The World We Will Face in 2036

As of 2026, blockchain technology has not changed the world. But will blockchain technology have brought significant changes to the world by 2036?

The time machine train departs for 2036.

1. "Are there still people using paper money?"

In 2036, at a currency exchange in the fictional inflation-prone country of Jutopia, Judy, who has been working there for 34 years, took out a banknote validator from the drawer and began counting bucks.

"I can't believe there are still people using bucks."

It was understandable. The value of bucks, the currency of an inflation-prone country, had been plummeting daily, and while it legally existed, hardly anyone used it. Instead, everyone was using dollar stablecoins in their daily lives.

'Tap tap tap'

Judy listened to the sound of the banknote validator diligently counting bills and reminisced about the past.

In 2002, Judy was 22 years old. That year, Jutopia declared national bankruptcy. Banks locked their doors, and people could not withdraw their lifelong savings.

"You need to exchange it now."

Judy's father said. The moment the salary was deposited into the bank account, it had to be exchanged for dollars immediately. Even a day's delay would significantly reduce the value of bucks. People checked the black market dollar exchange rate before the front page of the newspaper.

"How much is the dollar today?"

This question opened each day. Buying dollars at the official exchange rate was nearly impossible. The government set a monthly limit on how many dollars individuals could buy, and there was constant anxiety about when the bank's dollar deposits would be frozen.

Then, in the mid-2020s, young customers began asking questions that were hard to understand.

"Can I exchange for USDT?"

At first, a few freelancers and exporters used it as a means to receive overseas remittances. They didn’t have to go through banks or wait in line at currency exchanges. With just a mobile phone, they could convert bucks to stablecoins and back to bucks when needed.

Initially, Judy didn’t think it would replace her job. Older people still wanted cash, and many businesses needed cash. However, the lines gradually became shorter. Young customers disappeared first, followed by middle-aged customers.

By 2030, there were no customers even on payday. As companies found no reason to hold bucks, they began paying part of salaries in stablecoins. Bucks became a currency only needed for paying taxes and utility bills.

In 2033, the tax authority changed its stance. It calculated that it was better to collect overdue taxes in stablecoins than in bucks. A short notice was posted on its website.

"USDC and USDT can be used for tax payments."

Bucks still existed, but the government announced it would prefer to receive foreign currency over its own.

In 2034, the Ministry of Finance also took action. Bonds denominated in bucks failed to sell at auction, and eventually, the Ministry issued new bonds denominated in dollar stablecoins. Civil servant salaries followed suit. In 2035, some state governments began paying half of civil servant salaries in stablecoins. Civil servants who had only received salaries in bucks were the first and most severely affected by inflation.

The authority to print money, collect taxes, and pay civil servants was originally solely the government's. That authority gradually shifted to stablecoins.

As of May 2026, the total market size of stablecoins was approximately $320 billion, with an annual trading volume of $28 trillion. Compared to the U.S. wholesale payment network, which processes over $2 trillion daily, this was only the trading volume for three weeks. Moreover, when removing wash trading and fictitious transactions, the actual proportion used for payments was less than 6%. The remaining 88% was circulating within exchanges for trading or collateral.

The problem was where that 6% was happening. While it may have started in New York and Silicon Valley, the money was not actually moving from hand to hand in the U.S. Americans lived without any inconvenience using credit cards and bank accounts, while it was the people in countries where currency was melting away daily who desperately sought stablecoins.

Judy put the validator back in the drawer. Would there be customers tomorrow?

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2. Liquidated in 10 Minutes at 2 AM

In 2036, in a small apartment in Singapore.

At 2 PM, Ria checked her phone due to a notification. It was a limit order alert for Nvidia.

2 PM in Singapore is when the New York Stock Exchange is closed. However, the Nvidia graph on Ria's screen was moving. Ria quickly pressed the buy button. On the screen, not only Nvidia but also government bonds, real estate REITs, and data center infrastructure funds appeared all at once.

In 2036, it was possible to trade not just stocks but everything in the world.

"Investing can continue 24 hours a day, anywhere."

This was something Ria often said. For her, it had always been that kind of world.

In 2021, when Ria was nine years old, the stock of GameStop, an offline game store, skyrocketed in the hands of individual investors in the U.S. Investment became an activity where participation itself was the goal, rather than the value of the asset, and the organization of that participation was not by brokerage firms but by online communities.

According to a 2025 survey of 13 countries by the World Economic Forum, 30% of Generation Z started investing as soon as they became adults, significantly outpacing Generation X (9%) and Baby Boomers (6%). The proportion of those who learned to invest before entering the workforce was also higher for Generation Z at 86%, compared to Baby Boomers (47%), indicating a strong interest in investing.

In a Q4 2025 survey by Coinbase, 73% of young people responded that it was difficult to accumulate wealth through traditional means, a higher figure than the older generation (57%).

In other words, the new generation found investing to be a natural activity and wanted exposure to more assets.

In June 2025, tokens backed 1:1 by core U.S. stocks like Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia flooded decentralized exchanges (DEX). Without nationality or complicated identity verification (KYC) restrictions, anyone with just a wallet address could access U.S. stocks, and leverage was virtually unlimited.

"I can just do it again tomorrow."

Lia logged into the borderless trading platform, Lemming Brothers, and purchased tokenized Korean real estate index products, but just ten minutes later, she received a notification about liquidation. She brushed off the warning that popped up on her screen as if it were nothing significant.

For Lia, the smartphone notifications of 2036 felt like the background music of her daily life. As she checked the constant signals from her trading app, she picked up her smartphone again. This was in stark contrast to her parents, who were steadily accumulating what they called 'safe assets' on regulated exchanges.

In the world Lia lives in, all values are converted into assets and move ceaselessly around the clock. This enormous market, which never stops for a moment, is constantly enticing new trades today as well.

3. The Day $2.2 Billion Vanished Like Vapor

In 2036, at a startup office in Pangyo Techno Valley.

Dohyun, now a 12-year veteran infrastructure engineer, paused while scrolling through the network status dashboard on his monitor. He softly murmured as he looked at the neatly organized list of chains on one screen.

"Just ten years ago, I had to scroll endlessly, but now there are less than ten left."

The year 2024, when Dohyun began his engineering career, was truly the 'Age of Layer 2 (L2) Rollups.' It was a time when anyone could launch their own blockchain by simply copying and pasting a few lines of framework and stack code. Dohyun's company also rode the wave of the massive infrastructure boom and built validator nodes.

The chain was named 'Allchain.' In June 2024, amid expectations of an airdrop, the total value locked (TVL) surged to $2.2 billion. The memory of clinking beer glasses with team members in the conference room and cheering is still vivid.

"At this rate, aren't we going to grow like Ethereum?"

However, the joy of listing was fleeting. Once the token was listed and the airdrop rewards were exhausted, the token price and chain usage plummeted off a cliff. Projects and users that had flocked for rewards turned their backs on Allchain when it ceased to be profitable, and within just a year, 97% of the deposits evaporated.

This was not just a cruel ending for Allchain. Many independent networks that had sprung up at that time also collapsed along the same trajectory. They lured development teams with the sweet reward of incentives, but the moment the funding ran dry, the ecosystem quickly hollowed out, leaving only a shell of infrastructure in silence.

The astronomical fixed costs of operating an independent chain were beyond the capacity of individual projects. Unable to bear the soaring infrastructure maintenance costs, Allchains began to declare operational suspensions one by one, inevitably fading into the annals of history.

The power that survived the cold scrutiny of capital was granted only to a select few. Hundreds of chains that once seemed poised to change the world shared a market that had become a wasteland, with barely 10% market share, and quietly walked the path of extinction.

"Back then, everyone thought they would survive and create their own massive ecosystems..."

In 2026, people mistakenly believed that 'the number of chains equated to the scalability of blockchains.' However, fragmented chains only led to a disconnection in user experience and a surge in security costs. What the public wanted was not hundreds of complex networks, but a few massive foundational infrastructures that provided liquidity that would never collapse and optimized speed.

Dohyun let out a deep sigh, quietly closed his monitor, packed his bag, and headed home.

4. The 'Human Eye' That Clicked Has Disappeared

In 2036, at a media startup office in Sangam-dong.

Jaehun laughed as he happened to see an advertisement banner in the lower right corner while browsing another platform.

"I can't believe there are still companies waiting for readers with banner ads on their screens."

Jaehun was right. The daily visitor count of that platform was breaking records every month, but traditional banner ad revenue was nonexistent, and such advertising methods had become a thing of the past.

When Jaehun first entered the media industry in the early 2020s, the formula for the web economy was crystal clear. If you wrote good articles, people gathered, and when people gathered, advertisers would pay money to place banners.

"How many page views did we get today?"

This question, which opened the conference room every morning, determined the survival of the media at that time.

However, that peaceful formula began to disappear from the late 2020s. By 2029, more than half of global web traffic began to come from AI agents and bots rather than humans. AI could scrape articles in a second and summarize them, but there was no 'eye' to view the advertisement banners for machines.

At first, like most media, they blocked bots. They could not afford the skyrocketing server costs. But the cost of blocking was brutal. They were completely buried in the AI search and recommendation ecosystem, and the brand itself was forgotten. Media companies at that time faced a significant dilemma. Blocking bots meant losing traffic, but leaving them open meant no revenue.

"Who are we selling our content to now?"

Desperate questions filled the office. The answer was not advertising boards but pricing the content itself.

The turning point came in May 2025 when Coinbase unveiled the 'x402' standard. It resurrected the 402 response code, which had been left to languish in a corner of web standards for 30 years, signaling 'Payment Required.'

By 2029, the focus was on building basic infrastructure such as agent identity verification (KYA) and settlement procedures. The real explosion began in 2030 when a media company started selling data directly to AI using the x402 system. Once its effectiveness was proven, other media and data companies quickly adopted x402 and jumped into data sales.

Initially, there were sneers suggesting it was just a trivial endeavor dealing with a few dozen won. However, as hundreds of thousands and millions of machine calls piled up, substantial cash began to flow into the accounts, far exceeding the previous banner ad revenue.

"Without needing to worry about advertisers, machines pay the right price and buy, so the company runs smoothly."

The traditional web advertising, which captured human attention to sell ads, gradually came to an end, and the 'Machine Economy' where agents trade APIs began in earnest.

Jae-hoon closed the dashboard screen and picked up his coffee cup. The visitor count graph still showed an inexplicable vertical rise that could not be understood by past standards, but it had become a part of daily life. It was no longer about how many people came, but rather how many AI agents made payments today.

Tomorrow, hundreds of thousands of agents will knock on his server door, and the line of honest transactions will not diminish again.