Original source: @Mippo
Translation: Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Translator: Wenser (@wenser 2010)
Editor's Note: As we approach the end of 2024, many crypto investment institutions, including a16z and VanEck, have released a series of outlooks for the cryptocurrency industry in 2025. Blockworks' crypto researcher Mippo recently published a lengthy tweet titled (About 27 Crypto Speculations for 2025), which Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan also shared, stating 'very well said.' The tweet covers multiple aspects, including future U.S. crypto policy, DeFi, Ethereum, Solana, and stablecoins, and Odaily Planet Daily will compile and briefly comment on this article for readers' reference.
About 27 Crypto Speculations for 2025
Note: The reason for translating the original author's Prediction as 'speculation' is due to the rigor of writing, as predictions require relatively sufficient inference reasons, but these 27 points are more like the author's subjective speculations and do not necessarily have strict logical support, so they are for reference only.
1. The U.S. will rise again as a global crypto center.
Many crypto entrepreneurs will return to the U.S. and open offices in New York, and the scale of crypto conference activities in the U.S. will surpass that of Asia.
2. More than 10 DeFi protocols will activate fee switches.
Multiple DeFi protocols will activate fee switches for the first time, with Uniswap among them.
3. DeFi protocols will initiate a re-staking business model for customer assets.
An increasing number of DeFi protocols will re-stake customer assets as a revenue source, including cross-chain bridges and liquidity staking tokens (LST) models.
4. The core direction debate of Ethereum will soon come to a conclusion.
Efforts dedicated to L1 network expansion will gradually reduce to a minimum (e.g., raising the Gas target to 50 M gwei, etc.), but the Rollup-centric roadmap will be emphasized again. The efforts of ETH's fervent supporters will ultimately not succeed.
(Odaily Planet Daily Note: This indicates that the development of L2 networks has become inevitable.)
5. The Ethereum ecosystem will be more cohesive.
Although some dissenters may leave the Ethereum ecosystem, the overall sentiment of the community will shift towards a more positive direction, and the market price of ETH will perform well.
6. Rollup-based solutions will ultimately not take off by 2025.
Protocols like Across will achieve sufficiently good cross-chain interoperability, but the realization of general composability is temporarily hopeless.
7. TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) will become a (permanent) component of L2 infrastructure.
8. Solana remains the protagonist of this cycle, but hidden dangers will emerge in 2025.
The REV (Return on Economic Value) of the Solana ecosystem will struggle to reach new highs.
With the liquidity decentralization and MEV issues brought by Meme coins, extremism is on the rise, and these challenges will collectively pose hidden dangers to the ecosystem.
9. The Firedancer of the Solana ecosystem will be released in Q4 2025, reaching 100,000 TPS.
10. Solana will adjust its issuance mechanism to curb inflation, but Ethereum will not.
11. Base will rise as a strong competitor to Solana and become the ultimate winner of the Rollup ecosystem.
The TVL (Total Value Locked) of the Base ecosystem will exceed $40 billion.
12. Base will become the main ecosystem for AI agents (and potential AI derivatives).
13. Stablecoins will become the main asset on L2.
The number of on-chain stablecoin issuances on L2 will be twice that of ETH.
14. Stablecoins will experience explosive growth.
The market value of stablecoins will exceed $450 billion, becoming one of the top three investment categories for venture capitalists.
15. More than 5 large financial or traditional financial institutions will launch stablecoins in 2025.
This will put pressure on existing stablecoin projects, and the growth rate of existing stablecoins will slow down.
16. More than 10 enterprises (banks, Web2 giants, etc.) will launch L2 networks.
But most will end without resolution, until it ultimately fades away. There may be exceptions, such as fintech companies (like Robinhood).
17. Robinhood will rise in 2025, leveraging its large user base and blue-chip stocks.
By the end of 2025, the crypto industry will place Robinhood alongside Coinbase as the two major exchanges in the U.S.
18. Investment trading in L1 public chains will still be effective.
Investment funds flowing into L1 public chains have not yet bottomed out and will continue to exist for a long time.
Sui and HyperLiquid will be the fastest 'dark horses' in the market.
19. The ICO (Initial Coin Offering) model will return to the market.
Although not as hot as in 2017, the new ICO model will have better investor protection mechanisms, similar to crowdfunding models.
5 blue-chip level protocols will conduct ICOs.
20. Venture capital will return again, but the scale will not reach that of 2021.
The scale of crypto venture capital in 2021 was $30 billion; it is expected to be around $20-25 billion in 2025.
Meanwhile, there will be more funding rounds of $50 million to $100 million.
(Odaily Planet Daily Note: Currently, there are not many projects in this round in the industry, which to some extent indicates that the market has not fully warmed up, and even the activity level has reached a historical high.)
21. Crypto companies will pioneer IPOs (Initial Public Offerings), but there won't be a widespread explosion.
More than 4 crypto companies will initiate IPOs, but the overvaluation of 2021 remains a barrier on this path.
Growth equity will still not enter this field.
22. The mainstream trend in 2025 will be the deep integration of AI and crypto.
The ongoing development of foundational large language models will continuously trigger new rounds of media attention and further convert related dynamics into more AI concept tokens.
23. The AI trend will create segmented tracks, not limited to AI Agents.
Different types of AI Agents (creators, hedge fund traders, artists, etc.) will successively step onto the crypto stage.
Unsurprisingly, most AI Agents are merely early iteration products and will not succeed.
24. TikTok will have an unprecedented impact on the crypto field.
Crypto Twitter (CT) will become part of the exit liquidity for certain TikTok tokens.
(Odaily Planet Daily Note: This has already been reflected in some Meme coin projects that performed well this year, such as Moodeng and Chillguy. Compared to short videos, which are highly viral, the textual information on platform X, i.e., Twitter, spreads relatively slower, making platform users likely to become the 'buyers' of TikTok-related influencer Meme coins.)
25. Major crypto legislation will be passed in the U.S.
An updated version of the stablecoin market structure bill may be signed into law in the U.S.
26. Bitcoin L2 will still not take off in 2025.
We still have a long way to go to achieve a truly meaningful zero-knowledge (ZK) Bitcoin L2 network.
27. The cryptocurrency industry will be widely recognized as a permanent force in U.S. politics.
Mainstream media will gradually change their previous negative or indifferent attitudes towards the crypto industry, recognizing that the cryptocurrency industry will become an indispensable part of the U.S. political landscape and will never disappear.
Easter egg at the end: The author previously recommended in a podcast.
At the beginning of October this year, on Blockworks' Bell Curve podcast, Mippo (also known as Mike) discussed (the ongoing adoption of cryptocurrency in institutions) with two other industry figures (Framework Ventures co-founder Michael Anderson and co-founder Vance Spencer). At that time, Trump's campaign partner Vance had just concluded a vice-presidential debate with Democratic vice-presidential candidate Walz, marking an initial shift in U.S. cryptocurrency legislation. Looking back two months later, perhaps there will be new discoveries and insights for reference.
Podcast link: https://blockworks.co/podcast/bellcurve/026cb1da-828c-11ef-a046-a3c247d0bbf5
