VanEck’s CEO has a clear thesis for 2026, and it centers on a battle most investors haven’t fully mapped yet. The fight isn’t just about which cryptocurrency goes up. It’s about which blockchain becomes the plumbing for Wall Street itself.
“I think 2026, this is our thesis a little bit is the year of the corporate chain wars,” the VanEck CEO said recently. He went on to explain what he means: “Blockchains are shortened to chain. And it used to be okay, what am I going to use to be the transaction mechanism for Wall Street in the future? Is it going to be Ethereum? Is it going to be Solana? And then a lot of people were starting their own chains.”
That last sentence is the key. It’s no longer a two-horse race.
Why 2026 Is Different
The conversation that triggered this prediction started with stablecoins. Circle’s momentum has reignited excitement around the “plumbing” layer of crypto, the infrastructure that actually moves money rather than speculates on it. When stablecoins become a serious settlement mechanism, the question of which chain those stablecoins run on becomes enormously consequential.
That’s the corporate chain war. Enterprises, financial institutions, and even sovereign-adjacent players are now asking whether they should build on an existing public chain, fork one, or launch their own entirely. The answer they pick locks in a competitive moat that could last a decade.
VanEck has real skin in this game. The firm launched its Ethereum ETF in June 2024, which now holds approximately $135 million in net assets. That’s not a passive observation from the sidelines. VanEck is betting on the infrastructure layer, which makes their CEO’s thesis worth taking seriously.
Ethereum vs. Solana vs. Everyone Else
Ethereum is sitting around $1,968 as of March 2, 2026, down roughly 40% from its January peak near $3,282. Solana tells a similar story, trading near $85 after opening the year around $127.
Price declines don’t kill infrastructure theses, though. If anything, they separate speculative froth from genuine adoption cycles. The real question is whether enterprises building on these chains are accelerating or pausing. The VanEck CEO’s framing suggests acceleration, with more players entering the race rather than fewer.
The wild card is proprietary chains. When a major bank or payments network decides to roll its own blockchain rather than adopt Ethereum or Solana, it fragments the ecosystem but also validates the underlying concept. More chains means more competition, and more competition means the winning infrastructure eventually captures enormous value.
If the VanEck CEO’s thesis is right, 2026 won’t be remembered as the year crypto recovered. It’ll be remembered as the year corporations picked their chains, and those choices will shape institutional finance for a generation.
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