kalshi to farm airdrops
– infra that powers them (oracles, L2s where these apps ship)
– on-chain perps/prediction hybrids: $LMTS, $DRIFT

3️⃣Privacy as a macro hedge

MiCA, CBDCs with spend limits, KYC everywhere, AI-powered surveillance → people don’t want their whole transaction graph doxxed on-chain forever.

That’s why privacy coins smoked majors this year. At peak they grabbed ~6% of total crypto volume.

My basket here:

– $ZEC: optional privacy that still works for institutions, plus halving + treasury hoarding

– $XMR: still the gold standard for default opacity

– $DASH: payment angle + upgraded privacy stack, smaller-cap beta to the same story

4️⃣Perp DEXes as the default exchange

Perp DEXes are already doing >$1.4T monthly, ~4x YoY, sitting at ~16–20% of all crypto derivatives volume, open interest pushing $8B daily and creeping up on CEX share.

They’re running sub-200ms engines, full orderbooks, and still paying you back via points, buybacks, and fee share.

As regulation funnels CEX leverage and traders want self-custody, more size will hit the top perp DEXes:

– $HYPE: real revenue, burn + buyback, massive utilities, and a product traders actually love

– $ASTER: CZ’s bag

– whatever’s owning deep liquidity + sustainable pts model: @Lighter_xyz, @edgeX_exchange

None of this is risk free and obv nfa, but if we get another risk-on window I’d rather park size in narratives that already show product market fit and scary growth curves.