99Bitcoins Exclusive: “We can’t catch a break,” Says Coinbase Research Chief Analyzing Crypto ETF Outflows, Euro-Stablecoins And Institutional Adoption

“We can’t catch a break,” said David Duong, Head of Global Research, Coinbase Institutional, as he discussed the current state of the crypto market, institutional adoption and Euro-Stabelcoins.

“We saw ETF outflows in December, and a big part of that had to do with tax loss harvesting and other things. I thought that we would see some of that recovery,” said Duong. “Right now, I would say markets are unfortunately pinned by technical factors. And it is the challenge for a lot of people.”

“I’m still cautiously optimistic for the first half of 2026. I don’t have a strong view on where I see crypto going in the second half of the year. And there are a lot of reasons for that. I think that there are certain things right now that I just can’t price in. What could happen with midterms in the US, for example? Or what happens with the market structure bill? I think that progress on that could still be meaningful. So I’m watching to see whether that could be a potential catalyst for us into the second half of the year.”

“It’s going to be a ladder and that’s going to be very helpful for crypto. And so I see that happening. I think the liquidity situation is showing signs (we produce our own custom M2 money supply index)  that the highest regression tends to be a lag around 110 days. We’re at an upward uptick for that. I think that those things definitely suggest to me that crypto should be doing better in the Q1 and possibly in the Q2 as well.”

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On Euro-Stablecoins 

“Certainly we’ll see a diversification of stablecoins into other currencies. We’re already seeing it. I think that there’s announcements on our potential Renminbi stablecoin (RMB) and a potential Japanese yen stablecoin. And we do have Euro stablecoins already, like, EURC, for example, already exists.”

“It’s really just the traction around it. I think that there’s a lot of geopolitical economic factors that fall into this when people are thinking about it, because typically, the reason why the dollar still represents like 99% of all stablecoins out there is because the dollar remains the reserve currency of the world.”

And you mentioned de-dollarization earlier. That’s probably not going to last forever, but we don’t know how long it’s going to last. It could still potentially be generations long. And again, that has been accelerated in 2025. But for the most part, people don’t know what the alternative to the dollar would be.

“China obviously would like that to be the Renminbi stablecoin (RMB), but it’s a current account surplus country. And generally, what we’ve seen is that you need to be a current account deficit country in order to be able to produce a reserve currency like the dollar, for example. So there are challenges on what’s happening in Europe.”

“Europe is still going through a very difficult difficult fiscal situation. I mean, it’s not unique to Europe. It’s happening globally. A lot of countries are going through it. Notably, it’s been Japan over the last week that has grabbed the headlines. But we can’t forget that France is dealing with, I believe, 150% of GDP levels. I mean, these are things that were a worry when we had the crisis back in 2012, for example.”

“So, I think that this is kind of the stumbling blocks on which the euro experiment. And I still say it’s in that phase where even though it’s been around for a very long time, they’re trying to figure it out because we don’t have euro bonds like in a unified eurozone kind of way. And there’s a reason for that. There’s still policies of these individual countries. So I think that these are the things that make it difficult. Whereas with the dollar, well, we have an yield curve.”

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“Institutional adoption has definitely gained momentum, and it’s been doing so for years”

“I work for the institutional side of Coinbase. So I’ve gotten a first-hand view of these things.”

“I’ve been with Coinbase for the better part of 4 years now. And over that time, I can see the incremental changes that have been happening with institutions, not just with the access, but with their participation in these markets, it’s grown very, very sharply. And this is why I always felt very confident about this. Anecdotally, I will tell you that I remember when 2022 happened and we’re getting a lot of challenges. I’m not going to go through all of them. I’m sure you remember as well. But I would have friends, I used to work in TradFi, who would reach out to me and be like, are you doing okay? I was like, yes, I’m fine. I actually, if anything, was very confident that things were going to be fine at the end.”

2025 definitely marked a very big breakthrough year for institutional access. 2026 will very likely see the next phase of that institutional adoption being built.

“The investor base itself has also diversified. 2024, 2025, we saw spot ETFs. And I think these are definitely creating these durable, regulated, familiar on-ramp for investors.”

“We also got digital asset treasuries. And I think people are now more shy about talking about them, to be honest. But I still think they emerged as an important corporate balance sheet vehicle.”

“We’re seeing the tokenization of real-world assets. Stablecoins are really penetrating the core financial workflows. People are now not just using stablecoins to trade with, but people are using it for payrolls. People are using it for cross-border payments. So this is the foundation that is going to support the growth and infrastructure of crypto payment rail in 2026.”

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The post 99Bitcoins Exclusive: “We can’t catch a break,” Says Coinbase Research Chief Analyzing Crypto ETF Outflows, Euro-Stablecoins And Institutional Adoption appeared first on 99Bitcoins.

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