Source: @Mippo
Compiled by Odaily (Odaily China, @OdailyChina)
Translator: Wenser (@wenser 2010)
Editor's Note: As 2024 draws to a close, many crypto investment firms, including a16z and VanEck, have released a series of outlooks on the crypto industry in 2025. Mippo, a crypto researcher at Blockworks, recently published a Twitter thread titled "27 Crypto Predictions for 2025", which Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan described as "great". The thread covers various aspects of the future US crypto policy, DeFi, Ethereum, Solana, and stablecoins, which Odaily has translated and briefly commented on for readers' reference.
27 Crypto Predictions for 2025
Note: The original author's "Predictions" have been translated as "Predictions" for the sake of rigor, as predictions require more substantive reasoning, but these 27 items are more like the author's subjective guesses and may not have solid logical support, so they are for reference only.
1. The US will re-emerge as the global crypto hub
Many crypto entrepreneurs will return to the US and set up offices in New York, and the scale of crypto conferences in the US will surpass Asia.
2. Over 10 DeFi protocols will activate their fee switches
Multiple DeFi protocols, including Uniswap, will activate their fee switches for the first time.
3. DeFi protocols will adopt a client asset re-pledging business model
More and more DeFi protocols will use client asset re-pledging as a revenue source, including cross-chain bridges and liquidity staking tokens (LSTs).
4. The debate on Ethereum's core direction will be settled
Efforts to expand the L1 network will be minimized (such as raising the Gas target to 50M gwei), but the Rollup-centric roadmap will be reaffirmed. The efforts of ETH maximalists will ultimately fail.
(Odaily note: This suggests that the development of L2 networks has become inevitable.)
5. The Ethereum ecosystem will be more cohesive
While some dissenters may leave the Ethereum ecosystem, the overall sentiment of the community will shift in a more positive direction, and the market price of ETH will perform well.
6. Rollup-based solutions will not take off by 2025
Cross-chain interoperability will be achieved to a sufficient degree through protocols like Across, but the realization of general composability remains elusive.
7. TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) will become a (permanent) component of L2 infrastructure
8. Solana will remain the star of this cycle, but its vulnerabilities will emerge in 2025
Solana's ecosystem REV (return on economic value) will struggle to reach new highs.
Challenges such as liquidity fragmentation from Meme coins and the emergence of MEV issues, as well as the rise of extremism, will collectively become the ecosystem's vulnerabilities.
9. Solana's Firedancer will be released in Q4 2025, reaching 10,000 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
Base's ecosystem TVL will exceed $40 billion.
12. Base will become the leading ecosystem for AI agents (and potential AI derivatives)
13. Stablecoins will become the dominant asset on L2
The on-chain issuance of L2 stablecoins will be double that of ETH.
14. Stablecoins will experience explosive growth
The stablecoin market cap will surpass $450 billion, becoming one of the top three investment categories for venture capitalists.
15. Over 5 major financial or traditional financial institutions will launch stablecoins in 2025
This will put pressure on existing stablecoin projects, slowing the growth of existing stablecoins.
16. Over 10 enterprises (banks, Web2 giants, etc.) will launch L2 networks
But most will fizzle out and ultimately amount to nothing. The exception may be fintech companies like Robinhood.
17. Robinhood will rise in 2025 on the back of its large user base and blue-chip stocks
By the end of 2025, the crypto industry will put Robinhood on par with Coinbase as the two largest exchanges in the US.
18. Investing in L1 public chains will still pay off
The influx of investment capital into L1 public chains will not bottom 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 popular as in 2017, new ICO models will have better investor protection mechanisms, similar to crowdfunding.
5 blue-chip level protocols will conduct ICOs.
20. Venture capital will return, but not to the scale of 2021
The crypto venture capital volume in 2021 was $30 billion; it is expected to be around $20-25 billion in 2025.
At the same time, there will be more funding rounds in the $50-100 million range.
(Odaily note: Currently, there are not many projects in this round, to some extent indicating that the market has not fully recovered or even reached a historical high in activity.)
21. Crypto companies will lead the IPO (Initial Public Offering) wave, but not on a large scale
Over 4 crypto companies will go public, but the overvaluation in 2021 remains an obstacle 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 continuous development of large language models will trigger a new round of media attention, and the related dynamics will be further transformed into more AI-concept tokens.
23. The AI trend will spawn niche tracks beyond just AI Agents
Different types of AI Agents (creators, hedge fund traders, artists, etc.) will gradually enter the crypto stage.
As expected, most AI Agents will only be early iterative products and will not succeed.
24. TikTok will have an unprecedented impact on the crypto field
Crypto Twitter (CT) will become the exit liquidity for some TikTok tokens.
(Odaily note: This has already been reflected in the impressive performance of some Meme coin projects this year, such as Moodeng and Chillguy. Compared to short-video media, which has strong viral transmission, the text information on the X platform (Twitter) spreads relatively slowly, so platform users are likely to become the "bagholders" for TikTok-related celebrity Meme coins.)
25. A major crypto bill will be passed in the US
An updated version of the Stablecoin Market Structure Act may be signed into law in the US.
26. Bitcoin L2 will still not take off by 2025
We still have a long way to go before a true zero-knowledge (ZK) Bitcoin L2 network emerges.
27. The crypto industry will be widely recognized as a permanent force in US politics
Mainstream media will gradually change their previous negative or indifferent attitude towards the crypto industry, recognizing that the crypto industry will become an indispensable part of the US political landscape and will never disappear.
Bonus at the end: Recommended podcast episode by the author
In early October this year, on the Blockworks Bell Curve podcast, Mippo (Mike) and two other industry figures (Michael Anderson and Vance Spencer, co-founders of Framework Ventures) discussed the topic of "Continued Adoption of Cryptocurrencies in Institutions". At the time, Vance, who was Trump's running mate, had just finished the vice presidential debate with Democratic vice presidential candidate Walz, and the direction of US cryptocurrency legislation was taking an initial turn. Looking back two months later, there may be new discoveries and gains to be had.
Podcast link: https://blockworks.co/podcast/bellcurve/026cb1da-828c-11ef-a046-a3c247d0bbf5
