HTX Ventures Annual Review and Outlook: Regulatory Clarity, Asset Tokenization, and Institutional Adoption Resonate
PANAMA CITY, Jan. 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Recently, HTX Ventures, the global investment arm of HTX, released its latest research report, 2025 Annual Review: Crypto Assets Move Toward Mainstream Adoption. As long-term participants deeply embedded in the industry, HTX and HTX Ventures remain focused on building foundational capabilities that endure across market cycles. On one hand, HTX Ventures tracks structural trends through rigorous research to identify the market's long-term direction. Through investment and ecosystem collaboration, it supports teams with tangible product strength and sustainable business models, advancing the integration of crypto technology into broader real-world use cases in a more resilient and sustainable manner.
Regulation Becomes Predictable: Clear Rules Drawing Institutional Capital In
HTX Ventures notes that in 2025, regulatory ambiguity across major global jurisdictions narrowed significantly. Moving from a phase of grey-zone tolerance to one of formal rule-setting, regulators focus on stablecoin frameworks, market structure compliance, and stricter requirements for trading, custody, and disclosure. In the United States, the GENIUS Act established a federal-level framework for payment stablecoins, reinforcing requirements such as full 1:1 reserve backing. In Europe, the implementation of MiCA has materially raised compliance thresholds, pushing the industry from growth-at-all-costs toward compliant competition. Hong Kong, meanwhile, has advanced its stablecoin regulatory regime through issuer licensing frameworks and the rollout of new rules.
Everything On-Chain: Stablecoin Payments and RWA Tokenization Entering an Expansion Phase
In 2025, two forces jointly reshaped on-chain infrastructure: the expansion of stablecoins and the institutional adoption of RWA tokens.
Stablecoins accelerated their evolution from crypto-native tools into global financial infrastructure. Total stablecoin market capitalization reached a record high of $308 billion in Oct. 2025 and stabilized around $309.4 billion by mid-Dec. representing a 50.3% increase over the year. Annual on-chain transaction volume exceeded $46 trillion, comparable to the combined annual volumes of Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal.
The RWA tokenization market entered a phase of accelerated growth. As of Dec. 17, 2025, the total value of on-chain distributed RWA assets (excluding stablecoins) reached $18.74 billion, more than tripling since the beginning of the year. Tokenized U.S. Treasuries reached approximately 8.7 billion, accounting for 47.3%, with landmark products such as BlackRock's BUIDL (approximately $2.006 billion). This exemplifies deeper integration between traditional asset management and on-chain tokenization.
Clearer Institutional Entry Paths: From "Whether to Allocate" to "How to Allocate Compliantly"
HTX Ventures characterizes 2025 as the year when institutional adoption pathways became quantifiable. The core shift was not institutions broadly betting on high-volatility assets, but rather entering the crypto space through more auditable, standardized structures aligned with traditional balance sheet frameworks, decomposing on-chain capabilities into deployable financial modules.
Institutional participation is advancing through several well-defined paths: gaining crypto exposure through ETFs and ETPs; incorporating BTC into corporate treasuries; migrating payments and settlement on-chain via stablecoins; and transforming cash equivalents and collateral into composable on-chain assets through RWA tokenization.
Crucially, institutional participation is changing how the market functions. HTX Ventures summarizes these structural effects in three areas:
- Rising market concentration as capital gravitates toward major assets.
- Emphasis on compliance and risk management, with increased demands for data transparency.
- Pricing and yield curves that increasingly resemble traditional finance, incorporating concepts such as term structure and funding costs.
Strategically, institutions favor low-risk, medium-yield strategies—such as arbitrage, market making, and delta-neutral hedging—acting as structure providers rather than short-term price drivers.
HTX Ventures' Focus Areas for 2026
Alec, Head of HTX Ventures, commented: "After the structural shifts of 2025, the industry is entering a critical phase defined by infrastructure competition. Capital is flowing in along pathways that are regulated, auditable, and scalable. As a result, the next phase will be less about short-term price performance and more about which players can continuously accumulate value at the infrastructure layer."
Building upon the trends, HTX Ventures will focus on the following areas in 2026:
- AI x Blockchain: AI agent frameworks, machine accounts and payments, on-chain execution automation, and closed-loop data pricing and settlement
- Stablecoins and Payment Infrastructure: Compliant issuance and reserve management, on-chain settlement and reconciliation, risk management and AML, enterprise-grade wallet permissions, and payment routing optimization
- RWA Tokenization Expansion and Secondary Liquidity: Tokenization of cash equivalents, private credit, and institutional assets; the development of trading and liquidity infrastructure
- User Experience and Productization: Applications and protocols that lower barriers to on-chain finance through improved interaction, one-click cross-chain functionality, and mobile security
- Multi-chain Application Ecosystem: Identifying strong applications and integrated platforms that can retain users, cash flows, and developers in a multi-chain environment
In 2026, HTX and HTX Ventures will keep pursuing value creation with longtermism, focusing on critical infrastructure and real-world use cases, and advancing crypto technology adoption toward a more open, fair, and transparent global financial system.
About HTX Ventures
HTX Ventures is the global investment arm of HTX, integrating investment, incubation, and research to identify and discover the best and most innovative projects in the market. Visit us here.
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