What analysts think about BTC, ETH, XRP, and DOGE in 2026
There’s never a dull moment onchain. Here’s what you need to know this week:
Bitcoin bounced back above $94K to start the year. Also: Why Morgan Stanley is launching BTC and SOL ETFs of its own.
Four tokens to watch in 2026. What market watchers are predicting for BTC, ETH, XRP, and DOGE.
Ethereum’s record-breaking transaction numbers. Plus, more key stats from around the cryptoverse.
MARKET BYTES
Crypto markets rebounded above $90K to start 2026
For the first time in more than a month, bitcoin climbed above $94,000 this week as a wide range of tokens (including ETH and even major memecoins) rode a “bullish trend” to start 2026.
Why was the largest cryptocurrency by market cap up as much as 7% since the beginning of January? Analysts pointed to a range of potential factors as a trigger for the early-year gains, including theories around ways that markets could be responding to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
“Political uncertainty fanned by Maduro’s capture by U.S. forces late last week has failed to dent investor appetite for riskier assets like technology stocks, while driving fresh gains in gold and silver. U.S. stocks pushed higher on Monday, led by tech stocks,” noted Bloomberg.
While BTC dipped to around $91,000 on Wednesday, options markets show a large cluster of bets that BTC will return to the $100,000 mark by the end of the month.
Here's more news you need to know…
Crypto ETFs roared back to start the year
Bitcoin ETF inflows also mounted a strong start to the first full trading week of 2026, notching $1.2 billion in inflows for the week as of Tuesday (including $697.2 million on Monday, the biggest day for BTC ETFs since October).
Spot XRP ETFs also saw major inflows, accruing $48 million in new capital on Monday alone and pushing the funds’ total assets under management above $1 billion just two months after launching.
New record… Last week, the cumulative trading volume for all U.S.-based spot crypto ETFs eclipsed $2 trillion. “The milestone took roughly eight months to reach from $1 trillion — half the time it took to hit the first trillion from launch,” noted The Block.
Morgan Stanley plans crypto ETFs of its own
Banking giant Morgan Stanley is aiming to launch ETFs for both BTC and Solana, according to new SEC filings.
Some analysts said this news was a genuine “shocker,” given that wealth-management advisors at the bank were forbidden from offering crypto to clients until recently. “Can honestly say that I am very surprised by these,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart. “[But] I’ve been saying for literal years that most of these firms will change their tune on crypto.”
In recent months, a number of the biggest financial institutions in the world — including some that were previously skeptical about crypto — have announced new crypto-friendly policies.
In December, Vanguard — the world’s second-largest asset manager — began offering its 50 million customers access to crypto ETFs. And Bank of America wealth advisors have begun suggesting an allocation of one-to-four percent in crypto ETFs to clients.
Bank on it… “A bank entering the crypto ETF market adds legitimacy to it, and others could follow,” said Morningstar ETF analyst Bryan Armour.
TOKEN TAKES
Where analysts think BTC, ETH, XRP, and DOGE are headed in 2026
In 2025, crypto markets lost steam in the final quarter, with bitcoin ending the year down more than 6% and ETH closing down around 11%. But with markets bouncing back to start the year, some analysts are predicting that 2026 could be a lot better.
Fundstrat’s head of research, Tom Lee, predicts new bitcoin all-time highs in the coming weeks; Bitwise is anticipating further ETF inflows and institutional adoption; and Coinbase Institutional has declared the “four-year cycle” a thing of the past, which could result in a bullish 2026.
Here’s what else experts are saying about several leading cryptocurrencies as the new year begins.
Ethereum
ETH had a volatile 2025, setting a new all-time high of around $4,950 while also reaching lows below $1,400 within a five-month span. (It ended the year around $3,000.) But 2026 could be a big year for ETH, analysts say, thanks to the growth of Ethereum staking ETFs, plus the rise of tokenization and stablecoins, and other forms of institutional adoption.
Here are some of the main bull-case arguments:
Staking ETFs, which allow holders to earn yield on their ETH holdings, could help create new demand for ETH, especially among institutional holders seeking low-risk ways to enhance their returns.
Ethereum's status as the blockchain of choice for Wall Street, with the likes of BlackRock, JPMorgan, Robinhood, and others using ETH to tokenize assets, could portend a broader migration of assets onto the blockchain’s rails.
Digital asset treasury firms (DATs), which are public companies that add crypto to their balance sheets, could also be a big demand driver for ETH, with 21Shares predicting the amount of ETH such firms hold will more than double by the end of the year, from around $20 billion to $50 billion.
Ethereum also has two significant network upgrades on the roadmap for 2026 — Glamsterdam and Hegota — which could further increase the network’s scalability and support more institutional network activity.
Those tailwinds, according to Fundstrat’s Lee, could push ETH to surpass $9,000 in the first half of the year. “Our belief is that Ethereum is dramatically undervalued,” Lee said. “We believe ETH is entering a supercycle similar to Bitcoin from 2017 to 2021.”
That said, not all market watchers are quite so optimistic. While DATs could be a significant source of demand for ETH, some analysts are warning that they could also be one of the token’s biggest risks in 2026.
Many DATs are already underwater on their ETH holdings, and Steven Zheng of The Block believes that ETH could experience downside pressure in the early part of this year, spurred by treasury firms like Bitmine Immersion Technologies being forced to sell some of their holdings.
“Bitmine will execute its first ETH sale by the end of the first quarter of 2026," Zheng predicted. “The sale will open the gates for more DATs to also sell their assets, leading to more depressed price sentiment.”
Bitcoin
The world’s largest cryptocurrency is always top-of-mind for crypto investors. But after reaching lows of around $80,000 amid last fall’s major liquidation event, investors are wondering: Is bitcoin’s bull market over?
The consensus among major analysts is “no,” with many predicting a bullish 2026 for BTC, and the end of the four-year cycle that has defined its price action for more than a decade. Bitcoin already appears well on its way to a rebound, with prices approaching $95,000 early this week.
According to one train of thought, BTC’s Q4 decline was the result of an over-leveraged market and not a shift in fundamentals. “When prices and fundamentals move in opposite directions, opportunities arise,” wrote the research firm K33 in a recent report. “With this in mind, we enter 2026 with a constructively bullish view. Bitcoin will outperform equity indices and gold in 2026.”
Analysts at Bitwise shared a similar view, predicting BTC will set a new all-time high this year. Why? The combination of rising adoption from institutional investors and crypto coming to the retirement accounts of potentially millions of Americans. In 2025, an executive order instructed federal agencies to reevaluate guidance on allowing 401(k) accounts to invest in alternative assets, including bitcoin.
XRP also had a volatile 2025, with the token setting an all-time high in July of around $3.65, before dipping as low as $1.77 in the weeks following October’s major crypto liquidation event.
But Standard Chartered analysts have pegged XRP as a token to watch in 2026, with the U.K. bank reiterating its price target of $8 for XRP this year, which would be around a 300% gain from current levels. The bank notes that regulatory clarity has boosted institutional interest in XRP, its blockchain XRP Ledger, and the payments solutions company Ripple, which uses both.
Another tailwind is the success of the spot XRP ETFs that launched in November. The products have already seen a collective $1.25 billion in inflows (around 1% of XRP’s supply).
DOGE (and other major memecoins)
After peaking at around a $150 billion market cap at the end of 2024, the memecoin market spent much of 2025 in the doldrums, slumping more than 70% to as low as $47 billion in November. Trading volumes similarly dropped off in 2025, with daily memecoin trading dipping as low as $5 billion in December after peaking at around $87 billion the year prior.
But so far in 2026, three of the largest memes on the market — Dogecoin, BONK, and SHIB — have seen gains of 25% or more, with DOGE up more than 29%, BONK up 60%, and SHIB up 28%, as of Monday afternoon.
That said, some market watchers caution against treating this latest rebound as the start of a new, extended memecoin run.
“Memecoin rallies tend to be self-reinforcing in the short term, but fragile when positioning gets crowded, spot demand fades, or bitcoin turns lower,” noted CoinDesk.
NUMBERS TO KNOW
1.8 million
Ethereum’s peak amount of daily transactions so far this month, an all-time high per The Block. Active addresses have similarly surged to multi-year highs, supported by multiple scalability upgrades in 2025, enabling lower fees and more efficient transactions across both mainnet and ETH-powered Layer 2 chains.
75° C
The approximate temperature of excess water after it is used to cool down a bitcoin mining project in Canada. The project, run by the hardware manufacturer Canaan, plans to use the heat and water generated by the facility to power a greenhouse focused on growing tomatoes.
41%
Odds, as of Wednesday Jan. 7, that Kevin Warsh will get nominated to become the next Federal Reserve chair, according to Coinbase’s predictions market (which is powered by Kalshi). Kevin Hassett stands second, with 40%, followed by Christopher Waller, with 12%. Coinbase recently announced prediction markets alongside a slew of new products at December’s System Update product showcase.
TOKEN TRIVIA
How many U.S. states passed legislation to create crypto reserves last year?
A
1
B
2
C
3
D
4
Find the answer below.
Trivia Answer
C
3
Coinbase Bytes
Your weekly digest of crypto news
Learn how we collect your information by visiting our Privacy Policy
