You may have heard that Epoch released its Bitcoin Ecosystem Report for 2026. It's 186 pages long and only available as a pdf. It feels a little bit like punishment. But there are some interesting things in it.

The Epoch report is divided into 7 chapters:

Price action
Adoption
Media perception
Treasury companies
Business models
Protocols
Regulation
Venture capital

Here are the highlights from each chapter.

Price actionPrice action

In which the Epoch folks provide numerous charts that demonstrate why Bitcoin didn't go up last year, but it will go up this year.

AdoptionAdoption

There were three interesting charts here:

The self-custody number is kind of disappointing (not the size of it, just I was hoping for a little more detail).

Not really any new info in this one, just thought it was a nice summary.

40 - 50 million people owning Bitcoin in the US seems really high to me. They've got to mostly be in the ETFs. I suppose it means the government cannot attempt an outright ban.

Media perceptionMedia perception

This was probably my favorite chapter. Some really interesting analysis in here.

Most remarkable is the shift in FUD away from environment toward crime and illegality. I certainly felt this in the water last year.

The mainstream media sure seems to be setting Bitcoin up for a "it's too unsafe" narrative.

If you go to conferences, you are riding hopium. If you pay attention to any trad media, you probably think Bitcoin is a god-awful blight on humanity.

This point about lightning is really good. For people who use it all the time, it feels pretty integral to the bitcoin experience. But the reality is nobody has heard of it.

Treasury companiesTreasury companies

This is pretty much what you expect. I didn't find anything interesting here.

Business modelsBusiness models

There's a nice bit in here about miners and whether or not they are shifting to AI.

Sounds like Epoch does think Bitcoin miners are shifting to AI in order to capture some quick gains, but their gains are probably built on the fact that they've already built a lot of the necessary infrastructure.

Also there's cool graphic:

ProtocolsProtocols

There was a lot here, relying heavily on @januszgrze's Bitcoin Layers site. If you wanted to get a sense of the more fringe-y protocol stuff happening in Bitcoin, it does a nice job summarizing things.

This is an interesting point about Lighting, though.

RegulationRegulation

There's a pretty great summary of the GENIUS act:

This business of stablecoins not being able to pay yield except via a third party seems like it may be one of those messes that we made which will continue to trip the world up for many years to come...

I thought this was pretty good.

Venture capitalVenture capital

I didn't find much in this chapter that I hadn't heard before.

SummarySummary

The report is longer than it needs to be. It's got some interesting nuggets in it, but I wish they had exercised some editorial control and axed about half the words in the report and the same goes for more than half the charts. It's worth a skim, though. Especially the Media and Business Cases chapters.