Author: insights4.vc
Translated by: ShenChao TechFlow
To help you save time and focus on market hotspots, we have carefully curated over 300 forward-looking predictions for 2025. Each year, leading institutions and industry leaders share insights that have a profound impact on the future development of cryptocurrencies. This report gathers viewpoints from ETF issuers, investment funds, research institutions, and market pioneers, providing not only an overall overview of market sentiment but also practical advice and actionable insights on emerging opportunities.
The top five themes to watch in 2025 include:
Growth and Popularization of Stablecoins
Tokenization of Real World Assets (RWAs)
Expansion of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs
Integration of AI and Blockchain
Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePINs)
1. Growth and Popularization of Stablecoins
Prediction from Jason Yanowitz, Founder of Blockworks, and Santiago R Santos, Founder of Inversion Capital
By 2025, the market cap of stablecoins is expected to account for 10% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. This growth may be driven by at least one major bank, technology company, or fintech firm launching stablecoins. For example, BlackRock, Robinhood, and Meta are considered likely participants. Tether is expected to maintain its market leadership through its strategic political relationships, while USDC's market share may drop from the current 20% to about 15% due to the entry of new competitors like PayPal. These changes could drive regulatory progress in the U.S., positioning stablecoins as key drivers in the payment and e-commerce sectors.
Prediction from 21shares
The current market capitalization of stablecoins has surpassed $170 billion, achieving significant progress in the global remittance market, especially in countries like the Philippines and Turkey. With the tokenization of private credit becoming widespread, this trend is expected to further enhance capital liquidity and improve financial transparency. Platforms like Maple Finance leverage smart contracts to simplify operations and reduce costs, establishing themselves as industry leaders. With agencies like Moody's beginning to provide ratings for tokenized credit, this field is expected to become a mainstream asset class by 2025.
2. Tokenization of Real World Assets (RWAs)
Prediction from Coinbase
The market for tokenizing real-world assets (RWAs) is growing rapidly. It is expected to grow by 60% by 2024, reaching $13.5 billion; by 2030, this figure could soar further 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 by 60% to $13.7 billion, with 70% being private credit and the rest treasury bills and commodities. The inflow of funds is accelerating, and more complex types of tokenized assets are expected to emerge in 2025.
Private Credit: With improved infrastructure, Figure added $4 billion in tokenized credit in 2024. An increasing number of companies are bringing funds into the cryptocurrency space through private credit.
Treasury Bills and Commodities: The current on-chain treasury bill market is valued at $2.67 billion, while there are still trillions of dollars off-chain that have not been tokenized. Treasury bills offer yields that surpass stablecoins. BlackRock's BUIDL fund has an on-chain size of $500 million, while the off-chain size reaches hundreds of billions. DeFi pools have begun integrating treasury bills, thereby reducing the friction of user adoption.
3. Expansion of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs
Prediction 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, followed by the approval of Ethereum spot ETFs on July 23, 2024. This approval marks a gradual easing of the regulatory environment and lays the groundwork for the launch of altcoin ETFs. The emergence of altcoin ETFs could further enhance market liquidity and lower the barriers to entry for crypto investments.
The asset size of Bitcoin ETFs is expected to surpass that of gold ETFs in 2025. Currently, the asset size of Bitcoin ETFs stands at $110 billion, while gold ETFs are at $128 billion. The rapid growth of Bitcoin ETFs indicates that this trend may materialize sooner than expected.
If the leadership of the SEC leans more libertarian, it may approve altcoin ETFs, including XRP, Solana (SOL), and Hedera (HBAR), further enriching the variety of cryptocurrency investment products.
If you would like to learn more about Bitcoin spot ETFs in detail, we recommend referring to the article we published last month. Here are the ETF data as of January 8, 2025:
On-chain holdings of Bitcoin spot ETFs (Source: The Block)
Bitcoin ETF fund flows
Bitcoin ETF trading volume
Ethereum ETF fund flows
Prediction from Bitwise
It is expected that inflows into Bitcoin ETFs will exceed the record of $33.6 billion set in 2024. This growth is mainly driven by major brokerages like Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, which will provide more customers with investment channels for crypto products. As investor confidence strengthens and the allocation of Bitcoin in portfolios becomes mainstream, ETF inflows are expected to further accelerate, resembling the development path of gold ETFs over the past few decades.
4. Integration of AI and Blockchain
Prediction 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 activities, as they will not only optimize DeFi yields but also automate various tasks and facilitate interactions in gaming and social media. Platforms like Virtuals Protocol are actively advancing AI technology, expanding the application scope of agents from finance to gaming and marketing, thereby creating substantial revenue and enhancing user engagement.
Prediction from Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly Capital
AI agents will widely adopt stablecoins for peer-to-peer transactions, especially as stablecoin regulations further relax. This trend will also extend to large enterprises, which will use stablecoins to replace traditional banking systems for greater flexibility and efficiency.
The training and inference of decentralized AI will experience rapid development, driven by projects such as ExoLabs, NousResearch, and PrimeIntellect, providing new alternatives to current centralized AI models. NEAR Protocol is striving to build a fully permissionless AI tech stack, making development and deployment more open.
AI-driven wallets will revolutionize user experiences by automating complex operations (such as cross-chain bridging, trade optimization, reducing fees, and preventing fraud). This will provide users with a seamless cross-chain operational experience. By 2026, this trend of automation may diminish the significance of blockchain network effects, as users will no longer need to interact directly with blockchains.
5. Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePINs)
Prediction from Multicoin Capital
The Trump administration is expected to introduce 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 technology. As the scale of GPU clusters surpasses 100,000 H100s, autonomous driving technology will be capable of practical applications. Some startups funded by traditional venture capital firms may adopt the DePIN model to diversify operational risks and reduce costs. Early adopters of this model will be able to collect critical robotic operation data. For example, the startup Frodobots has begun exploring this direction, and more similar companies are expected to join in the future. Additionally, Hivemapper is also attempting a similar innovative concept.
Prediction from Vence Spencer, Co-founder of Framework Ventures
DePIN projects focused on the energy sector (such as Glow and Daylight) are expected to reach levels comparable to top DeFi platforms in terms of transaction fees. This indicates that the application of blockchain technology in managing and monetizing energy distribution is becoming increasingly widespread. For example, these projects optimize energy distribution efficiency through smart contracts while providing users with transparent transaction records and profit distribution methods.
