Original title: (Delphi's 'The Year Ahead for Markets 2025': Key Insights)
Author: Stacy Muur
Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow
Introduction
As the year comes to a close, various studies and predictions are flooding in. @Delphi_Digital recently released a (2025 Market Outlook), delving into the analysis of current market conditions and future trends, covering a range of topics such as Bitcoin price movements, key trends, and risk factors.
Given the lengthy text, a complete reading would take a considerable amount of time. Deep Tide TechFlow has compiled Stacy Muur's article summarizing the core viewpoints on the (2025 Market Outlook).
This article divides the Delphi Digital report into three major sections: The Rise of Bitcoin, the Mirage of Altcoin Season, and Trends for Future Development. Currently, Bitcoin's market value has reached approximately $2 trillion, while the performance of altcoins has been lackluster. Looking ahead, the growth of stablecoins may bring hope for market recovery. At the end of the article, Stacy Muur also shares her unique views on the crypto market in 2025, believing that the crypto market is evolving from the 'Wild West' to a more regulated alternative stock market. Web3 native users will be willing to take high risks and participate in speculative trading, while newcomers will adopt prudent risk management, focusing on long-term value; certain narratives may become marginalized.
Main text
The Rise of Bitcoin
Once upon a time, a Bitcoin price of $100,000 was considered a fantasy.
And now, this viewpoint has undergone a dramatic change. The current market value of Bitcoin is approximately $2 trillion—remarkable. If Bitcoin were considered a publicly traded company, it would become the sixth most valuable company in the world.
Despite Bitcoin attracting widespread attention, its growth potential remains enormous:
The market capitalization of BTC accounts for only 11% of the total market capitalization of MAG7 (Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Google's parent company Alphabet, Meta, and Tesla).
It accounts for less than 3% of the total market capitalization of U.S. stocks and about 1.5% of the global stock market's total market capitalization.
Its market value is only 5% of the total public debt in the U.S. and less than 0.7% of the global total (public + private) debt.
The total amount of money in U.S. money market funds is three times the market value of Bitcoin.
The market value of Bitcoin is only about 15% of the total global foreign exchange reserves. If global central banks were to invest 5% of their gold reserves into Bitcoin, it would bring over $150 billion in purchasing power to Bitcoin—equivalent to three times this year's net inflow into IBIT.
Global household net worth has reached an all-time high of over $160 trillion, which is $40 trillion higher than the pre-pandemic peak. This growth is mainly driven by rising home prices and a booming stock market. By comparison, this figure is 80 times the current market value of Bitcoin.
In a world where the Federal Reserve and other central banks drive currency depreciation of 5-7% each year, investors need to pursue annual returns of 10-15% to offset future purchasing power losses.
What you need to know:
If currency depreciates by 5% each year, its real value will be halved in 14 years.
If the depreciation rate is 7%, this process will shorten to 10 years.
This is precisely why Bitcoin and other high-growth industries are receiving so much attention.
The mirage of altcoin season
Although Bitcoin has set new historical highs this year, 2024 does not appear friendly for most altcoins.
$ETH failed to break its historical high.
$SOL reached a new high, but the increase was only a few dollars more than the previous high, making this performance seem trivial compared to its market value and network activity growth.
$ARB performed strongly at the beginning of the year, but its performance gradually declined as the year came to a close.
There are many similar examples. Just look at the performance data of 90% of the altcoins in your portfolio.
Why is this the case?
First, Bitcoin's dominance is a key factor. BTC has performed exceptionally well this year, driven by ETF inflows and factors related to Trump, with its price rising over 130% year-to-date, reaching the highest level of dominance in three years.
Secondly, there is the phenomenon of market divergence.
This year's market divergence is a new feature of the crypto market. In previous cycles, asset prices typically fluctuated in sync. When BTC rose by 1%, ETH usually rose by 2%, and altcoins by 3%, creating a predictable pattern. However, this cycle is markedly different.
Although a few assets have performed exceptionally well, many more are in a state of loss. Bitcoin's rise has not driven a broad increase in the prices of other assets, and the much-anticipated 'altcoin season' has not materialized as expected.
Finally, meme coins and AI agents also play important roles in this.
The crypto market oscillates between 'this is a Ponzi scheme' and 'this technology will change the world.' In 2024, the narrative of 'scam' dominated.
In the public's collective imagination, the crypto market oscillates between 'a globally unified financial system of future technology' and 'the largest scam in human history,' happening every two years.
Why does this narrative seem to alternate between two extremes and occur every two years?
The supercycle of meme coins and market sentiment
The supercycle of meme coins further reinforces the impression that the crypto market is a 'Ponzi scheme.' Many people begin to question whether the fundamentals of the crypto market really matter, even viewing it as a 'casino on Mars.' These concerns are not without reason.
In this context, I would like to add a note.
When memes are called the best-performing assets of the year, people usually focus only on the 'mainstream memes' (like DOGE, SHIB) that already have significant market capitalization and have successfully built a community. However, 95% of memes quickly lose value after launch, which is often overlooked. Yet, even so, people still 'want to believe.'
This belief has prompted many funds that previously invested in altcoins to shift towards memecoins—few profited, but most did not succeed. As a result, capital inflow has been primarily concentrated between Bitcoin (institutional funds) and memecoins (high-risk investments), while most altcoins have been overlooked.
Delphi believes that 2025 will be a year of technological transformation in the market, with these technologies 'changing the world.'
But I am not so optimistic about this personally. In 2024, a large number of KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) focusing on memecoins will emerge. When I tried to create a folder for 'truly valuable' channels on Telegram (where you can find this), I found that almost all channels were discussing 'ape calls' (i.e., high-risk short-term investment advice). This is the essence of the attention economy, and these narratives profoundly influence market trends.
What are the upcoming trends?
Growth of stablecoins and credit expansion
One of the main challenges facing the current market is an oversupply of tokens. Driven by private investment and public token offerings, a large number of new assets have flooded in. For instance, over 4 million tokens were launched on Solana's pump.fun platform alone in 2024. However, in contrast, the total market capitalization of the crypto market has only grown threefold compared to the previous cycle, whereas it grew 18 times and 10 times in 2017 and 2020, respectively.
The two key factors missing from the market—growth in stablecoins and credit expansion—are re-emerging. With declining interest rates and an improving regulatory environment, speculative behavior is expected to re-emerge, alleviating the current market imbalance. The central role of stablecoins in trading and collateral will be crucial for market recovery.
Institutional capital inflow
Until last year, institutional investors remained cautious about crypto assets due to regulatory uncertainty. However, with the SEC reluctantly approving spot Bitcoin ETFs, this situation began to change, paving the way for future institutional capital inflows.
Institutional investors generally tend to choose familiar investment areas. Although a few institutions may dabble in memecoins, they are more likely to focus on assets with fundamental support, such as ETH/SOL, DeFi, or infrastructure.
Delphi predicts that the market may experience a 'full rebound' similar to previous cycles in the coming year. Unlike before, this time the market will be more focused on fundamentally driven projects. For example, OG DeFi projects (original decentralized finance projects) may become a focus due to their proven track record in the market; infrastructure assets (such as L1 protocols) may also regain their glory. Additionally, RWA (Real World Assets) or emerging fields (like artificial intelligence and DePIN) may become hotspots.
Of course, not all tokens can achieve triple-digit gains as they did in the past, but the existence of memes will remain a part of the market. This could mark a new starting point, a broad crypto rebound driven by overall market uplift.
Note: Most institutional traders typically rely on options hedging strategies. Therefore, if a 'full rebound' occurs, the assets most likely to attract institutional interest will be those with options trading—currently mainly traded on Deribit and possibly on the Aevo platform.
Arguments about Solana
@Solana demonstrates the strong resilience of the blockchain ecosystem. After experiencing a 96% drop in market value due to the FTX collapse, Solana has seen a remarkable recovery in 2024.
Here are its key performance highlights:
Developer momentum: By hosting hackathons and distributing airdrops (such as the Jito airdrop), Solana successfully rekindled interest among developers and users. This increase in participation not only propelled innovation but also created a virtuous cycle of technological development and user adoption.
Market leadership: In the trends of the crypto market in 2024, Solana is at the forefront, from memes to AI applications. Notably, its Real Economic Value (REV), a comprehensive measure of transaction fees and MEV, exceeds that of Ethereum by over 200%, demonstrating strong market vitality.
Future outlook: Solana is expected to challenge Ethereum's dominance in terms of scalability and user experience. Compared to decentralized Layer-2 solutions, Solana offers a seamless user experience and a highly centralized ecosystem, giving it a significant competitive advantage.
Stacy's final thoughts
The current market conditions may remind one of 2017-2018, when Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $20,000 on New Year's Eve, only to start declining in early 2018. However, I believe it is inappropriate to compare the 2018 crypto market with that of 2025. The two are in completely different market environments—the once chaotic 'Wild West' is rapidly evolving into a more regulated alternative stock market.
We need to recognize that the scope of the crypto market far exceeds the discussions on Crypto Twitter (CT) and X platforms. For those who are not active on these platforms, their understanding and perception of the market may be completely different.
Looking ahead to 2025, I believe the crypto market will diverge into two main directions:
Web3 native users: This group deeply engages with the crypto market, is familiar with its unique operating methods, and is willing to take high risks, participating in speculative trading in memes, AI agents, and presale projects. These behaviors evoke memories of the early 'Wild West' era of the crypto market.
Ordinary investors: Including institutional and retail investors, they typically adopt more prudent risk management strategies and tend to base their investment strategies on fundamentals. They view the crypto market as an alternative to the traditional stock market, focusing on long-term value rather than short-term speculation.
So, which areas might become marginalized? Early DeFi projects, RWA (Real World Assets), and DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks) protocols that fail to establish a leading position in their fields or within the blockchain ecosystem may gradually lose market attention. This is just my opinion.
PS: This article summarizes the core viewpoints from @Delphi_Digital's 2025 market outlook. If you want to fully understand Delphi's detailed predictions for 2025 and beyond, I strongly recommend reading their original research report.
