[Digital Today reporter Jinju Hong] Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at crypto-focused venture investment firm Dragonfly, forecasts bitcoin (BTC) could reach $150,000 in 2026. He also expects bitcoin's market dominance to gradually decline from about 59 percent.

Cryptopolitan, a blockchain media outlet, reported on Dec. 30 that Qureshi views 2026 as a year when both positive and negative factors emerge across the crypto industry. He expects greater participation by large institutional investors and more practical uses of blockchain technology, while the gap widens between successful projects and overvalued ones.

Global financial institutions are already offering similar forecasts. Citigroup set a bitcoin target range of $143,000 to as high as $189,000, and it expects the introduction of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF) to spur about $15 billion in new inflows. Standard Chartered and JPMorgan also forecast bitcoin will reach $150,000 and $150,000 to $170,000, respectively, by the end of 2026.

As of December 2025, bitcoin is at about $87,103. That is still more than 30 percent below the record high of $126,080 hit on Oct. 6.

Qureshi says the crypto industry is moving past a purely speculative phase and entering a stage of integration with the existing financial system. He expects insider trading scandals could recur in the decentralised finance (DeFi) market. He also forecasts derivatives-based decentralised exchanges (DEX) will secure about 20 percent market share and then be reshaped around a small number of core platforms.

For the altcoin market, he forecasts Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL) will remain strong. He expects stablecoin supply to rise about 60 percent by 2026, but Tether (USDT) could see its share fall to about 55 percent. He also projects stablecoin-based card usage could surge by up to 1,000 percent, with Rain leading new market expansion.

He also cited moves by big tech companies as a key variable. Qureshi forecasts global big tech firms including Google, Apple and Meta are likely in 2026 to launch their own crypto wallets or acquire related companies, providing crypto services to billions of users. He also expects Fortune 100 companies in the finance and banking industry to move to develop practical applications using blockchain technology.

He expects these companies are likely to build private or licensed networks using existing blockchain toolsets such as Avalanche subnets, OP Stack, Orbit and ZK Stack. By contrast, he forecasts newly emerging public blockchains led by fintech companies will not grow as much as expected, and the existing ecosystem centred on Ethereum and Solana will keep the upper hand for the time being.