From Bitcoin ETFs To Memecoins

As the best year in cryptocurrency history comes to an end, it’s worth looking back at how it went and where it’s taking us in 2025. BTC has been the leader this year. It started with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approving spot Bitcoin ETFs from Blackrock, Fidelity and other top institutions.

Then the fourth Bitcoin halving occurred in April. Options contracts moved to spot Bitcoin ETFs, accelerating mass adoption. American and Russian lawmakers proposed strategic Bitcoin reserves, and then, the big milestone, Bitcoin surpassed the highly anticipated $100,000 mark in early December.

But 2024 wasn’t just about Bitcoin’s success. It also covered key infrastructure improvements and breakthrough innovations in Layer-2, Real-World Assets (RWAs) and crypto AI. Stablecoins, the killer digital asset app that provides the fiat on-ramps and exit ramps for Web3.0, exploded in 2024 with a slew of new issuers and a market cap of over $200 billion, and memecoins experienced one this year great upswing and met with great interest from private users and investors.

Both retail and institutional interest drove holistic industry growth in 2024, driving new use cases and solving real problems.

Building the Fundamentals of Crypto Finance

Bitcoin ETFs have reached a market capitalization of over $132 billion, with inflows of more than $10 billion since Donald Trump’s victory in the American presidential election.

The year 2024 was also marked by political change and a new crypto-friendly government in the USA. The appointment of former PayPal executive David Sacks as AI and crypto czar, as well as the appointment of former college football player and Republican congressional candidate Bo Hines to the presidency of the Council of Digital Asset Advisers, chaired by Sacks, contributes to this the year 2025 is quickly taking shape.

Add Paul Atkins taking on the role of new SEC chairman, replacing Gary Gensler, who is stepping down on January 20, and the expected appointment of Brian Quintenz, a16z chief executive and crypto policy right-hand man to former CFTC commissioner Chris Giancarlo, crypto dad and uber-crypto policy czar – the team that created the Bitcoin future market, and it looks like the US is on it positioning to dominate crypto globally.

Ryan Chow, co-founder and CEO of Solv Protocol, says: “The approval of Bitcoin ETFs has legitimized the asset class as an institutional investment. In addition to incoming liquidity and positive price activity, Bitcoin ETFs have increased the popularity of BTC. Not surprisingly, Bitcoin DeFi has attracted over $3 billion in TVL despite its emergence.”

Alongside Bitcoin, AI emerged as the leading narrative, dominating crypto mindshare with an all-time high of 48 percent in November. Currently, the crypto AI sector has a market cap of over $34 billion with strong growth potential.

Tiancheng Xie, co-founder and CTO of Polyhedra Network, said: “The biggest challenges for AI revolve around trust, transparency and accountability. By using blockchain, particularly zero-knowledge proofs, we can ensure verifiable data, fair compensation for contributors, and a trusted builder ecosystem, which in turn creates scalable innovation in a more trusted environment.”

According to a16z’s Builder Energy dashboard, crypto developers are also heavily focused on AI, with over 34 percent of projects using AI in 2024. The dashboard also shows that building blockchain infrastructure is the second most popular category this year with over 19 percent builder activity. According to a16z’s Builder Energy dashboard, crypto developers are also heavily focused on AI, with over 34 percent of projects using AI in 2024. The dashboard also shows that building blockchain infrastructure is the second most popular category this year with over 19 percent builder activity.

Ben Wynn, CMO at House of ZK, reiterated that infrastructure developments are a key focus for the industry to increase overall capacity, saying: “Blockchain development continues to grow significantly, with over 23,000 monthly active developers worldwide in 2024 – approximately 40 percent annual increase since 2015 – and ZK is growing even faster, with annual growth of over 50 percent over the last four years, up from 40 in 2020 to approximately 640 in 2024 – a 16-fold increase – reflecting the transition from predominantly theoretical to more practical use and increasingly recognized as a basis for solving the pressing challenges of scalability, data protection, interoperability and more.

“The potential to transform every facet of blockchain is clear and with adoption accelerating rapidly, we expect developer activity in ZK to increase exponentially in the coming years.”

Overall, infrastructural improvements in the backend have a major positive effect on onboarding new users to cryptocurrency.

Bringing crypto to the masses

In September 2024, a record-breaking 220 million wallet addresses interacted with a blockchain at least once, the highest ever in cryptocurrency history. On average, there are currently 30 to 60 million monthly active crypto users, or about 5 to 10 percent of the 617 million global crypto owners.

The increase in on-chain interactions was primarily driven by Solana, NEAR and Base. Interestingly, Solana and Base also top the list of chains in the interest of builders. With a developer’s shareholding of 10.7 percent, Base now has some of the…