'2026 crypto winter is a healthy one': analyst urges focus on industry shift, not price slump [Herald Money Festa 2026]

"This year's crypto winter can be summed up in one phrase: a winter for prices, a spring for the industry. Bitcoin's price used to lead the broader ecosystem, but now the groundwork is being laid for industry growth — in payments, settlement and tokenization — to drive bitcoin's price instead."

Oh Tae-min, CEO of Otaebus and adjunct professor of bitcoin monetary philosophy at Hanyang University, offered that assessment in an interview ahead of his lecture at Herald Money Festa 2026, a two-day event opening Thursday at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in Seoul. Where past downturns were marked by major failures and collapsing trust that drove participants out of the market, Oh said this cycle is different: as overheated expectations cool, financial institutions are stepping in and the composition of market players is changing.

Oh described the current environment as a healthy winter. "US spot bitcoin ETFs saw net outflows of $5.3 billion from January through July, and the operating profit of Dunamu and Bithumb fell 79.7 percent and 83.4 percent, respectively, in the first half — so prices are clearly cold," he said. "But the essence of this winter is not a slump; it's a substitution. The people who were placing bets have left, and the people who design the table have arrived."

Institutional entry into the digital asset market is already becoming a global standard. The United States is drafting rules ahead of the GENIUS Act taking effect, and the stablecoin market has held at around $300 billion. Products targeting institutions — including tokenized government bonds, money market funds and equity-linked perpetual futures — are also on the rise. In South Korea, traditional financial firms continue to invest in and partner with won-denominated exchanges, gradually lowering the barrier between conventional finance and the digital asset industry.

Oh forecast that the digital asset market will grow around three pillars: business-to-business transactions, consumer-facing services and decentralized on-chain financial platforms.

In the retail segment, he identified the smartphone as the most promising platform — it can easily carry a digital wallet while also offering hardware for private-key storage, biometric authentication and access to payment merchant networks. "That is exactly why it matters that Samsung Wallet has announced plans to incorporate stablecoins across more than 800 million Galaxy devices in 61 countries worldwide," Oh said.

Should a won-denominated stablecoin take hold in everyday life, Oh said it could be used for overseas travel, tuition remittances for students studying abroad, migrant workers sending money home, cross-border online shopping and subscription payments, settlements for creators and freelancers working internationally, and micropayments in content and gaming. "Consumers won't decide to 'use a stablecoin,'" he said. "They'll use it because it's cheaper or faster."

South Korea's competitive edge, he added, lies not in issuing stablecoins but in the distribution layer — specifically the automatic currency-conversion function built into digital wallets. "The fact that users are unaware of which currency they're using doesn't mean the won has lost," Oh said. "What matters is which wallet, which liquidity pool and which set of rules that conversion happens on — that is where real monetary sovereignty sits."

Oh also sees decentralized on-chain financial platforms — such as Uniswap, Polymarket and Hyperliquid — growing into distinct economic ecosystems. Markets where tokens can be bought and sold without a listing review, real-world events can be priced, and perpetual futures on equities and raw materials trade around the clock are already expanding rapidly, he said.

Change is also coming to lending. The decentralized lending protocol Morpho has accumulated $7.2 billion in deposits, and France's Société Générale has listed its own stablecoin on Morpho — a sign that traditional financial institutions are beginning to integrate on-chain infrastructure in earnest. "While conventional finance, bound by borders, hesitates or waits on the sidelines, this is becoming an international shadow-finance system growing at remarkable speed," Oh said.

In South Korea, however, the regulatory framework is still being worked out. Rather than simply blocking new markets, Oh recommended legalizing offshore hedging channels for domestic institutions and establishing a won-based, 24-hour derivatives market. He added that prices formed offshore and their impact on the domestic market should be used as supervisory indicators, and that regulators and financial firms need to take a closer look at what is actually happening in on-chain finance.

"In past crypto winters, the market rested — but in this one, the seating arrangement is being finalized," Oh said. "The biggest crisis facing Korean finance is a structure where the regulated are outside while the penalized are inside, and where every time a new market emerges, others do the designing while we only decide whether to ban it."