The-Great-Crypto
Saheli Majumder Ambwani
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The “Wild West” era of crypto yield farming is officially being buried in early 2026. According to a new report from the CfC St. Moritz conference, senior decision-makers are no longer obsessed with the latest DeFi protocols. Instead, they are pouring capital into the unglamorous world of market infrastructure. We’re talking about custody, clearing, and settlement layers. A staggering 85% of respondents—which included family offices, C-suite executives, and regulators—ranked infrastructure as their absolute top priority. This isn’t just a trend; it’s a survival tactic. The industry has realized that you can’t build a trillion-dollar ecosystem on shaky market plumbing.

The primary fear haunting these investors is liquidity. While the general outlook for 2026 is positive, 242 high-level attendees flagged market depth as the biggest hurdle for institutional adoption. They are tired of the “liquidity shortages” that make large-scale capital deployment a nightmare. The shift is clear: the focus has moved away from consumer-facing apps and speculative DeFi tokens toward tokenization frameworks and stablecoin infrastructure. It’s a “back-to-basics” approach that values stability and execution over high-risk innovation. Basically, the grown-ups have entered the room and they want better pipes, not more casinos.

Interestingly, sentiment toward the US is actually improving. The survey ranks the US as the second-most favorable jurisdiction for digital assets, trailing only the UAE. This is a massive jump, driven by clearer rules for banks and stablecoin legislation. However, the appetite for crypto IPOs has cooled significantly after the record-breaking run in 2025. Investors are now more selective, waiting for valuation resets before jumping back in. The message for 2026 is blunt. If you’re building “DeFi for the sake of DeFi,” the money has already left the building. The current game is all about building the backbone that can actually support the next bull run.