Forward the Original Title ‘Crypto in 2025: What happens next?’

The crypto story of this year revolves around three central themes:

1. The market becoming efficient, very quickly

2. Stablecoins rapidly spreading globally

3. Trump playing 4d chess (or checkers)

Let’s break these down individually.

1/ The market is becoming efficient, very quickly.

1a - Bitcoin and “Web3” are different things.

Historically, Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market have been intertwined through flows. Bitcoin goes up, those gains then flow to ethereum…those gains then flow to the rest of the market.

Today, Bitcoin has actual institutional flows. These institutions are buying bitcoin primarily for its unique properties (sovereignty, permissionlessness, hard supply) in relation to more controlled currencies around the world. The flows that are driving this bitcoin bullrun, are not flows interested in the rest of the market.

Many will argue that these flows will also come to ethereum, for its properties that are similar to bitcoin. So far, this has not been the case. While ethereum is decentralized, its main differentiator against bitcoin are its smart contracts. This drives the inherent value of ethereum to be its usage, rather than just its technical properties. Institutions will buy ethereum, but not because it’s decentralized like bitcoin. They will buy ethereum (and solana, etc.) because it’s being used, the same way they would buy a growth stock.

1b - Ethereum’s brand is weakening.

Ethereum’s underwhelming price performance hurts morale for everybody in crypto, regardless of how eth aligned you are. It also hurts prices across the board (again, flows).

There are many reasons you can point to for its underperformance. The most important one is actually now the rise of Solana. Before Solana’s success, it was easier to think about what Ethereum would be in the future rather than what it is today.

The bar has been raised considerably, and the market is tired of waiting. It’s unclear how painful a solana flippening would be, but it is a very real possibility that everybody should consider.

1c - The average market participant is as smart as they have ever been.

As coins continue to go down, and the market gets more challenging, more and more participants simply lose all of their money and just leave. Most of the people left standing are still here for good reasons.

Onchain data is widely available now. You can easily view TPS, transaction fees and app revenue for every chain. Many market participants do this regularly.

source: blockworks

Also, market participants actually go onchain. The bar is now that you either have created a new experience, a better experience, or you will be called a scam/waste of resources. No amount of storytelling can change this.

When you put these dynamics together (bitcoin decorrelation, ethereum weakness & general market intelligence) you are left with a market that doesn’t value bullshit. This can be very confusing for anybody who doesn’t truly have conviction in the underlying technology being built here. With prices going down, it’s easier than ever to claim the entire industry is a scam, and that everybody is secretly in on it (looking at you, evil VCs).

2/ Stablecoins are rapidly spreading globally

Some quick data:

• Stablecoin usage has hit all-time highs in 2025

source: https://visaonchainanalytics.com/transactions

• For the past 6 months, there has been an average of $20B in stablecoin transaction volume per day

source: https://visaonchainanalytics.com/transactions

• The total supply of stablecoins has increased by $100B since the beginning of 2024

source: https://visaonchainanalytics.com/supply

I would not define stablecoins as crypto’s “killer app”, but rather crypto’s first sustainable onchain onboarding mechanism.

The traditional crypto onboarding mechanism is through speculation. Price goes up, followed by people chasing those gains. Arguments can be made about the sustainability of this, but it is largely responsible for the growth of this industry towards trillions of dollars.

There is a difference (and tradeoff) between being “onboarded” to crypto via speculation vs. stablecoins.

Speculation often leads to exploration of the industry. With speculation, you chase altcoins on a centralized exchange and then 2 years later somehow end up buying NFTs on a testnet for a chain that hasn’t even launched. You have this experience because you keep chasing gains in weirder and weirder places.

With stablecoins, you are onboarded directly onchain to use the stablecoin to transfer value. The downside here is that there is not much reason to expand outside of this mechanism to explore further gains, because you were never chasing gains at all. This is why despite recent rapid stablecoin adoption, it has not translated towards rampant speculation in the crypto markets.

Make no mistake, the adoption of stablecoins represents a sustainable growing onchain economy. At some point, the world of stablecoins and the world of speculation will meet. But, instead of the stablecoin class (normal people) coming down to meet the speculator class (degenerates), we likely have to go up and provide them with compelling use cases that make sense to someone that isn’t a gambler. This is particularly good, because as described in theme #1, the market is getting more efficient.

3/ Trump is playing 4D chess (or checkers)

The trump administration is great for crypto because it means there will likely (hopefully) be sensible regulations created. This will invite capital, builders, and users to the space.

The trump administration is simultaneously terrible for crypto because his economic policies are both extreme and wildly unpredictable. This creates uncertainty which reduces risk appetite, hurting everyone’s coins. Is he actually playing 4D chess? Nobody knows.

The best way to think about Trump, and markets, is as if there is a big game of “Red Light, Green Light” from Squid Games being played with Trump in charge.

You see this dynamic playing out this week. Trump announces that he will “not play hardball” with China, and bitcoin pumps 10%. While this is comforting, it’s impossible to predict what the next headline will be.

To Recap:

• New bitcoin buyers don’t want to buy ethereum or altcoins, ethereum uncertainty is at all-time highs and market participants keep getting smarter. These all contribute towards the market becoming efficient, hurting prices almost everywhere in the short term.

• Stablecoin adoption and onboarding is up only. The onchain economy is growing, the industry has underlying value and these people have high standards for use cases.

• Crypto will uniquely benefit from this administration, but risk assets will suffer until trump relaxes.

In conclusion, the common theme behind all three of these macro crypto trends is short term pain with long term gains. It’s easy to feel like things are dying, but I’m of the belief that the situation is actually the opposite. 2025 is the year that crypto takes its much needed medicine, only then will we finally be ready for the main stage.

Disclaimer:

1. This article is reprinted from [tunez (evm/acc)]. Forward the Original Title ‘Crypto in 2025: What happens next?’. All copyrights belong to the original author [tunez (evm/acc)]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
2. Liability Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.
3. The Gate Learn team does translations of the article into other languages. Copying, distributing, or plagiarizing the translated articles is prohibited unless mentioned.