Citrini's 79-Page Report: Will Agency Finance Reshape Crypto and Leave Mainstream Coins Behind?

Citrini points out that the crypto market has reached a turning point, but BTC, ETH, and XRP may be marginalized as funds shift towards tokenization and AI agent-related protocols.

Written by: Billy Bambrough, Forbes

Compiled by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

Note: Analysts at Citrini Research released a 79-page report titled "Breaking The Wall: Has Blockchain Finally Reached Its Moment?" on October 8, 2026. Forbes subsequently wrote a brief based on this report. This article is compiled from the Forbes brief and further supplements some viewpoints from the original report.

BlackRock claims the crypto "gate" has opened, while Citrini Research suggests pulling out of mainstream coins and shifting towards DeFi protocols and infrastructure stocks.

In 2026, AI trading continues to dominate the market, putting pressure on Bitcoin and crypto assets overall. However, Bitcoin's price has rebounded from below $60,000 in July to above $80,000. Meanwhile, BlackRock revealed that the "gate" for Bitcoin and crypto assets has suddenly opened; one of Wall Street's most formidable and influential institutions claims the crypto market is at a "turning point." But this turning point may exclude Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP. A large-scale crash could also become a game changer for Bitcoin's price.

Wall Street Report: Agentic Finance Will Be Built on Blockchain

Analysts at Citrini Research propose in their 79-page report titled "Breaking the Wall" that AI agents and crypto-based tokenized assets are opening a new paradigm for fundamental investment in crypto. They believe the upcoming wave of agentic finance will be built on blockchain. Earlier this year, the agency shocked the stock market by warning of a global intelligence crisis in 2028.

The report states that the blockchain industry has spent 15 years creating something unexpectedly useful in the agentic world: an always-on, programmable financial infrastructure that allows assets, ownership, and settlement to coexist in an already integrated world. AI agents will programmatically operate across applications around the clock, and funds and financial assets will ultimately do the same. This brings people back to the crypto industry, which for most of the past decade has felt like a "solution looking for a problem" sector.

Don't Just Focus on Mainstream Coins: Funds May Shift to DeFi and Infrastructure Stocks

To bet on agentic finance, the report suggests reallocating funds from assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP to DeFi protocols that generate fees and publicly listed companies focused on infrastructure. The report states that financial assets are being tokenized and moved on-chain, merging traditional finance with the crypto world; meanwhile, agents are bringing in a new class of users who do not care about the poor user experience of blockchain explorers.

In Citrini's proposed portfolio, Derive, Lighter, and ether.fi have the highest weights, along with a basket of stocks including real-world asset tokenization company Securitize, stablecoin issuer Circle, and crypto exchange Coinbase. The authors candidly state that one cannot assume that major coins—especially Bitcoin and Ethereum—will reach new all-time highs as a result; even if they do, there are better betting targets.

The rest of the portfolio includes some smaller but well-known tokens, such as Ethereum competitor Solana, Hyperliquid's HYPE, liquidity protocol Aave, and synthetic dollar protocol Ethena; lesser-known tokens associated with platforms like Aerodrome, Maple, Pendle, and Ondo Finance are also on the list.

Who Led the Charge in the Past Year

Price performance also supports this judgment. Over the past year, Derive soared 1300%, while most other tokens on the list recorded double-digit gains, leaving Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP behind.

Researchers also noted that improvements in the tech, finance, and crypto regulatory environments, along with the Iranian oil crisis, propelled the rapid rise of Hyperliquid's 24/7 derivatives trading linked to crude oil prices. The report's authors wrote that since then, the adoption of real-world assets (RWA) has noticeably accelerated; large-scale changes have begun to emerge in the crypto space over the past month, seemingly marking a turning point.

Additional Insights from Citrini's Original Report

Systemic Risk of Agentic Bank Runs

The report opens with a disturbing scenario: What happens when millions of AI agents continuously and programmatically transfer idle funds to the institutions or protocols offering the highest interest rates? Will the cheap deposit funding sources that traditional banks rely on be continuously drained? Could there be an "agentic bank run"?

The traditional financial system is designed for human users, who have brand loyalty, inertia, operational friction, and emotional factors; agents do not care about these and only pursue optimal returns, executing across institutions at extremely low costs around the clock. The report points out that if this behavior scales, it could create persistent pressure on banks' funding costs and liquidity, and the current system lacks design to respond to this. This is not a short-term trading suggestion but a macro-level warning about the long-term impact of agentic finance.

Internet Protocol Analogy: Blockchain May Become "Backend Infrastructure"

The report draws an analogy with the development of the internet: Most people are unaware of how HTTPS, TCP, or IP specifically work, yet they use them unconsciously every day. The authors believe that blockchain may also follow a similar path in the future—becoming a backend programmable financial infrastructure directly invoked by agents, with ordinary users not even needing to understand the underlying technology.

The blockchain industry has spent about 15 years building a system that allows "always-on, programmable, asset, ownership, and settlement coexistence." In the age of agents, this characteristic becomes highly relevant: agents need to operate 24/7, transferring funds and assets across applications without being constrained by traditional financial business hours or complex manual processes. The report believes this is a key moment for blockchain to truly find its "reason for existence."

Author's Personal On-Chain Experiment and Ecosystem Maturity Observation

The report's author mentions that they invested $1,000 in Coinbase Wallet, initially expecting to encounter a typical "rug pull" or highly speculative environment, but instead found a mature financial application ecosystem far exceeding meme coins. This includes tokenized government bonds, stocks, options, programmable debt, lending, payment, and yield protocols, increasingly resembling existing traditional finance (TradFi).

This observation supports the report's core judgment: on-chain financial applications have been quietly developing, and their usability may be further amplified with the arrival of agentic users, as agents do not care about poor user experiences.

Shift in Core Investment Questions: From "Is It Legal?" to "Who Captures Value?"

The report clearly shifts investors' focus from "Is tokenization legal? Can it enter the U.S. market?" to more substantive questions: "When these products eventually enter the regulated U.S. market, who can capture economic value?"

The emphasis is not on whether assets are on-chain, but on who can continuously collect fees from trading, lending, payments, yield generation, and settlement. The report believes the market will ultimately reward those protocols and infrastructures that can generate real income, rather than merely holding mainstream coins. This is also one of the main logics behind not assuming Bitcoin and Ethereum will reach new highs due to this theme.

Publicly Disclosed Portfolio Weights and Structural Characteristics

The report discloses a crypto basket (15 tokens) that completely excludes Bitcoin and Ethereum, giving higher weights to emerging derivatives and yield-related protocols, such as Derive, Lighter, and ether.fi at around 10% each, and Aave and Ethena at around 9% each. The derivatives-related assets account for a high proportion (about 39%), while yield/staking-related assets account for about 27%, and blue-chip infrastructure accounts for about 26%.

The stock basket primarily focuses on infrastructure and tokenization-related companies (such as Securitize with a high weight, followed closely by Circle and Coinbase), excluding MicroStrategy or mining stocks. This structure reflects the report's idea of "focusing on value capture rather than market beta."

The Significance of the "Hyperliquid Moment" and the Composability of Tokenized Assets

The report specifically mentions the weekend during the Iranian conflict when on-chain exchanges became one of the few places that could provide the most accurate crude oil prices, referred to as the "Hyperliquid moment." Since then, the adoption of real-world assets (RWA) has accelerated significantly.

At the same time, tokenized stocks have become composable, able to flow across different applications and chains, no longer limited to a single issuance venue (such as Robinhood Chain, which pioneered this process). The report believes these developments collectively signify a true turning point, bringing on-chain assets closer to practical financial tools rather than remaining in the experimental stage.

Risks and Clear Non-Bullish Signals

The report does not take an overall bullish stance on all crypto assets. It clearly states that higher on-chain activity or tokenization scale does not automatically drive up the prices of all tokens; investors should focus on segments that can truly capture economic value. The report also emphasizes that agentic finance and tokenization are long-term structural trends, but their price transmission takes time and involves uncertainties related to execution, regulation, and competition.