Source: Grayscale Research; Compiled by Golden Finance
Key Points:
-----
Q1 2026 characterized by volatility: Geopolitical risks and macroeconomic repricing drove severe market fluctuations.
Industry-wide decline: Six major crypto sectors posted negative returns for the second consecutive quarter, with risk-averse sentiment and deleveraging processes intensifying.
Finance applications and tokenization projects leading: Supported by institutional adoption and improved regulatory clarity, related projects outperformed the broader market.
AI-related tokens performing strongly: As attention to artificial intelligence accelerated and the clear need for on-chain financial settlement by agents (Agent) became evident, the AI sector stood out.
Overall Performance
Q1 2026 was another challenging period for the crypto market
Author: Maria Shen, Electric Capital Partner; Translation: @金色财経xz
Full data and interactive charts for this article available at the link:
Article Summary
----
We reviewed 501 real-world yield sources and cross-referenced them with currently attractive on-chain real-world assets (RWAs).
1. Stablecoin demand first brought Treasury assets on-chain, and the current centralization of Treasuries is now driving higher-yield assets to follow.
2. Mainstream strategies for achieving instant high-yield asset experiences all see their returns pulled toward the risk-free rate level.
3. Tokenizable yield assets are abundant. Seven opportunity clusters reveal the potential that can be unlocked on-chain.
4. The biggest challenge is asset distribution. Among 35 yield-bearing non-stablecoin RWAs with market cap exceeding 50 million dollars, only
Author: Xiaojing
Silicon Valley is trending a new term: Tokenmaxxing.
Within Meta and OpenAI, engineers have begun competing on AI usage leaderboards. According to foreign media reports, one engineer even consumed 210 billion tokens in a week, equivalent to the text of 33 Wikipedias. Some people have AI bills as high as $150,000 per month.
An engineer at Ericsson in Stockholm spent more money on Claude than his own salary, but the bill was covered by the company. Token budgets are becoming a new type of work benefit for engineers, "just like free snacks or free lunch used to be."
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke released an internal memo as early as April 2025, announcing that "AI usage is a baseline expectation at Shopify," requiring all teams