Author: ARK Invest

Compiled by: Felix, PANews (This article has been edited)

ARK Invest releases its flagship research report "Big Ideas" every year. This report aims to identify and interpret the technologies that are reshaping the global economy by filtering out short-term distractions. In this year's report, ARK explores 13 major ideas covering AI, robotics, energy, blockchain, space, and biology, which are generating compound effects and redefining productivity, capital allocation, and competitive advantages across various industries. This article excerpts content from fields such as AI and blockchain, with the following details.

**In the era of great acceleration, *AI* serves as the core engine, accelerating the development of five major innovation platforms and triggering a turning point in macroeconomic growth.**

Technological convergence is accelerating. The five major innovative technologies (AI, public blockchain, robotics, energy storage, and multi-omics) are becoming increasingly interdependent, as performance improvements in one technology unlock new capabilities for another.

Reusable rockets sending autonomous Mobility AI chips into orbit may become key to expanding next-generation cloud services. Multi-omics data authorized in digital wallets could power neural networks, driving the development of precision therapies to cure rare diseases.

The world is entering an unprecedented cycle of technology investment. Each disruptive technology could have profound macroeconomic impacts.

AI Infrastructure

**As reasoning costs decline, demand for *AI* is rapidly increasing.**

From certain indicators, reasoning costs have dropped by over 99% in the past year. With the surge in AI-native applications, the decrease in costs is driving an explosive growth in the number of tokens for reasoning by developers, businesses, and consumers. Since December 2024, the computational demand for OpenRouter (a unified API for accessing large language models) has increased 25-fold.

**Since the "ChatGPT moment," the growth rate of data center systems has accelerated from *5%* to 29%, with the annual growth rate continuing to rise.**

By 2025, annual investment in data center systems is expected to be around $500 billion, nearly 2.5 times the average level from 2012 to 2023. According to ARK research, such investments will continue to grow, potentially doubling by 2030 to approximately $1.4 trillion.

Technology capital expenditures have reached levels seen during the tech and telecom boom, but valuations of tech companies remain far below those levels.

According to ARK research, capital expenditures for hyperscale data center operators are expected to exceed $500 billion in 2026, nearly three times the $135 billion in 2021 (before the ChatGPT boom in 2022). Although capital expenditures in the information technology and communication services sectors have reached the highest proportion of GDP since 1998, the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of the tech sector remains far below the peak during the tech and telecom bubble.

NVIDIA faces intensified competition.

NVIDIA's early investments in AI chip design, software, and networks have allowed its graphics processing units (GPUs) to capture an 85% market share with a 75% gross margin. Today, competitors like AMD and Google have caught up in certain areas, such as small language model reasoning. NVIDIA's Grace Blackwell rack system leads in large model reasoning, supporting state-of-the-art foundational models.

**Demand for *AI* will drive sustainable growth in infrastructure.**

As AI workloads spread across enterprise and consumer environments, AI infrastructure investment could exceed $1.4 trillion by 2030, with most of it directed towards accelerating servers. ARK research indicates that ASICs designed by companies like Broadcom and Amazon's Annapurna Labs will continue to capture market share as AI labs and hyperscale enterprises seek cost-effective computing power.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin is gradually becoming the leader of a new institutional asset class.

**U.S. ETFs and publicly traded companies hold a total of *12%* of Bitcoin.**

By 2025, Bitcoin ETF holdings are expected to grow by 19.7%, from approximately 1.12 million to about 1.29 million coins; while publicly traded companies' Bitcoin holdings are projected to increase by 73%, from about 598,000 to approximately 1.09 million coins. Consequently, the total amount of Bitcoin held by ETFs and publicly traded companies will rise from 8.7% to 12%.

Bitcoin's annual risk-adjusted return (Sharpe ratio) has long been higher than that of the entire crypto market.

For most of 2025, Bitcoin's risk-adjusted returns have outperformed those of most other large-cap cryptocurrencies and indices. Since the recent cycle low (November 2022), early 2024, and early 2025, Bitcoin's average annualized Sharpe ratio has also exceeded the average of Ethereum, SOL, and the other nine components of the CoinDesk 10 index.

In 2025, the average decline in Bitcoin's price relative to its historical peak has moderated.

As Bitcoin's role as a safe-haven asset continues to strengthen, its volatility has decreased. Over the spans of 5 years, 3 years, 1 year, and 3 months, the decline in Bitcoin's price in 2025 has been relatively moderate compared to historical levels.

ARK has adjusted its assumptions for Bitcoin growth, but its forecasts remain largely unchanged.

ARK's forecast for Bitcoin in 2030 has remained quite stable, with only two assumption factors changing: as digital gold, its potential market (TAM) grew by 37% after the market value of gold surged by 64.5% in 2025; as an emerging market safe-haven asset, its projected penetration rate decreased by 80% to reflect the rapid adoption of stablecoins in developing countries.

**The market value of digital assets could reach *$28 trillion* by 2030.**

The market size of smart contracts and pure digital currencies (the latter serving as a store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account on public blockchains) could grow at an annual rate of about 61%, reaching $28 trillion by 2030. ARK believes Bitcoin could capture 70% of the market share, with the remainder dominated by smart contract networks like Ethereum and Solana.

• According to ARK's projections, Bitcoin is likely to dominate the cryptocurrency market over the next five years with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 63%, growing from nearly $2 trillion to approximately $16 trillion by 2030.
• The market value of smart contracts could grow at an annual rate of 54%, reaching about $6 trillion by 2030, with annual revenue of approximately $192 billion and an average fee rate of 0.75%.
• Two to three L1 platforms will capture most of the market share, but their market value will derive more from their currency premium (store of value and reserve asset characteristics) rather than discounted cash flows.

Tokenized Assets

**Thanks to the *GENIUS* Act, financial institutions are reassessing their stablecoin and tokenization strategies.**

With the regulatory clarity brought by the GENIUS Act, stablecoin activity has surged to historic highs. Multiple companies and institutions have announced the launch of their own stablecoins, while BlackRock has revealed plans for an internal tokenization platform. Major stablecoin issuers and fintech companies like Tether, Circle, and Stripe are launching/supporting L1 blockchains optimized for stablecoins.

**In December, stablecoin trading volume reached **$3.5 trillion, far exceeding most traditional payment systems.

In December 2025, the 30-day moving average of stablecoin trading volume was $3.5 trillion, 2.3 times the total value of Visa, PayPal, and remittances.

Circle's stablecoin USDC dominates the trading volume with a share of about 60%, followed by Tether's USDT with a share of approximately 35%.

In 2025, the supply of stablecoins grew by about 50%, increasing from $210 billion to $307 billion, with USDT and USDC accounting for 61% and 25%, respectively.

Sky Protocol is the only stablecoin issuer, apart from other stablecoin issuers, to exceed a market capitalization of $10 billion by the end of 2025.

Notably, PayPal's PYUSD saw its market capitalization grow more than sixfold, reaching $3.4 billion.

**Driven by U.S. Treasury and commodity dominance, the tokenized asset market doubled in *2025*, reaching *$19 billion.*

The market capitalization of RWA grew by 208% in 2025, reaching $18.9 billion.

BlackRock's $1.7 billion BUIDL money market fund is one of the largest products, accounting for 20% of $9 billion in U.S. Treasuries.

Tokenized gold products from Tether (XAUT) and Paxos (PAXG) lead the tokenized commodity market, with market capitalizations of $1.8 billion and $1.6 billion, respectively, together accounting for 83%.

The tokenized scale of publicly traded stocks is close to $750 million.

Ethereum remains the preferred blockchain for on-chain assets.

The total value of assets on Ethereum has now exceeded $400 billion. Among the eight hottest blockchains, seven chains have 90% of their market capitalization supported by stablecoins and tokens ranked in the top 50.

On blockchains other than Solana, the market capitalization of meme coins accounts for about 3% or less. On Solana, however, meme coins account for about 21% of the asset share.

Tokenization of RWA is expected to become one of the fastest-growing categories. Since most global value exists off-chain, off-chain assets still represent the largest growth opportunity for on-chain adoption.

**By *2030*, the global tokenized asset market could exceed *$11 trillion.*

According to our research, the scale of tokenized assets could grow from $19 billion to $11 trillion, at which point it would account for approximately 1.38% of all financial assets.

While sovereign debt currently dominates the tokenization space, the on-chain value of bank deposits and globally listed stocks may exceed current levels within the next five years.

ARK believes that the widespread adoption of tokenization will depend on the clarification of regulatory policies and the improvement of institutional-level infrastructure.

Traditional enterprises are expanding their on-chain influence by building their own infrastructure.

Traditional enterprises are constructing their own on-chain infrastructure. Circle (Arc), Coinbase (Base, cbBTC), Kraken (Ink), OKX (X Layer), Robinhood (Robinhood Chain), and Stripe (Tempo) are launching company-branded L1/L2 networks to support their own products, such as Bitcoin loans, tokenized stocks and ETFs, and stablecoin-based payment channels.

DeFi Applications

The value capture of digital assets has shifted from networks to applications.

Networks are gradually transforming into public utilities, transferring user economic benefits and profit margins to the application layer.

Led by Hyperliquid, Pump.fun, and Pancakeswap, total application revenue reached a historic high of approximately $3.8 billion in 2025.

One-fifth of all application revenue in 2025 came from January, marking the highest monthly revenue ever recorded.

Today, there are 70 applications and protocols with monthly recurring revenue (MRR) exceeding $1 million.

The asset scale of DeFi and stablecoin issuers is catching up with many fintech companies.

The asset scale gap between traditional fintech platforms and crypto-native platforms is narrowing, indicating that traditional and on-chain infrastructures are merging.

DeFi protocols, such as liquid staking or lending platforms, are attracting institutional capital and rapidly expanding.

The top 50 DeFi platforms have all crossed into the billion-dollar club, with the top 12 protocols each exceeding $5 billion in scale.

**The most revenue-efficient companies globally include *Hyperliquid*, *Tether*, and **Pump.fun.

By 2025, Hyperliquid generated over $800 million in annual revenue with just 15 employees.

By positioning itself in on-chain verticals such as perpetual contracts, stablecoins, and meme coins, Hyperliquid is attracting users and capital at an astonishing scale, with a clear product-market fit.

On-chain businesses and protocols are redefining productivity, as a small team can generate revenue and profitability comparable to world-class enterprises.

**Under the leadership of *Hyperliquid*, *DeFi* derivatives are capturing market share in perpetual contracts from Binance.**

L1 networks are evolving from revenue-generating networks to monetary assets.

If we estimate based on a 50x revenue multiple, over 90% of Ethereum's market capitalization is attributed to its role as a monetary asset.

Solana generated $1.4 billion in revenue, demonstrating that 90% of its valuation comes from network utility.

According to ARK research, only a few digital assets can retain monetary properties and become highly liquid stores of value.

Related reading: Cathie Wood's 2026 Macro and Tech Investment Roadmap

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