Ripple President Monica Long: “By 2026, half of Fortune 500 companies will hold and use crypto assets”

A forecast has emerged that the adoption of crypto assets (cryptocurrencies) by major U.S. companies will accelerate in earnest starting in 2026. The analysis suggests that crypto assets and blockchain are moving beyond auxiliary tools for corporate finance and becoming core infrastructure.

According to Cointelegraph on the 21st, Ripple President Monica Long said in a recent blog post that “by the end of 2026, roughly 250 of the U.S. Fortune 500 companies will hold crypto assets or make use of blockchain-based financial products.” She assessed that the crypto industry has spent the past several years strengthening its technological and regulatory foundations and has now completed the preparatory phase for institutional adoption.

Long stressed that blockchain is evolving into an operational layer of modern finance. She projected that “by 2026, the amount of digital assets reflected on global companies’ balance sheets will exceed $1 trillion,” adding that “half of Fortune 500 companies will formalize their digital-asset strategies.”

She also said companies’ use of crypto assets is likely to expand beyond simple holdings. Use cases are expected to broaden to tokenized assets, digital-asset treasury strategies, stablecoins, on-chain Treasuries, and programmable financial products. She added that, unlike investment aimed at price exposure, this would represent a shift into a phase where companies actively use crypto assets across their financial operations.

As support for her view, Long cited a Coinbase survey conducted in mid-2025. In the survey, six out of 10 Fortune 500 executives said they were already driving blockchain-related projects. The growing number of publicly listed companies holding bitcoin was also presented as an indicator of the institutional adoption trend.

While cases of Fortune 500 companies holding bitcoin remain limited, GameStop moved to build holdings by purchasing 4,710 bitcoin (BTC) in May 2025. Block and Tesla are also cited as companies holding bitcoin as a treasury asset. Long said the number of companies adopting digital-asset treasury strategies has risen from four in 2020 to more than 200 today, and that about 100 of them were newly established in 2025.

She also offered an outlook for stablecoins. Against the backdrop of an improving regulatory environment and participation by global payments companies such as Visa and Mastercard, Long predicted that stablecoins will become a key instrument for global payments going forward. She said, “Within the next five years, stablecoins will not be an alternative payment method; they will be integrated as foundational infrastructure of the global payments system.”

She further projected that banks, financial services firms, and crypto companies will accelerate their blockchain strategies as they move into direct custody. The combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain was also identified as a factor that will significantly broaden the use of on-chain finance.

She said, “Stablecoins and smart contracts will enable treasury departments to manage liquidity in on-chain environments, execute margin calls, and optimize yields in real time,” adding, “If zero-knowledge proof technology makes it possible to assess creditworthiness and risk without exposing personal data, digital-asset adoption will expand further even in regulated markets.”