Author: HASHED
Compiled by: TechFlow
Hashed has developed and strictly enforces internal policies and procedures to identify and effectively manage conflicts of interest associated with investment activities. This content is for reference only and does not constitute legal, business, investment or tax advice. In addition, any securities or digital assets mentioned are for illustrative purposes only and are not investment advice or an invitation to provide investment advisory services.
Simon Kim’s Introduction: Hashed 2025 Investment Proposition and US Crypto Policy Outlook
We are at a critical juncture where technological innovation and policy change intersect. I am pleased to introduce two of our important reports: (Hashed 2025 Investment Proposition: Global Blockchain Application with Asia as the Core) and Special Report (Trump's Second Term in 2025: The Future of US Cryptocurrency Industry Policy).
The blockchain industry is reaching a turning point, with increasingly improved infrastructure, institutional participation, and unprecedented opportunities emerging. Our investment outlook for 2025 is based on the cyclical development of technological innovation, industry challenges, and market maturity that we have witnessed in the global market over the years.
Over the past few years, our strategic direction has been confirmed by several important trends: blockchain infrastructure has become more stable and reliable, the stablecoin ecosystem has continued to expand, and high-performance networks have gradually realized the promise of convenience and efficiency. These developments, coupled with increased institutional investment and the expansion of the global digital economy, have paved the way for the large-scale application of blockchain technology.
We divide our investment proposition into three parts:
Review of 2024 Investment Proposition: Providing readers with transparent insights into industry growth and market dynamics through real data analysis.
Vision and Strategic Focus: Clarify our focus on high-growth markets and emerging opportunities.
Priority investment areas: Our investment team will explain how to build a more inclusive and efficient blockchain ecosystem.
In addition, the Hashed Open Research team also specifically analyzed the policy direction that the United States may take towards crypto assets during Trump's second term in 2025. This report explores key issues from stablecoin legislation to industry regulation, and these policy changes may reshape the global market landscape. In the context of the increasing interconnection of global blockchains, understanding these policy trends is crucial to the development of the industry.
Through these two reports, we hope to provide our partners with a unique perspective to help them understand the potential impact of policy changes on market dynamics and investment opportunities. We believe that this comprehensive view combining market insights and policy analysis will provide important reference for strategic decisions in 2025 and beyond.
We sincerely invite you to read these two reports and look forward to your feedback and suggestions.
Hashed 2025 Investment Proposition: Focusing on Asia and Leading the Global Application of Blockchain
Hashed has been committed to promoting the Golden Age of Blockchain - a popularization phase driven by real applications and widespread global participation. We believe that Asia, with its highly digital society, rapidly developing economy, and openness to new technologies, will play a central role in this transformation. From stablecoins becoming the backbone of the financial system to the gradual maturity of efficient and scalable blockchain technology, the entire ecosystem is ready for real-world applications. We predict that 2025 will be the starting point for large-scale blockchain applications, and Asia will lead this trend and promote the realization of more fair and transparent distributed ledger technology worldwide.
Part 1 2024 Investment Proposition: Data Reveals the Real Story
We review our investment proposition for 2024 through data analysis, exploring where actual market performance matches and differs from expectations. We gain insight into the latest developments in the Web3 industry by combing through key trends, important developments, and lessons learned.
2024 Key Area 1: Infrastructure Construction for Large-Scale Application of Blockchain
In 2024, the construction of blockchain infrastructure will further mature, focusing on improving scalability and user experience. Advances in stablecoins and scalability solutions demonstrate that specialized technologies are significantly increasing the efficiency and user engagement of blockchain applications. Although some expectations have not been fully realized or presented in different forms, the overall trend is clear: 2024 is an important year for blockchain to move towards large-scale application.
Theory about 2024 written at the end of 2023:
Specialized stablecoins will enter niche markets (such as B2B payments) and challenge the dominance of USDT and USDC by providing targeted services.
2024 Review:
Stablecoins have seen significant growth in transaction volume, user count, and transaction count, with monthly active addresses increasing from 10 million in 2022 to 25 million in 2024, an increase of 150%. This growth is independent of market fluctuations, demonstrating its strong market demand.
Theory about 2024 written at the end of 2023:
Layer 3 Rollups will solve the computational expansion problem of high-performance decentralized applications, especially optimizing user experience in gaming and social scenarios.
2024 Review:
New blockchains have achieved breakthroughs in usability and scalability. For example, B3, a Layer 3 chain focused on gaming, reached 1.8 million active accounts and 110 million operations in just 4 months, a growth rate 7 times that of Ethereum in its early days.
2024 Key Area 2: Consumer-facing products mature
With the further optimization of payment channels and infrastructure, we are optimistic about the combination of AI and blockchain products, transparent intellectual property management ecosystem, and the rise of a fully on-chain economy. These trends are not only our observations, but also the common understanding of institutions and individual users in the industry. Social data also verifies the correctness of this direction, further strengthening our confidence in future development.
Theory about 2024 written at the end of 2023:
The combination of AI and blockchain will enhance smart contract functionality, data privacy protection, and promote the development of a decentralized AI ecosystem, thereby improving decision-making and ownership management.
2024 Review:
In 2024, "AI" became a hot topic for users. According to Kaito data, AI-related narratives accounted for 45% in November, becoming the dominant trend in the crypto space.
2024 Key Area 3: Integration of Traditional Finance and Blockchain
In 2024, the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) and the advancement of new Bitcoin token standards (such as Ordinals, BRC-20) have promoted the deep integration of traditional finance and blockchain. RWAs have attracted billions of dollars in institutional funds, with giants such as BlackRock and Franklin Templeton leading the trend. At the same time, Bitcoin has achieved about 60% of network activity through new token standards, unlocking new DeFi-like features for it, further consolidating its role beyond being a value storage tool.
Theory about 2024 written at the end of 2023:
The tokenization of real-world assets and security tokens will serve as a bridge between traditional finance and blockchain, with a focus on compliance and infrastructure development.
2024 Review:
The tokenization of RWAs has attracted billions of dollars in institutional liquidity, and institutions such as BlackRock and Franklin Templeton are accelerating this trend with plans to continue until 2025.
Theory about 2024 written at the end of 2023:
Ordinals and the BRC-20 standard on Bitcoin will expand its functionality through data imprinting and tokenization, creating new opportunities similar to DeFi.
2024 Review:
New standards such as Ordinals and Runes have driven significant growth in Bitcoin network activity since 2023, now accounting for approximately 60% of transaction volume.
Part 2 Asia: Where faith and opportunity meet
Beyond the noise and hype, we delved into why Asia can continue to lead Web3 innovation. From user base to developer ecosystem, Asia’s unique advantages make it a core region for blockchain development, and the opportunities cannot be ignored.
Hashed firmly believes that the golden age of blockchain will not belong to a small number of people in developed countries, but a global opportunity, especially a large number of users in Asia will become the main force. They will participate in a variety of economic and non-economic activities on a fair and transparent global distributed ledger. Based on this vision, we have always regarded the Asian consumer market as a strategic focus and have made investment layouts at an early stage.
In 2021, we seemed to be standing on the threshold of a golden age for blockchain. Bitcoin hit an all-time high, and Ethereum’s DeFi and NFT ecosystems flourished, driving rapid growth in market capitalization. The rise of altcoins marked classic bull market signs. By August 2021, users from emerging markets in Asia were flooding into the blockchain space, and although these regions lacked cryptocurrency experts, users were enthusiastic about the technology. P2E (play-to-earn) games like Axie Infinity attracted global attention, and the dream of mass adoption seemed within reach. However, as transaction fees soared and the network became congested, Ethereum gradually became a luxury, while other high-throughput "Ethereum killers" also exposed chain-level problems. The growth of Asian users eventually stabilized, and the narrative shifted from enthusiasm to calm.
However, reality failed to live up to expectations. The surge in activity also brought a sharp rise in transaction fees, causing network congestion and transforming Ethereum from a public resource to a luxury. Meanwhile, so-called “Ethereum killers” frequently encountered chain-level problems despite touting high throughput. The continued influx of large Asian users initially seemed promising but eventually leveled off. Macroeconomic challenges and multiple market turmoil curbed retail-driven growth before institutional investors entered the market. The wave of enthusiasm eventually ended, leaving behind the story of the previous cycle as we know it.
In the ensuing year-long crypto winter—a period marked by sharp declines in market indicators and a prolonged bear market—one thing has remained “stable”: stablecoins. Ironically, in an industry that prizes decentralization, the most popular stablecoins are fiat-backed stablecoins. Even amid rising interest rates and a decoupling from overall market trends, stablecoin usage has remained strong. This phenomenon has emerged as users continue to rely on stablecoins to perform actual on-chain value transfers despite the slow and costly development of financial and information infrastructure on blockchains. This suggests that Bitcoin’s original vision of on-chain value transfer is maturing through its integration with fiat currencies.
At the institutional level, the approval of cryptocurrency ETFs opens the way for institutional funds to enter the blockchain field.
During this period, as the fundamentals of stablecoins continued to consolidate, a group of emerging competitors of high-performance blockchains emerged. These platforms found a balance between integrity, decentralization, practicality and commercial viability. After the stress test of the bear market, the surviving blockchain networks became more robust. At the same time, Ethereum's dominance in key indicators began to diverge, and more and more activities shifted to L2 solutions (which was also the original intention of Ethereum's design) and the rapidly developing monolithic blockchain ecosystem. Unlike the previous cycle that was limited by high transaction fees, the current blockchain ecosystem provides a more accessible environment for the public to participate, driving wider user participation.
This change coincides with the deepening application of stablecoin payment networks as a major financial pillar and the formal establishment of high-performance blockchains as ecosystem-level infrastructure. At the institutional level, the approval of major cryptocurrency ETFs has opened the door to institutional investment and accelerated its integration with the mainstream financial system. Unlike the previous round of speculative enthusiasm, this time institutional interest is more serious, and more and more companies are beginning to explore the application of blockchain in infrastructure and consumer-oriented solutions.
Asia is particularly prominent in this renaissance. Ordinary users are returning to a market with better infrastructure, diverse application scenarios, and more efficient value transfer mechanisms. At the same time, major governments and companies in regions such as the Middle East, Japan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia are beginning to take blockchain technology seriously, marking a shift from speculative interest to strategic deployment. Asia's advantage stems from its unique combination of conditions: high mobile device penetration, a demographic structure with high technological familiarity, and a rapidly developing digital economy. In addition, the preference for gamification and collective participation in Asian culture is a perfect match for new consumer-oriented application scenarios of blockchain.
We believe this is not just a simple replay of past cycles, but a transformative phase that lays the foundation for a global distributed ledger that supports mass adoption. Asia has a large, young, and digitally native population, which makes it uniquely positioned to lead this transformation. With its openness to innovation and vibrant consumer market, Asia will continue to be a core driver of the future development of blockchain, accelerating the world's transition to a decentralized system.
Part III 2025: Key Actions
The investment team conducted an in-depth analysis of future trends based on market signals and ecosystem dynamics. We identified key value drivers and growth directions, and proposed core trends that will shape the next wave of Web3 adoption.
Reinvention of Currency: Stablecoins Integrate into Traditional Markets
By Simon Kim
In the second quarter of 2024, the transaction volume of stablecoins exceeded that of Visa for the first time, marking the expansion of its application from cryptocurrency exchanges and DeFi to B2C and B2B financial fields. In South Korea, stablecoins now account for 10% of trade settlements, showing a shift from a gray area to a regulated financial system.
Behind this trend is that traditional financial institutions are incorporating stablecoins into their payment systems to improve efficiency, reduce payment costs, and accelerate cross-border transactions. Even SWIFT is exploring the integration of stablecoins into existing payment infrastructure, indicating that the global payment system is moving towards real-time settlement.
In addition to payments, stablecoins also create new opportunities in the lending market. By taking advantage of the interest rate differential between high-interest and low-interest countries, stablecoins, as stable collateral, not only promote cross-border capital flows, but also improve global financial efficiency. At the same time, it also provides more financial service opportunities for people without bank accounts.
These trends create huge investment opportunities for blockchain infrastructure and application development. Although technology expansion and security improvement remain top priorities, long-term market growth will rely more on regulatory adaptation and the development of institutional frameworks.
Infinite Creators: How Autonomous Digital Entities Are Disrupting Attention-Driven Social Media
By Ryan Kim
Although Web3 social platforms have yet to surpass traditional giants such as X.com (formerly Twitter) or TikTok, a revolution is brewing led by autonomous digital creators who are able to generate a steady stream of high-quality content 24/7, breaking through the limitations of human creation.
Looking back at the development of social media, from Facebook's friend network to TikTok's algorithmic recommendations, platforms have been constantly evolving to attract user attention. The next stage will be dominated by intelligent entities, which, through integration with smart contracts, convert user attention into real economic value. Through this mechanism, profits can be redistributed to token holders, building a self-reinforcing attention economy system.
This model transforms Web3 social from a traditional speculative model into a real economic engine, making creativity and attention an important part of the value ecosystem, and may even shake the dominance of current centralized platforms.
A new paradigm for AI: decentralized intelligence
Author: Baek Kim
Currently, centralized computing systems are facing bottlenecks. Opaque governance, data monopoly, and increasing privacy issues have made it urgent for traditional frameworks to be overturned. Decentralized intelligence provides a new solution, which is to share power, ownership, and participation through distributed networks.
The core features of this model include:
Data sovereignty: Users have full control over their own data.
Collaborative governance: Avoid single point failure problems through distributed decision-making mechanisms.
Transparent incentives: ensuring participants receive fair returns.
By moving from closed, proprietary systems to open, decentralized frameworks, this new model redefines how computing resources are managed, improving trust and efficiency while embedding accountability into the core of digital ecosystems while making innovation more inclusive.
The Data Gold Rush: The $20 Trillion Opportunity Hidden in High-Quality Data
Author: Jun Park
Every leap in technological progress is accompanied by a breakthrough in key scarce resources:
In the early 2010s, the lack of models was addressed by architectures such as AlexNet and CNN.
In the late 2010s, the bottleneck of computing power was gradually alleviated with the emergence of large-scale basic models.
Today, the key to the next generation of technological breakthroughs lies in high-quality data, an underutilized resource that will become the core fuel for future innovation.
Traditional systems often store data in closed proprietary frameworks, resulting in a large amount of data resources not being effectively utilized. Blockchain technology provides a new means to release these hidden values:
Ownership and provenance tracking: Ensure data contributors have control over the data and receive due recognition.
Privacy-preserving access: Securely use sensitive data sets while protecting data privacy.
Incentive alignment: Reward data sharing through a transparent economic model.
For example, Zettablock provides solutions for specific sectors through a decentralized data layer, while Story Protocol focuses on the provenance tracking of creative assets. These blockchain-driven frameworks show how to empower various industries. By unlocking access to non-public data, blockchain-based ecosystems can not only drive innovation, but also provide customized solutions for the global market worth $20 trillion, covering a variety of fields from finance to healthcare.
Liberating ordinary users: Consumer-centric applications drive mass adoption of blockchain
By Edward Tan
The next wave of growth in blockchain technology will be driven by consumer-centric applications that make the use of crypto technology as simple and smooth as traditional applications. Just as crypto games have attracted millions of users, on-chain services for users are expected to become a key entry point for blockchain to enter the mainstream market.
By redesigning familiar user processes and incorporating efficiency and transparency, blockchain applications can revolutionize people's daily interactions. For example, Modhaus tokenizes fan consumption behavior in the entertainment industry, transforming ordinary transactions into personalized experiences, and directly enabling deep interaction between fans and idols. Similarly, mobile interfaces designed for DeFi protocols can also simplify user operations, allowing ordinary consumers to easily use tools such as decentralized exchanges (DEX) and currency markets, thereby lowering the entry barrier.
In order to break the monopoly of centralized giants on the ordinary user market, blockchain teams need to focus on user accessibility and guided experience. By designing applications that are close to the user's lifestyle, blockchain-based consumer products are expected to drive large-scale adoption and build a sustainable consumer ecosystem.
Social on the blockchain: Integrating instant messaging platforms with decentralized ecosystems
Author: SJ Baek
Telegram, with 900 million monthly active users, and its blockchain TON, demonstrates the great potential of driving mass adoption of Web3 through mature social platforms. Its growth momentum mainly comes from click-based and hyper-casual games, such as Notcoin, which have attracted tens of millions of users to participate in on-chain interactions. Similarly, Line and Kakao, with more than 200 million monthly active users, are attracting developers through the Kaia platform, promoting the development of social, gaming, decentralized finance (DeFi), and real-world asset (RWA) projects, and bringing more users into the Web3 ecosystem.
Compared to WeChat's centralized ecosystem, Telegram and TON's open application ecosystems are still in their early stages. This ecosystem is characterized by rapid user growth, but low user activity and retention. However, proven vertical application areas (such as vertical social platforms, medium to heavy games, short video content, and social finance) provide great potential for on-chain user growth and revenue growth, while also helping to extend the user's usage cycle.
As an open platform, Telegram and TON have a small operating team, which also leads to the lack of key infrastructure, such as social data platforms, application distribution channels, and technical support. To make up for these deficiencies and improve the scalability of the platform, it is necessary to establish an intermediate layer, supported by a dedicated team or mature applications, to improve these functions and promote the further development of the ecosystem.
Transforming Trading: Revitalizing High-Growth Assets and Legacy Systems
By Dan Park
Blockchain-driven marketplaces are transforming high-growth assets and traditional industries by creating efficient, transparent platforms that address long-standing unmet needs and systemic inefficiencies.
High-growth assets: As demand for emerging resources grows rapidly, blockchain markets are providing trading platforms for these assets. For example, GAIB focuses on computing resource trading to meet the rapidly growing demand in decentralized AI and cloud computing. At the same time, markets for unconventional assets such as urban air rights are also releasing liquidity. These assets are usually traded frequently but the market is fragmented. Through blockchain technology, not only does it simplify the trading process, but it also provides opportunities for more people to participate and innovate.
Modernization of traditional infrastructure: Some traditional industries are also being modernized through blockchain technology. Tokenized systems can simplify processes and increase transparency in the industry. For example, multiple platforms are optimizing the dollar-based stablecoin ecosystem or introducing real-time data sharing capabilities for stock and commodity trading networks. These improvements not only improve the efficiency of global trade, but also enable more people to participate in traditionally difficult-to-access markets.
These blockchain marketplaces are more than just a medium for transactions, they are the key engines driving long-term product-market fit (PMF) for blockchain technology. By changing the way industries operate, these platforms are opening the door to new opportunities for more people while also breathing new life into legacy systems.
