The success of the blockchain industry does not lie in the success of a single technology or a single platform, but is an inevitable product of the history of world financial development. This is a demand in the era of financial development and innovation, and it is also the best testimony to financial globalization!
Bitcoin is rising to become the world's largest dollar-denominated financial asset, becoming a key tool to hedge the US fiscal deficit and US debt crisis. In 2024, amid the drastic changes in the global financial landscape, the crypto industry has experienced profound ups and downs and reconstruction. With a historic high of $100,000, Bitcoin has declared its core position in the global asset system and successfully ranked as the seventh largest asset in the world by market value.
It is also the beginning of a structural change: a dollar liquidity circulation chain has been formed with Bitcoin as the core asset, ETFs and US stocks as the capital bridge, and US listed companies as the carrier. This financial change not only shapes a new asset value system, but also injects lasting growth momentum into the blockchain industry.
Encounter 1: Compliance - making the industry more standardized
After Trump was successfully elected, the (Bitcoin Bill of Rights) was officially passed! and Trump, officially launched the encryption mode of governance! This will further enhance the legal compliance status of Bitcoin in the United States. After Trump officially takes office on January 25, he will definitely further promote cryptocurrency. At the same time, many countries around the world have also changed from before after Trump came to power. The prohibition is changed to the cancellation of the prohibition, and it is allowed by default! In 2025, the compliance environment of the blockchain industry will usher in significant progress, laying a solid foundation for the healthy development of the industry.
Trump's promotion of cryptocurrency will be the biggest engine of this bull market: President-elect Trump supported cryptocurrency during his campaign, promising to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve and reorganize the SEC. He also nominated Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary, who once said that "cryptocurrency represents freedom, and the crypto economy will exist for a long time." At the same time, the use of Bitcoin as a national strategic reserve currency and the large-scale increase in institutional holdings will definitely lead to a higher price breakthrough for Bitcoin in 2025.
Compliance innovation will emerge in the custodial wallet space, resolving the contradiction between self-custody and regulation. The integration of technology and compliance will reach new heights, raising the standards of the entire industry. The macro-regulatory environment will become more positive, creating favorable conditions for the development of the industry. The UK government plans to consult on a regulatory framework for stablecoins and crypto assets in early 2025, which shows that the global regulatory environment is moving in a clearer and more supportive direction. National strategic bitcoin reserves may also become a reality in 2025. Currently, more than 60 listed companies hold#bitcoinas a treasury reserve asset.
Encounter 2: RWA Track and Ethereum RWA
It will become the most explosive track
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has transformed from a former Bitcoin skeptic to a staunch supporter of tokenization, saying that "security tokenization will become the next generation of the market." This statement from the head of the world's largest asset management company is of great significance. On-chain securities will grow 61% in 2024
The tokenized RWA market is expected to reach $50 billion by 2025, with the potential to grow exponentially from there. Venture capital firm ParaFi recently predicted that the tokenized RWA market could grow to $2 trillion by 2030, while the Global Financial Markets Association predicts it could reach $16 trillion.
The Ethereum ecosystem is ushering in a new round of leaps. The improvement of network performance, the innovation of second-layer technology and the expansion of the ecosystem complement each other with the outbreak of the RWA market, which will push Ethereum to a new height. As more and more real assets are tokenized and migrated to the chain, Ethereum not only consolidates its position as a leader in decentralized applications and smart contract platforms, but also plays a key role in connecting traditional finance with decentralized finance. By the end of 2024, the total market value of tokenized assets on the chain has exceeded US$14 billion, and Ethereum accounts for nearly 80% of the market share, becoming the core driving force for the development of this field.
The rise of tokenized assets. Traditional financial giants are accelerating their embrace of tokenized financial assets, and Ethereum has become the underlying infrastructure platform of choice for institutions with its mature technical architecture, security, decentralization, and stability.
Through its smart contract platform and distributed validator network, Ethereum not only provides stronger support for RWA applications, but also provides a safe, efficient, and transparent migration path for traditional financial assets. Tokenized assets can enable faster and lower-cost transactions and settlements on the chain, thereby significantly improving the operating efficiency of financial markets.
The impact of RWA on Ethereum’s economic model. The expansion of RWA is not only an expansion of the ecological scale, but also injects new momentum into Ethereum’s economic model. According to market data forecasts, the annual cost of RWA-related on-chain activities is expected to exceed $100 billion, which is 40 times the current annual revenue of Ethereum.
Policy and market driving force. Further clarification of regulation will provide strong support for the rapid expansion of RWA. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to take a more pro-crypto stance in 2025. In addition, regions such as Singapore and Europe are also actively promoting the regulatory framework for tokenized financial assets, injecting more compliance and transparency into the market and removing obstacles for institutional capital to enter the RWA field.
Encounter 3: Ai redefines the blockchain track
First: AI Agent will become an important player in the market.
Participating in asset creation, asset issuance, and asset trading, with the rapid development of super-large-scale language models (XLLMs) and multimodal models (XLMMs), new AI agents will gradually become important players in the market. They will become the main players in the blockchain world, with the ability to make decisions and take actions independently.
AI agents are highly adaptable, have clear goal setting and self-correction capabilities, and can make independent decisions in complex environments. This shift indicates that AI agents will play a more important role in the market and social platforms. The emergence of AI agent frameworks like Eliza, combined with Agent platforms like Myshell, will promote the development of this trend.
Second: AI Agents Have Over 1 Million On-Chain Activities
AI agents will become one of the most compelling narratives driving mass adoption in 2025. Designed to help users achieve specific goals, such as “maximize revenue” or “increase engagement on X/Twitter”, these agents are able to autonomously adjust strategies to optimize outcomes, often trained and specialized on data from a specific domain.
The development of AI agents is mainly focused on the DeFi sector, but we believe that their applications will go beyond financial activities. Agents can serve as social media influencers, computer players in games, and interactive companions or assistants in consumer applications. Given the huge potential of AI agents, we expect that by 2025, more than 1 million new AI agents will be created.
Third: AI helps solve security issues.
The verifiability of blockchain can indeed be an important solution to AI security issues, and it is particularly important to establish a "human identity verification" mechanism to ensure the interaction between users and real individuals. 61% of organizations reported that deep fake attacks have increased in the past year and are expected to increase by 50% to 60% in the future. The complexity of AI security issues is mainly reflected in two points: dynamic attack vectors and prompt injection vulnerabilities.
Blockchain projects can effectively address these challenges by virtue of their decentralized and tamper-proof characteristics:
1. Data tracking and source verification: Blockchain can record and track the source of data, ensure the authenticity of content generation through encrypted signatures, combat AI-generated deep fakes and fake news, and ensure the transparency and traceability of data.
2. Protect training data: Protect the data sets required for AI model training to prevent tampering or attacks, thereby ensuring data integrity and security and reducing the risk of single point failures.
3. Record and monitor AI model usage: Prevent unauthorized abuse and share models or data on a secure platform without worrying about information leakage or tampering. Users can audit and verify AI behavior, thereby increasing trust.
Fourth: AI penetrates existing track projects and changes the industry paradigm
In 2025, the in-depth application of AI technology will significantly change multiple industries, including games, NFT, DeFi, social and other fields.
The gaming industry is likely to be the industry most impacted by AI. Global spending on AI in gaming is expected to reach approximately $1.1 billion by 2025, indicating the industry’s emphasis on the potential of AI. These include:
1) Generative design: Generate game content through algorithms to improve development efficiency.
2) Personalized experience: AI will analyze player behavior and provide tailored game suggestions and challenges.
3) Enhanced interactivity: Intelligent NPCs will be more realistic, increasing the immersion of the game.
4) A more intelligent AI agent, which improves the way gamers interact with the game and reduces the experience burden on gamers themselves;
Social projects have also seen a lot of innovation. AI not only plays an important role in content generation and community interaction, but also promotes innovation in tokenization and decentralized economic models. In the future, AI will:
1) Realize social monetization: Users can earn crypto rewards through content creation and interaction.
2) Build a community economy: Using blockchain technology, users can directly participate in platform governance and profit distribution.
3) Improved security: Protect user privacy through decentralized identity authentication.
DeFi benefits from the efficiency improvements and changes in interaction patterns brought by AI.
1) AI agent will become an important participant in the DeFi ecosystem.
2) AI-driven investment platforms and trading tools can also lower the threshold for user participation.
3) AI-assisted security will play a key role in vulnerability detection and optimization of smart contracts.
Encounter 4: Bitcoin’s price and ecological technology
will reach new heights in the first quarter.
In the previous article, we analyzed in detail that in the first quarter of 2025, the price of Bitcoin will reach a new height, with a high probability of being around US$150,000. The price surge will definitely attract more funds and technology, and thus the development of Bitcoin ecological technology will also reach a new height.
Data 1: Bitcoin Layer-2 Total Locked Value (TVL) Reaches 100,000 BTC
Bitcoin L2 lock-up reaches 30,000 BTC in 2024, up 600% year-to-date. We are closely watching the rise of Bitcoin Layer-2 (L2) blockchains, and these solutions have great potential to transform the Bitcoin ecosystem. By extending Bitcoin's functionality, these L2 solutions can achieve lower latency and higher transaction throughput, thereby addressing the limitations of the underlying blockchain.
Bitcoin can be transferred to smart contract platforms through bridging or packaging, but these methods rely on third-party systems and are vulnerable to hacker attacks and security vulnerabilities. The Bitcoin L2 solution aims to address these risks through a framework that is directly integrated with the Bitcoin underlying layer and reduces reliance on centralized intermediaries.
In fact, the most important point here is that the hype space in the Bitcoin ecosystem is very large. At present, apart from Ordi, there are no other high-quality projects, so the space here is very large.
Data 2: BTC Layer 2 ushered in BTC’s DeFi Summer
Looking ahead to 2025, the TVL and DeFi activity of the Bitcoin ecosystem will reach a breakthrough. As of October 2024, Babylon has locked more than 57,288 Bitcoins with a total value of US$6 billion.
There will be more diverse application scenarios in the Bitcoin DeFi field. It is estimated that by 2025, the trading volume of Bitcoin DEX may exceed 4 trillion US dollars, accounting for 20% of the spot trading volume of centralized exchanges.
The Bitcoin ecosystem in 2025 will be more diversified and interconnected. Innovations from infrastructure to application will drive Bitcoin from a simple value storage to a full range of financial infrastructure, providing users with richer and more efficient financial service options.
Data 3: Innovation of Bitcoin Ecosystem Technology
First: On the technical level, the expansion of Bitcoin scripting language is an important direction. As the second-layer expansion solution of Bitcoin, Lightning Network is expected to usher in a major upgrade in 2025. The introduction of channel factories may allow batch creation of payment channels, greatly reducing the cost of opening.
Second: Privacy enhancement is another important direction that the Bitcoin community has been actively researching. With current technology, the addresses of many whales are easily traceable. In fact, there is a problem here: the real big players do not want others to see their movements, so the mixing technology is likely to be well applied in the Bitcoin ecosystem in 2025. Improving transaction privacy without sacrificing auditability is the key to future development. This may bring revolutionary privacy protection capabilities to Bitcoin.
Third: At the application level, the Bitcoin network is spawning diverse and innovative applications. These applications integrate technologies such as micropayments, decentralized identities, content storage, Ordinals, and RGB protocols, which not only bring new business models to the social media and gaming industries, but also enhance the transparency and credibility of scientific research through transparent fund management, data integrity protection, and decentralized evaluation mechanisms.
Encounter 5: Ethereum Ecosystem Technology Breakthrough
Sui and Sol followed closely behind.
First: Ethereum data shard (Blob Space) generates $1 billion in fees, and the number of Ethereum data shards released daily
The Ethereum community is actively discussing its ability to capture value through data sharding (Blob Space) of the Layer-2 (L2) network, which is a key part of its expansion roadmap. This architecture supports the scalability of Ethereum, but the current L2 value return to the main network is low, with a gross margin of about 90%. This has raised concerns that Ethereum's economic value may be excessively transferred to L2, resulting in underutilization of the underlying network.
However, its use is forecast to expand significantly by 2025, driven by three main factors:
1. Explosive adoption of L2:
2. Rollup Technology Optimization
3. Introduction of high-fee scenarios
Second: Ethereum Ecosystem Technology and Ecosystem Breakthrough
In 2025, the Ethereum ecosystem is expected to experience important developments, with significant breakthroughs at both the technical and ecological levels. In terms of expansion, the number of L2 and L3 solutions is expected to exceed 2,000, and Ethereum can truly achieve 200 times expansion. After Pectra is upgraded, the increase in blob capacity will further reduce the cost of rollup and push the daily transaction volume to exceed 100 million. These improvements will provide the Ethereum network with greater processing power and lay the foundation for supporting large-scale users.
The popularization of account abstraction technology will also be an important progress. The implementation of EIP-3074 and EIP-7702 has enabled more than 25% of on-chain transactions to adopt account abstraction, and users can use any token to pay gas fees. After EIP-5003 achieves complete account abstraction, it will change the way users interact with smart contracts.
In terms of optimization of the staking mechanism, EIP-7251 allows validators to stake more than 32 ETH to obtain additional income. At the same time, the permissionless staking pool is realized through EIP-6110 and EIP-7002, making the total amount of Ethereum staked expected to exceed 30 million, and the annualized income is stable between 3% and 4%.
In terms of network efficiency, through the Verkle Trees, EOF optimization and PeerDAS improvements in the Amsterdam upgrade, the storage burden of Ethereum validators will be reduced and the EVM execution efficiency will be improved. Network throughput is expected to increase by more than 10 times. These technical updates will significantly enhance the performance of Ethereum and provide support for the future development of modular blockchain architecture.
Ecosystem integration will also be an important direction in 2025. The native interoperability ZK stack has become the standard for new rollups, and efficient validity proof clusters have gradually taken shape. These improvements lay the foundation for modular blockchain networks and promote Ethereum's transformation from technology-driven to application-driven.
The Beam Chain upgrade will usher in important changes to the Ethereum consensus layer, including shortening the block production time to 4 seconds, lowering the staking threshold to 1 ETH, and introducing zero-knowledge proof technology. These changes not only improve network performance, but also enhance decentralization, providing more possibilities for future development.
Third: Sui and Sol continue to rise strongly
Solana is relying on its technological advantages to continue to consolidate its leading position in the field of high-performance public chains. By upgrading the Gulf Stream parallel processing technology, its TPS is expected to exceed 100,000 in 2025. At the same time, the application of state compression technology reduces the hardware threshold of verification nodes and reduces the cost burden by 30%.
The developer ecosystem of Solana and Sui has achieved remarkable performance, with 2,500-3,000 active developers per month and a three-month retention rate for developers that has increased from 31% to over 50%. In terms of technology stack, more than half of the developers have at least three years of blockchain development experience, and this maturity ensures higher quality application output in the ecosystem.
Encounter 6: Bitcoin’s Strategic Reserve and
Overweight countries will reach a record high
This chart shows the proportion of Bitcoin holdings from several dimensions, including listed companies, ETF institutions, and countries. In 2025, the number of increased holdings by institutions such as MicroStrategy, BlackRock, and Fidelity will increase by at least 50%.
At the national level: more countries will strategically reserve Bitcoin and improve laws and regulations. It is still uncertain whether the United States will establish a strategic reserve of Bitcoin in 2025. Although there are positive signals:
A Republican senator from Wyoming has introduced a bill that would require the United States to purchase 1 million bitcoins over five years.
President Trump expressed support for the proposal.
Globally: The United States' consideration of establishing a strategic reserve currency for Bitcoin has prompted more countries to follow suit, which will drive up the price of Bitcoin globally.
Lawmakers in Poland and Brazil have also proposed bills to establish their own strategic Bitcoin reserves.
CZ also stated in public not long ago that China will establish a strategic reserve of Bitcoin.
Russia, publicly supports Bitcoin as payment for trade
The UK uses pension funds to strategically reserve Bitcoin.
France has included Bitcoin in its pension system in July 2024.
Not to mention Japan, Singapore and others, they are more supportive than China.
Countries that publicly hold Bitcoin: This number is expected to double by 2025
According to BitcoinTreasuries.net: Nine countries in the world currently hold Bitcoin, with the United States in the lead
Encounter 7: DeFi will hit a new historical high
The NFT market will rebound
DeFi performed very well in the last bull market. In the bull market from 2020 to 2021, 61 of the top 600 tokens by market value saw an increase of more than 100 times in the secondary market. DeFi has the greatest potential in this round, and there is no shortage of hype hotspots and users at any time!
DeFi hits a new high: In the last round of bull market, the total locked value (TVL) of DeFi has exceeded 185 billion US dollars. This round, it will exceed 250 billion US dollars at least.
DeFi Total Locked Value (TVL) Trend
Decentralized Exchange (DEX) trading volume will exceed 4 trillion US dollars
The influx of security tokenization and high-value assets will further drive DeFi growth, injecting new liquidity into it and expanding its functionality. As the demand for decentralized financial infrastructure rises in the evolving digital economy, DeFi TVL is expected to rebound to more than $250 billion by the end of 2025.
NFT market will rebound, with trading volume reaching $30 billion
NFT trading volume declined in 2024 and is expected to rebound in 2025
The 2022–2023 bear market hit the NFT space hard, with trading volumes down 39% since 2023 and 84% since 2022. Volumes began to recover in 2024, but most NFTs lagged, with weak prices and low activity until a turning point in November.
As crypto wealth recovers, we expect new users to diversify into NFTs, not only as speculative assets, but also as assets of lasting cultural and historical significance. Ethereum still dominates the NFT market, hosting the majority of significant collections. In 2024, it accounts for 71% of NFT transactions, a share that is expected to rise to 85% by 2025.
Encounter No. 8: Stablecoin market value doubled,
Decentralized Science (DeSci) Leads New Markets
As of the last day of 2024, the total market value of stablecoins has reached 210 billion US dollars. This figure will most likely double in the second half of 2025, and the United States will pass the long-awaited stablecoin legislation.
I think there are at least the following reasons for the rapid growth:
First: Stablecoin legislation. The lowest hanging fruit for pro-cryptocurrency policymakers in Washington is passing comprehensive stablecoin legislation. This would answer important questions, including who regulates and what the appropriate reserve requirements are. Clear regulations would spark huge interest from issuers, consumers, and businesses. Large traditional banks such as JPMorgan Chase are expected to enter this space.
Second: global trade and remittances. In fact, I personally think this will be one of the important driving factors, because this is a more convenient financial currency payment method than the circulation of US dollars, especially for companies doing bulk trade, this is the best and fastest way. Among them, the transaction volume of stablecoins in 2024 will reach 8.3 trillion US dollars, close to Visa's payment volume of 9.9 trillion US dollars in the same period.
Third: With the growth of the crazy bull market, more retail investors, institutions, and smart wallets will enter the market to get a piece of the pie, and a large amount of funds will flow in. At this time, the market demand for stablecoins will increase accordingly. In addition, many existing large coin holders hold their coins for a long time, which reduces the liquidity of BTC to a certain extent, and the demand for Usdt in the market will also increase.
Decentralized Science (DeSci) is reshaping scientific research funding, collaboration, and intellectual property management through blockchain technology and tokenization mechanisms, and is injecting new vitality into the scientific research economy.
DeSci’s core innovation lies in funding allocation and intellectual property management. IP-NFT not only provides legal protection for scientific research results, but also allows researchers, communities and investors to participate in funding and profit distribution.
In the field of medical data, the DeSci project also shows great potential. AminoChain has raised $5 million to develop a decentralized biological sample market, helping patients control and benefit from data usage, while reducing the cost of sample acquisition for research institutions.
In terms of scientific research publishing, ResearchHub has completed 2,800 peer reviews through token rewards, shortening the average turnaround time to 9 days, which is far better than the 70-98 days of traditional journals, significantly improving the transparency and efficiency of scientific research.
Decentralized Science (DeSci) uses governance tokens to achieve community-driven scientific research funding, reduce intermediaries, and reduce capital waste. As the policy environment gradually becomes clearer and institutional participation increases, it is expected that the scale of on-chain scientific research funding will further expand, and promote the further development of intellectual property commercialization, open publishing, and medical data management.
The rise of decentralized science is driving scientific research from closed to open, and from centralized to democratic. DeSci's transparent mechanism, efficient collaboration, and data sharing model will have a profound impact on global scientific research innovation.
It is worth noting that if the United States announces the purchase of 1 million bitcoins to build a strategic reserve, the time for the price of Bitcoin to break through 1 million US dollars may be greatly advanced.
It is expected that the market value of Bitcoin will surpass the gold market by 2029. Based on the current market value of gold, this means that the price of each Bitcoin will exceed $1 million.
We believe that with the maturity of blockchain technology and the continuous expansion of application scenarios, the decentralized industry will usher in a profound dividend period in the next 3 to 5 years, and huge market opportunities will follow.
2025 will be a crazy bull market. With Trump’s support all the way, you have no reason not to make money!
