Crypto’s Next Bull Market Could Be Led by Wall Street, Not Retail
For most of crypto’s history, retail investors have led the market while institutions followed. That dynamic may now be reversing. As Wall Street firms, banks, and major asset managers push deeper into stablecoins, tokenization, and on-chain infrastructure, crypto’s next bull market could be the first one driven by institutional adoption from the start.
By Zack Guzman
September 1, 2026
For basically the entire history of crypto, Wall Street has been late.
Retail bought Bitcoin before institutions cared. Retail piled into ICOs before banks knew what Ethereum was. Retail kicked off DeFi summer, the NFT boom, and just about every speculative frenzy crypto has ever produced.
This time, something strange appears to be happening. The order may have flipped.
“I think it’s the first cycle,” ARK Invest Director of Research for Digital Assets Lorenzo Valente told Coinage from our Brooklyn studios this week. “The previous cycles were retail driven.” But now?
“There’s never been like more interest, honestly, in crypto from institutions,” he said.
That might sound like an odd thing to say after one of crypto’s nastier bear markets. But if you stop looking exclusively at token prices, it’s getting harder to ignore what is happening underneath them.
“The amount of interest from banks, brokers, just financial institutions in general on stablecoins, how you integrate them, or tokenized assets… is at all-time high, honestly,” Valente said.
Just last week, 38 state bankers associations announced the creation of the BankChain Alliance, a blockchain network designed to let banks offer tokenized deposits, stablecoins, automated settlement and other on-chain financial services. The group is targeting a 2027 launch.
At the same time, The Wall Street Journal reported that more than a dozen banks — including Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Santander — are exploring a joint stablecoin venture. JPMorgan, which already operates its own tokenized deposit infrastructure, is also evaluating its stablecoin options as customer demand develops.
And earlier this month, nearly 40 major Wall Street firms — including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Invesco and Citadel Securities — participated in a test showing how tokenized stocks and Treasurys could move through real institutional workflows involving trades, collateral and margin calls.
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It’s indicative of a larger trend Valente thinks investors may still be missing.
Stablecoins have already grown to roughly a $300 billion market, he noted. Tokenized assets have grown more than 50% this year to roughly $40 billion — during a crypto bear market.
And yet those numbers remain almost comically small when compared with the markets they are potentially attacking.
U.S. equities alone are worth roughly $65 trillion to $70 trillion.
“They’ve grown a lot, but they’re extremely, extremely small,” Valente said. “The opportunity here to take more market share from TradFi and to tokenize these assets is still enormous.”
Add clearer regulation and a little more appetite for risk, he argues, and those markets could surprise investors with how quickly they expand. But that still leaves the need to get the CLARITY Act passed — which remains the opposite of a foregone conclusion.
On Monday, odds of the bill passing dipped to new lows on Polymarket at just 11%.
With that Senate vote approaching a potential defeat, that doesn’t mean crypto can’t fall again. But most people are in the same camp Valente is in — that all of this bad news is priced in already.
Instead, Valente thinks macro remains firmly in control of Bitcoin in the short term. After Fed Chair Kevin Warsh reiterated his focus on inflation at Jackson Hole, rate-hike expectations have risen again. Renewed fighting between the U.S. and Iran pushed oil and Treasury yields higher Monday, adding another complication for risk assets.
Valente pointed out that prediction markets recently gave Bitcoin roughly similar odds of finishing the year near $95,000 as falling back toward $60,000-$65,000.
“The market doesn’t think that we’re going to stay here,” he said.
But that is precisely what makes the institutional activity beneath the surface so interesting.
In every prior cycle, rising prices brought institutions to crypto. This time, the institutions may be arriving before any material swing in price.
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