Original author: insights 4.vc
Original translation: TechFlow
To help you save time and focus on market hotspots, we have carefully compiled more than 300 forward-looking predictions for 2025. Every year, top institutions and industry leaders share insights that have far-reaching implications for the future development of cryptocurrencies. This report brings together the views of ETF issuers, investment funds, research institutions, and market pioneers to provide you with not only an overall overview of market sentiment, but also practical advice and actionable insights on emerging opportunities.
The top five themes for 2025 include:
The growth and popularity of stablecoins
Tokenization of physical assets (RWAs)
Expansion of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs
The integration of artificial intelligence and blockchain
Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePINs)
1. Growth and Popularity of Stablecoins
Predictions from Blockworks founder Jason Yanowitz and Inversion Capital founder Santiago R Santos
Stablecoins are expected to account for 10% of the total cryptocurrency market cap by 2025. This growth could be driven by the launch of a stablecoin by at least one major bank, technology company, or fintech venture. For example, BlackRock, Robinhood, and Meta are considered likely to participate. Tether is expected to continue to lead the market through its strategic political relationships, while USDC’s market share could drop from the current 20% to around 15% due to the entry of new competitors such as PayPal. These changes could drive regulatory progress in the United States, making stablecoins a key driver in the payment and e-commerce sectors.
Forecast from 21 shares
Stablecoins currently have a market capitalization of over $170 billion and have made significant inroads in the global remittance market, especially in countries such as the Philippines and Turkey. As the tokenization of private credit becomes more widespread, this trend is expected to further enhance capital liquidity and enhance financial transparency. Platforms like Maple Finance are becoming industry leaders by leveraging smart contracts to streamline operations and reduce costs. The space is expected to become a mainstream asset class by 2025 as institutions like Moodys begin offering ratings on tokenized credit.
2. Tokenization of physical assets (RWAs)
Predictions from Coinbase
The market for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) is growing rapidly. Its total value is expected to grow by 60% to $13.5 billion by 2024, and by 2030, this figure may further soar to $30 trillion. Currently, leading global financial institutions such as BlackRock and Franklin Templeton are actively promoting the tokenization of government securities. Tokenized assets are becoming important collateral in the DeFi ecosystem.
Prediction from Paul Veradittakit, Managing Partner at Pantera Capital
This year, RWAs grew 60% to $13.7 billion, with 70% in private credit and the rest in Treasuries and commodities. Inflows are accelerating, and more sophisticated tokenized asset types are expected to emerge in 2025.
Private Credit: As infrastructure improves, Figure sees $4 billion in new tokenized credit in 2024. More and more companies are bringing capital into the cryptocurrency space through private credit.
Treasurys vs. Commodities: The current on-chain Treasury is $2.67 billion, while trillions of dollars are still untokenized off-chain. Treasurys offer better yields than stablecoins. BlackRock’s BUIDL fund is $500 million on-chain, while the off-chain size is in the tens of billions. DeFi pools are now beginning to integrate Treasurys, reducing friction for user adoption.
3. Expansion of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs
Predictions from Bloomberg ETF experts Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the first 11 Bitcoin spot ETFs on January 10, 2024, and then approved the Ethereum spot ETF on July 23, 2024. This approval marks the gradual relaxation of the regulatory environment and lays the foundation for the launch of altcoin ETFs. The emergence of altcoin ETFs may further enhance market liquidity and lower the entry barrier for crypto investment.
The asset size of Bitcoin ETFs is expected to surpass that of gold ETFs in 2025. Currently, the asset size of Bitcoin ETFs is $110 billion, while that of gold ETFs is $128 billion. The rapid growth of Bitcoin ETFs suggests that this trend may be realized earlier than expected.
If the SEC's leadership is more liberal, it may approve altcoin ETFs including XRP, Solana (SOL), and Hedera (HBAR) in the future, further enriching the variety of cryptocurrency investment products.
If you would like to learn more about Bitcoin spot ETFs, we recommend referring to our article published last month. Here are the ETF data as of January 8, 2025:
On-chain holdings of Bitcoin spot ETFs (data source: The Block)
Bitcoin ETF Fund Flows
Bitcoin ETF Trading Volume
Ethereum ETF Fund Flows
Predictions from Bitwise
Bitcoin ETF inflows are expected to exceed the record $33.6 billion set in 2024 in 2025. This growth is mainly driven by large brokerages such as Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, which will provide more customers with investment channels for crypto products. As investor confidence increases and Bitcoin allocation in portfolios gradually becomes mainstream, ETF inflows are expected to accelerate further, a trend similar to the development path of gold ETFs in the past few decades.
4. Integration of artificial intelligence and blockchain
Predictions from Vaneck
By 2025, the number of AI agents is expected to exceed 1 million. These agents will significantly drive the growth of on-chain activity, not only optimizing DeFi returns but also automating a variety of tasks and enabling interactions in games and social media. Platforms such as Virtuals Protocol are actively promoting the development of AI technology, allowing the application of agents to expand from finance to gaming and marketing, thereby generating significant revenue and increasing user engagement.
Prediction from Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly Capital
AI agents will widely adopt stablecoins for peer-to-peer transactions, especially if stablecoin regulations are further relaxed. This trend will also extend to large enterprises, which will use stablecoins to replace the traditional banking system to achieve greater flexibility and efficiency.
Decentralized AI training and reasoning will see rapid development, driven by projects such as ExoLabs, NousResearch, and PrimeIntellect, providing new options for current centralized AI models. NEAR Protocol is working to build a completely permissionless AI technology stack to make development and deployment more open.
AI-driven wallets will revolutionize the user experience by automating complex operations such as cross-chain bridging, transaction optimization, fee reduction, and fraud prevention. This will provide users with a seamless cross-chain operation experience. By 2026, this automation trend may weaken the importance of blockchain network effects because users will no longer need to interact with the blockchain directly.
5. Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePINs)
Predictions from Multicoin Capital
The Trump administration is expected to launch a national standard for autonomous driving (AD), which will provide new development opportunities for decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs) based on autonomous driving and robotics. As the scale of GPU clusters exceeds 100,000 H100s, autonomous driving technology will have the ability to be applied in practice. Some startups funded by traditional venture capital firms may adopt the DePIN model to spread operational risks and reduce costs. Early adopters of this model will be able to collect critical robot operation data. For example, startup Frodobots has begun exploring this direction, and more similar companies are expected to join in the future. In addition, Hivemapper is also trying similar innovative concepts.
Prediction from Framework Ventures co-founder Vence Spencer
DePIN projects focusing on the energy sector, such as Glow and Daylight, are expected to reach a level comparable to top DeFi platforms in terms of transaction fees. This shows that the application of blockchain technology in the management and monetization of energy distribution is becoming more and more extensive. For example, these projects optimize energy distribution efficiency through smart contracts while providing users with transparent transaction records and profit distribution methods.
