Crypto in 2025: What Actually Worked, What Changed, and What 2026 Will Be About

As every year, OAK Research has released its annual report on the crypto market. For this new edition, titled “2026, The Year of Change,” we decided to go beyond our usual formats.

The report was produced in collaboration with Castle Labs and Hazeflow, with a clear ambition: to offer a comprehensive, rigorous, and accessible reading of the crypto ecosystem as it exists today. More than 180 pages, 12 analysts, 20 contributors, and an in-depth analysis covering all the major themes that shaped crypto in 2025.

The report is available for free on OAK Research and can also be purchased in physical form in a high-quality book to support our work. But for those who don’t have the time or desire to dive into such a dense document, this article provides a synthesis of the key lessons from 2025 and the dynamics already shaping 2026.

Do not hesitate to follow OAK Research, Castle Labs, and Hazeflow on X to support our work.

We would also like to thank Kraken for their support in developing this report. We invite you to join them in supporting us. Enjoy reading!

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Bitcoin Has Become a Macro Asset

At first glance, Bitcoin’s price action in 2025 may look like a forgettable year, one with little significance. That would be a misreading. 2025 was not a year of performance, but a year of transition. Bitcoin confirmed the status shift that began in 2024: it moved from an asset governed by its own internal cycles to a fully fledged macro asset.

The reason is straightforward. In 2025, liquidity flows were no longer primarily driven by retail investors, but by professional and institutional actors. Now embedded in regulated investment vehicles, Bitcoin has gradually detached itself from its historical cycles and increasingly responds to the logic of traditional finance.

This change in status implies several major shifts for the crypto market:

• Bitcoin is now a macro asset. It benefits from the liquidity, visibility, and legitimacy that come with this status, but it is still perceived as a high-beta, risky, and largely speculative asset. Institutional actors have not yet fully embraced its long-term thesis: that of a scarce, neutral asset capable of preserving value over time.
• The classic four-year crypto cycles are over. The change in investor profile implies a change in catalysts. Market dynamics are now primarily macroeconomic, driven by global liquidity, financial conditions, and the broader economic environment. The market is entering a new phase of maturity: less explosive, but more gradual.
• Altcoins remain in a bear market. A large share of liquidity has concentrated in Bitcoin, whose dominance stayed above 50 percent throughout 2025. Capital rotation into altcoins did not materialize, as retail investors stepped aside and were replaced by actors with minimal exposure to tokens beyond Bitcoin.

In short, we see 2025 as a structurally important transition year. Bitcoin has entered the macro arena, traditional finance has yet to fully internalize its thesis, and the rest of the crypto market must adapt to this new reality. With a gradual return of global liquidity, 2026 could mark the continuation of this maturation process, in an environment that is less speculative but more sustainable for Bitcoin.

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Institutional Players Are More Present Than Ever

In 2025, institutional interest in on-chain finance is no longer up for debate. But it did not materialize where the market initially expected it to. Institutional flows have not gone into tokens, but into products backed by regulated assets, generating yield and compatible with existing frameworks.

This reality is directly reflected in the rise of Real World Assets (RWA). Tokenization has become the key bridge between traditional finance and on-chain finance, and RWAs have been the preferred entry point for institutions. Their total value grew from around 3 billion dollars in 2022 to nearly 36 billion dollars by November 2025.

The RWA market has concentrated around several key segments:

• Stablecoins backed by high-quality collateral. Long seen as simple digital representations of the dollar, stablecoins are in fact the core and future of on-chain finance. They serve as the gateway for liquidity into RWAs and as the connective tissue between retail and institutional users. In 2025, nearly 200 million addresses held stablecoins.
• Tokenized U.S. Treasuries. This is the dominant RWA segment, with a total market capitalization of around 9 billion dollars, driven by products such as BlackRock’s BUIDL, Circle’s USYC, Ethena’s USDtb, and Ondo’s funds.
• Tokenized private credit. One of the highest-potential segments, enabling large non-listed debt instruments (SME loans, trade finance, invoices) to be transformed into on-chain, tradable tokens.
• Tokenized stocks. A segment that gained significant traction toward the end of the year, particularly in the wake of the success of on-chain perps. Tokenized equities are being developed by players such as Robinhood, Backed Finance (xStocks), Ondo Global Markets, and Hyperliquid via HIP-3 and Unit.

The growth of RWAs and the arrival of institutional capital have deeply reshaped on-chain finance. Teams are no longer building solely around liquidity and incentives, but around concrete issues such as custody, compliance, transfer restrictions, identity management, and regulatory interoperability.

Maple is a clear example. With permissioned institutional pools, a BTC yield product focused on custody, and permissionless pools around syrupUSD (syrupUSDC, syrupUSDT), the protocol serves both KYC-compliant institutional clients and crypto-native users. Maple’s AUM increased by 800 percent in 2025.

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DeFi Has Found Its Path to Adoption

In 2025, DeFi did not experience a new speculative phase comparable to 2021. Yet it is far from dead. Its role has evolved and, in many ways, strengthened. DeFi has gradually moved away from incentive-driven farming and refocused on its core value proposition: the production and distribution of on-chain yield.

• The return of yield as the primary driver. Protocols such as Ethena, Pendle, and Maple captured growing demand for structured yield products backed by real assets or more sophisticated market strategies.
• The dominance of stablecoins in DeFi activity. Most flows now run through stablecoins, used as collateral, payment rails, lending assets, or the base of yield strategies. DeFi has effectively become a financial layer built around the tokenized dollar.
• Institutional demand for yield. Institutions are not seeking direct exposure to tokens, beyond Bitcoin and to a lesser extent ETH, but rather attractive yield products within a regulated framework, particularly in a context of gradually declining interest rates.
• The emergence of crypto super-apps and neo-banks. The future of retail adoption lies in applications with familiar interfaces and no technical friction, powered by stablecoins and offering payment accounts and savings products connected to on-chain yield protocols.

Our view is that on-chain finance has reached an important level of maturity. The challenge is no longer just to generate yield, but to make it accessible at scale. Institutional and traditional finance players are already entering the space, and the next step is to reach retail users. This is why we believe 2026 will be the year of super-apps, where the general public will access on-chain yield products without even realizing it.

Aave is the most compelling example. Already the leader in on-chain lending, with its own stablecoin (GHO) and an institutional offering via Horizon, Aave has recently expanded into retail through the acquisition of Stable, a U.S.-based savings app. The protocol has also obtained a MiCA license, allowing it to offer regulated financial services in Europe.

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What Actually Worked in 2025

• On-chain perps and the rise of Hyperliquid

2025 was a confirmation year for on-chain derivatives. By introducing the first truly functional on-chain order book, Hyperliquid established itself as the leader in decentralized perpetuals. For the first time, an on-chain infrastructure demonstrated that it could rival centralized exchanges in terms of market depth, volume, performance, and execution quality.

This success was not only technical. Hyperliquid also broke several established DeFi norms, including the absence of venture capital and the largest airdrop in history, and introduced a new way of thinking about on-chain market structure, where infrastructure and liquidity become both a moat and a product.

More importantly, Hyperliquid sparked a true DEX Perps War, paving the way for a dozen credible competitors such as Lighter, Extended, Paradex, Variational, and EdgeX. This dynamic pushed innovation to its limits and offered users a rare opportunity to capture value creation, particularly through airdrops.

• The revenue and buyback meta

One of the most structural shifts for DeFi in 2025 was the return of revenue redistribution models. Hyperliquid’s success refocused investor attention on protocols capable of generating real revenue and redistributing value to token holders through buyback mechanisms.

This logic is not new. The fee switch has been debated in DeFi for years, but it was only with Donald Trump’s return to power in the United States that such mechanisms became politically and regulatorily viable, without immediate risk of being reclassified as securities.

Uniswap is a clear example. The “UNIFication” proposal finally aims to use protocol revenues to buy back UNI, after more than three years of governance resistance. Other protocols such as Jupiter, Aave, Maple, Fluid, and Pumpdotfun have also adopted this revenue-and-buyback meta.

• Prediction markets as a new frontier for speculation

After being widely declared dead following the U.S. presidential election, prediction markets experienced a strong resurgence at the end of 2025. Beyond narrative appeal, they demonstrated real utility: aggregating information, producing actionable probabilities, and offering a credible alternative to traditional polling.

The sector has consolidated around Polymarket and Kalshi, two players now deeply integrated into the traditional financial ecosystem as reliable information tools. Their funding rounds were among the largest of 2025. In 2026, prediction markets are already emerging as one of the key sectors to watch.

• Regulation as a catalyst, especially in the United States

Contrary to common belief, 2025 showed that regulation can become a growth driver for on-chain finance. In the United States, the most significant development was the GENIUS Act, with major implications for stablecoin issuers, payment infrastructure, and the broader tokenization of financial assets.

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What Disappointed in 2025

• Ethereum: the paradox between fundamentals and price action

Despite major protocol-level progress, 2025 was a disappointing year for ETH. Investors expected a revaluation driven by roadmap execution, scaling progress, and institutional demand via ETFs. Price action clearly invalidated this thesis.

The gap between Ethereum’s technological ambition and its token performance was one of the ecosystem’s biggest disappointments. That said, we were aware that the very success of Ethereum’s scaling strategy weighed on value capture at the layer 1 level and therefore on ETH issuance.

User experience improved significantly, while validator operating costs and user fees dropped sharply. This opened the door to a proliferation of layer 2s but shifted a large share of activity away from mainnet. As a result, fee pressure declined, burn via EIP-1559 decreased, and Ethereum entered a prolonged phase of net inflation since The Merge.

The “ultrasound money” narrative, central to the previous cycle, lost credibility. Institutional inflows via spot ETH ETFs provided occasional support but failed to establish a sustained bullish trend. Each rebound was met with persistent selling pressure. By year-end, Ethereum found itself in a paradoxical position: a more robust infrastructure than ever, but a token whose valuation thesis remains difficult for the market to grasp.

• The year of “crime”: memecoins, insider trading, and large-scale hacks

2025 was marked by a massive transfer of wealth from average users to a new class of so-called PvP actors. The industrialization of insider trading, the proliferation of pump-and-dump schemes, and the normalization of extractive memecoins severely degraded the retail experience.

Platforms such as Pumpdotfun generated record revenues, exceeding 900 million dollars, while becoming arenas for openly predatory practices. The vast majority of launched tokens were outright scams, with over 99 percent remaining below a 100,000 dollar market capitalization.

Cabal dynamics and insider trading amplified this trend, as certain actors, including KOLs and builders, enjoyed systematic advantages that allowed them to extract value before public participation.

The year also saw a resurgence of major hacks. Mature protocols were targeted, with cumulative losses reaching around 3 billion dollars in 2025. The Bybit hack (1.5 billion dollars) and attacks on GMX, Balancer, and Sui were stark reminders that, despite technological maturation, systemic risk remains high. DeFi is moving toward a phase of “low-risk DeFi,” but security practices remain uneven.

• Trump and the opportunistic politicization of crypto

Donald Trump’s return to power ushered in a more favorable regulatory phase for the industry, but it is important to remember that he is first and foremost a businessman. 2025 showed that crypto was, in many ways, instrumentalized for political, professional, and personal purposes.

The launch of the TRUMP and MELANIA memecoins illustrated how the larger the “crime,” the less appetite there was to call it out. These two tokens generated hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump circle, while leaving the majority of investors with losses exceeding 90 percent.

At the same time, World Liberty Financial positioned itself as the institutional pillar of the Trump crypto empire. The platform raised 550 million dollars via its WLFI token and issued over 2.7 billion dollars in USD1 stablecoins, attracting private and sovereign capital under near-total opacity. This does not even account for the political and financial connections surrounding the project’s existence.

• Layer 1, Layer 2, and the exhaustion of the infrastructure thesis

2025 confirmed an already emerging reality: the proliferation of blockchains and layers did not create proportional value. Most activity remains concentrated in trading, yield, and stablecoin payments. Decentralization alone is no longer enough; what now matters is the ability to generate revenue and real economic activity.

Infrastructure tokens suffered from a lack of a clear investment thesis. The link between network usage and token demand remains weak or nonexistent. In this context, many layer 1s and layer 2s have become redundant, unable to justify their valuations beyond initial speculation.

The altcoin situation deteriorated sharply. The continued decline of Total3 illustrates a structural erosion of value, exacerbated by VC unlocks, low liquidity, and narrative fatigue. Without radical improvement or differentiated utility, most tokens mechanically trend toward zero. By the end of 2025, the consensus was clear: the problem is no longer a lack of infrastructure, but poor integration and the market’s inability to absorb so many tokens without real demand.

• TGEs and the slow demise of the distribution meta

In 2025, the market sent a clear signal: it no longer wants new tokens. The vast majority of TGEs failed almost immediately, facing heavy sell pressure at listing and a near-systematic inability to sustain valuations. Airdrops, which were supposed to kickstart long-term adoption, mainly attracted mercenary capital, farmers, and Sybil participants whose sole objective was to sell at the TGE before moving on to the next protocol.

This model produced artificial metrics (TVL, volumes, activity) with no real retention. Once incentives dried up, activity collapsed and tokens quickly converged toward zero. In an environment of limited altcoin liquidity and elevated Bitcoin dominance, new tokens simply no longer have buyers.

This saturation forced a paradigm shift. Several major protocols delayed, reduced, or abandoned their airdrops, while others chose not to launch a token when it was not strictly necessary. The message is clear: in 2025, a TGE is no longer a catalyst but a risk, and only projects generating real revenue and clear usage can still justify the existence of a token.

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What 2025 Tells Us About 2026

2025 was not a classic bull market year. It was a year that clarified market structure, winners, and limitations. In many ways, 2026 will not be a rupture, but the logical continuation of these dynamics.

• Bitcoin will continue its upward cycle

2025 confirmed that Bitcoin no longer follows traditional crypto cycles, but global macroeconomic dynamics. Integration into traditional finance via ETFs and regulated derivatives has made it a true macro asset. In 2026, Bitcoin’s thesis as a scarce, neutral asset capable of preserving and measuring value will be increasingly understood and adopted by institutional players.

• Altcoins will see rallies, but no new cycle

A gradual return of global liquidity, potentially driven by renewed Fed easing, could offer relief rallies for altcoins in 2026. These moves will exist, but they will be episodic and highly selective.

Only tokens backed by protocols generating real revenues, capable of capturing and redistributing value, and increasingly resembling businesses rather than technological promises, will be able to sustainably outperform.

• The core of on-chain finance will be yield and stablecoins

The trajectory is clear. Everything converges toward stablecoins and on-chain yield production. In 2026, they will serve simultaneously as payment infrastructure, collateral, and the foundation of on-chain savings.

The key challenge will be accessibility. Retail users will not seek yield directly through complex protocols, but through super-apps and crypto neo-banks that hide technical complexity behind familiar interfaces. Yield will be natively embedded in savings accounts, cards, and payment apps, without users realizing they are interacting with DeFi.

• A new layer of actors will emerge: on-chain yield managers

Between base yield protocols and super-apps, a new category of players is likely to emerge: on-chain strategy and vault managers. Their role will be to aggregate, optimize, and secure yield, acting as intermediaries between DeFi infrastructure and mass-market distribution. This intermediate layer, whether human or AI-driven, should attract user interest in 2026 and offer fertile ground for incentives, points, and airdrops.

• Derivatives will remain the most profitable segment of the industry

On-chain perps are set to remain crypto’s primary economic engine in 2026. Hyperliquid is well positioned to maintain its central role thanks to its technological lead, liquidity, and economic model. Many competitors that emerged in 2025 may disappoint post-TGE once incentives fade. DeFi history shows that users ultimately gravitate back to the most performant and liquid infrastructure, especially when supported by a strong native asset.

• Prediction markets will scale

After proving their utility in 2025, prediction markets could see a sharp increase in activity and adoption in 2026, especially as they continue integrating with traditional finance and media. They represent a new way to monetize information, with potential far beyond pure speculation.

• Privacy will play a structural role, but at the margins of the regulated system

Finally, privacy is emerging as a foundational theme for 2026. Regulatory tightening in Europe and the United States has reinforced the divide between compliant assets and anonymity tools, concentrating liquidity around Bitcoin and regulated markets.

Paradoxically, this pressure strengthens the privacy thesis. As financial surveillance intensifies, social demand for financial discretion grows. Privacy-oriented protocols will not be driven by institutional flows, but they will persist as a counter-cyclical, narrative-driven segment, decoupled from the rest of the market and acting as an ideological hedge in an increasingly financialized ecosystem.

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