2025: The Year Crypto Grew Up

As the year winds down and desks empty out, we want to wish readers a Merry Christmas and a restful year-end. We’ll be publishing on a reduced schedule over the holidays and will return to our regular cadence in the first week of 2026. We'll still monitor breaking news and publishing op-eds, but mostly, we'll be recharging for what promises to be another transformative year ahead.

Before stepping away, it’s worth taking stock of what 2025 delivered — not in slogans or price charts, but in concrete developments that changed how crypto is used, regulated, and owned.

Six Figures Stopped Being the Story

Bitcoin crossing $100,000 in late 2024 was a headline. What followed in 2025 was more instructive.

By October, prices had pushed well beyond that level, setting fresh highs above $120,000. There was no single catalyst. Instead, steady ETF inflows, cautious institutional buying, and macro hedging combined into something less dramatic but more durable. Bitcoin moved when liquidity moved. It stalled when positioning got crowded. It behaved less like a spectacle and more like a market.

That behaviour was shaped by exchange-traded products. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs continued to pull in capital, quietly absorbing supply week after week. By year-end, they accounted for a meaningful slice of circulating bitcoin. What started as a breakthrough product became plumbing and something allocators debated in risk meetings, not Telegram groups.

Across crypto more broadly, exchange-traded products now hold well over $175 billion in onchain assets, up from $65 billion a year ago. That figure alone explains much of 2025.

Regulation Stopped Hovering and Started Landing

For years, regulation sat just above the market. Hinted at, threatened, endlessly debated. In 2025, it began to land.

The clearest example came in July, when the U.S. passed the GENIUS Act, establishing a federal framework for payment stablecoins. Issuers are now required to hold one-to-one reserves in cash and short-term Treasuries. Just as importantly, payment stablecoins were explicitly carved out from securities and commodities classification.

That distinction mattered. Stablecoins already settle trillions of dollars a year, mostly out of sight. With legal footing in place, banks and fintech firms no longer have to tiptoe around issuance. They can build.

Earlier in the year, a U.S. executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve sent a different kind of message. Bitcoin was no longer being discussed only as something to regulate or restrain, but as something to hold. The decision drew criticism, particularly around volatility and scope, but it left little ambiguity about intent. Digital assets had entered the policy frame as strategic instruments.

Stablecoins Became the Real Infrastructure

If Bitcoin defined the headlines, stablecoins defined the plumbing.

In 2025, the stablecoin market crossed $300 billion in capitalization. That figure matters less than the flows behind it. Total transaction volume over the past year hit $46 trillion, more than double 2024’s $22.3 trillion. Adjusted for bots and artificial inflation, that’s still $9 trillion, more than five times PayPal’s throughput and over half of Visa’s. In other words, stablecoins now rival major payments networks in raw financial movement – mostly invisible to most users, but essential for markets and settlements.

The composition of that $300 billion tells an even more interesting story. Tether and Circle still dominate, but the duopoly is starting to fracture. Yield-bearing stablecoins gained traction. New regulatory frameworks opened the door for banks to issue dollar tokens. The emergence of USDe as the third-largest stablecoin illustrates the first dynamic: these are not just stable dollars; they are productive assets.

The GENIUS Act accelerated the second. By mandating one-to-one reserves and carving out payment stablecoins from securities and commodities laws, it gave banks the confidence to issue regulated tokens. Joint ventures are already underway. The narrative shifted from “banks versus crypto” to “banks as stablecoin issuers.” Stablecoins stopped being just a crypto tool. They became part of the payments infrastructure, quietly handling trillions and tying digital assets into the broader financial system.

Treasuries Got Involved

One of the quieter developments of the year was the rise of digital asset treasury companies, or DATCOs.

Instead of dabbling, some firms made crypto holdings central to how they manage capital. Bitcoin — and in fewer cases Ether or altcoins — began to appear in formal treasury strategies, discussed alongside cash, buybacks, and debt.

The model pioneered by MicroStrategy (now known as Strategy) in August 2020, when it began converting a substantial portion of its cash reserves into Bitcoin, saw over 200 public companies collectively holding an estimated $115 billion in digital assets by September 2025. For these companies, crypto exposure became a defining feature rather than a footnote buried in filings.

Banks Went Onchain, Without Much Noise

The year also marked a change in how banks engaged with blockchain infrastructure.

JP Morgan expanded live onchain settlement and collateral processes. Bank of America publicly acknowledged crypto allocations as a legitimate part of diversified portfolios. Payment flows once described as “blockchain-adjacent” increasingly ran on actual networks.

None of this looked like disruption. There were no victory laps. Crypto rails were folded into existing compliance, custody, and risk systems. It was procedural, not revolutionary, and that’s precisely why it stuck.

Infrastructure Stopped Making Promises

Ethereum’s scaling story finally felt less theoretical in 2025.

Layer-2 networks such as Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism competed hard on fees, liquidity, and real usage. Tokenised funds lived next to memecoin trading. Institutional flows sat alongside retail churn. The mix wasn’t pretty, but it was real.

After years of upgrades and whitepapers, blockchains began handling sustained throughput without drama. Costs dropped. Reliability improved. The technology stopped asking for patience and started doing its job.

Mainstream, Yes. Mass, Not Quite.

For all of this, crypto still didn’t break out as a consumer product.

Outside of stablecoins — which continue to gain ground in remittances, cross-border payments, and corporate treasury operations — most users interacted with crypto through intermediaries. ETFs, platforms, wallets wrapped in familiar interfaces. Direct onchain usage grew, but unevenly.

Notably absent was a full-blown retail frenzy. Participation rose, but carefully. This cycle brought allocators and risk committees, not mobs. That restraint shaped everything from volatility to product design.

Institutional ownership didn’t smooth the ride entirely.

Late in the year, prices pulled back sharply as macro conditions tightened and capital rotated elsewhere. The move was a reminder that bitcoin remains sensitive to liquidity and risk appetite, regardless of who holds it.

Crypto in 2025 was sturdier, not safer.

What That Leaves Us With

By the end of the year, crypto no longer felt like something waiting to be taken seriously. It felt like something being worked around – regulated, allocated to, built into systems that predate it.

The questions heading into 2026 are practical ones: custody at scale, market structure, clearing, leverage, and how these assets behave under stress. The easy debates are over.

For better or worse, crypto didn’t go away. It stayed. And now it has to live with the consequences.

From Us to You

To all our readers: thank you for making this year special. Whether you're woking in the industry, a Bitcoin maximalist, DeFi enthusiast, or simply crypto-curious, we're grateful you chose to stay informed with us.

We'll be back in full force on January 5, 2026, ready to cover whatever the new year brings. Until then, enjoy the holidays, spend time with loved ones, and maybe take a break from checking price charts.

Merry Christmas. See you in 2026.

— Blockhead editorial team

Reduced publishing schedule: December 24, 2025 - January 4, 2026
Normal coverage resumes: January 5, 2026.