4 Major Keywords, Playing the 2025 Crypto Four Seasons Song

The Year 2025 is about to pass. Standing at the end of the “Mainstreaming of Cryptocurrency” year, it’s time to use some keywords to summarize each of the four quarters and gain insight into how the current world is being gradually infiltrated and transformed by cryptocurrencies.

The crypto world of 2025 experienced many twists and turns: from Trump taking office as US President in January, to the US initiating a tariff trade war in April; from Strategy leading the DAT treasury company trend with hundreds of billions of dollars in temporary profits, to ETH, SOL treasury-listed companies and even altcoin treasury companies blooming and then silencing; from stock tokenization platforms being seen as the “best combination of DeFi and TradFi,” to Nasdaq’s self-revolution joining the stock tokenization boom; from the wealth-building frenzy sparked by on-chain Perp DEXs like Hyperliquid and Aster, to the valuation of prediction market giants Polymarket and Kalshi surpassing 10 billion USD; from GENIUS stablecoin regulation bills to the stablecoin craze where PayFi is frequently mentioned; from crypto IPOs to the regularization of crypto ETFs… In the midst of countless disputes, struggles, and compromises among capital, attention, and regulatory forces, amidst wealth-generating projects, memes, hacker incidents, and amid FOMO, new highs, and frantic buying, in extreme fear, massive crashes, and black swan events, the tree of the crypto industry in its prime has grown another ring.

Behind the always-on money is the rising and falling of Meme coin players, the insufficient income of “lure hair” traders, Wall Street’s massive absorption, and the US regulatory hand-off. Such a year is somewhat complex—it is neither a full bull market nor a cold bear market; compared to previous years’ distinctly hot and cold, sector-rotating crypto markets, 2025’s crypto industry under the influence of Trump and many authoritarian governments is more like a monkey jumping around; some fall from grace, others rise with the tide. As for success or failure, perhaps our soon-to-be-published “2025 Crypto Investment Memoir” will reveal more answers.

In this article, Odaily Planet Daily will review 2025 in crypto through four quarterly keywords.

Crypto Spring: Trump Effect continues, Trump builds wealth, crypto regulation framework clarifies

In January, Trump officially took office as US President.

Continuing the momentum from last year’s election victory, after a brief consolidation, BTC price again approached the $100,000 mark.

Just three days before Trump took office, the headline “Trump Official Meme Coin” TRUMP launched the first wave of wealth creation frenzy in 2025, hitting many crypto participants hard.

I still vividly remember that morning when my colleagues first shared the TRUMP token contract. Its total market value (FDV) was only about $4 billion. Amid doubts like “Did Trump get hacked?” “Can the US President issue tokens?” “Is Trump trying to make a final grab before leaving office?” the TRUMP market cap surged, quickly surpassing $10 billion, $30 billion, and eventually exceeding $80 billion.

In this astonishing wealth-building frenzy, many Chinese meme traders made huge profits, with some earning millions or even over $20 million. For the list of traders who profited from TRUMP, see “Who Made Over a Million USD from TRUMP? Winning KOLs and Disappointed ETH Maxis.”

This also marked a “second spring” for the crypto market, which had already been reignited by Trump’s election in November 2024, due to his personal influence.

Soon after, the crypto market paid tribute to Trump’s presidency—on January 20, BTC once again hit a new all-time high of $109,800.

At that time, everyone regarded Trump as the “undisputed first crypto president.” Perhaps many didn’t realize then that “water can carry a boat, but also overturn it.” Trump brought not only macro policy and regulatory benefits but also a series of controversies, harvests, and swings related to his family’s crypto projects.

Another key point of the “Trump Effect” was whether his presidency could directly improve the US crypto regulatory environment—

Firstly, whether he could introduce legislation and executive orders with clearer boundaries and more friendly rules for crypto regulation. Trump gradually enacted some of his promises, including replacing SEC Chair Gary Gensler with Paul Atkins, appointing David Sacks as the White House AI and crypto chief, and pushing the passage of the GENIUS stablecoin regulation bill.

Secondly, the “US national strategic reserve of BTC” attracted much attention from the crypto market and many crypto-friendly politicians. In early March, Trump signed an executive order promoting the establishment of a US Bitcoin strategic reserve using previously confiscated BTC assets. He emphasized, “It will not increase taxpayers’ burden.” Details can be found in “Trump Establishes BTC Strategic Reserve as Promised, But Is It Funded Purely by Confiscations?”

Despite this, the outcome of the “Trump establishing a BTC national reserve within 100 days” bet on Polymarket was ultimately “No” (Odaily Planet Daily notes: because the rules specify that assets confiscated by the US government do not count towards BTC reserves), which disappointed many. Some even exclaimed “scam site” in the comments.

Polymarket betting event rules info

Meanwhile, the “insider whale” had already begun to show its claws—on Hyperliquid, the “50x leverage insider” profited millions of USD from news like “Trump establishing a crypto reserve.” Details can be found in “Review of Hyperliquid Contract ‘Insider’ Operations, Precise Long and Short Entries.”

During this period, several events that cast Trump into controversy included the “Melania Token” incident after Trump’s election and the Argentine President Milei’s LIBRA political celebrity coin. These were regarded as dark masterpieces of Trump’s token issuing group. Additionally, the first quarter also witnessed a series of “historic events,” including:

• Hyperliquid’s “largest airdrop of the year” attracting envy from on-chain players;
• Bybit being hacked by North Korea’s Lazarus Group, losing $1.5 billion worth of assets;
• The Ethereum Foundation’s renewal, with Aya, the former executive director, promoted to chair.

The industry did not expect that Trump would soon make the market witness a U.S.-style “Xiao He’s Success and Failure.”

Crypto Summer: DAT treasury companies, ETH surpassing new highs, stablecoins as main players

At the start of the second quarter, the crypto market was hit hard—early April, Trump launched a global “tariff trade war,” causing widespread panic and shaking the economy, with US stock and crypto markets suffering heavy losses.

On April 7, “Black Monday,” US stocks lost over $6 trillion in market value in about a week, including giants like Apple and Google, which together shed over $1.5 trillion. After nearly a month of turbulence, BTC finally dropped below $80,000, reaching a low of $77,000; ETH fell to $1,540, a new low since October 2023; total crypto market cap dropped to $2.6 trillion, with a single-day decline of over 9%. Read more in “Uncover the Culprit Behind the Tariff War—Did He Cause Over $6 Trillion to Vanish in One Night?”

From that point, after months of market decline and organizational reforms, ETH showed signs of a bottoming rebound. See “New Leadership at Ethereum Foundation: What Is the Future of EF?”

Meanwhile, aided by Circle’s US IPO, stablecoins and PayFi began entering the mainstream crypto scene, regarded by many as the key to large-scale crypto adoption. See “A Decade of Stablecoins: From Storms to the US Official ‘Point-to-Point Digital Cash’,” and “The Golden Age of Stablecoins Begins: USDT to the Left, USDC to the Right.”

In late May, following Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum, and founder of Consensys and MetaMask, the US-listed company Sharplink transformed from a sports marketing firm into the first “ETH treasury listed company.” This ignited a wave of DAT enthusiasm across the entire crypto market, and ETH’s price finally broke free from its persistent decline, surpassing the previous high of $4,800 in a few months, reaching nearly $5,000.

Subsequently, Wall Street oracle Tom Lee, together with US-listed firm Bitmine, joined the “DAT treasury craze,” making ETH treasury-listed companies another prominent “scenic spot” in the crypto world after Strategy-led BTC treasury companies.

A glimpse of ETH treasury companies

As of the time of writing, according to strategicethreserve, there are nearly 70 ETH treasury companies, with:

• Bitmine (BMNR) holding the largest ETH amount at 3.86 million ETH;
• Sharplink (SBET) holding over 860,000 ETH;
• ETH Machine (ETHM) holding over 490,000 ETH.

Notably, these three DAT companies’ ETH holdings significantly surpass the Ethereum Foundation’s holdings (less than 230,000 ETH).

Following ETH treasury companies, SOL DAT companies, BNB DAT companies, and a series of altcoin treasury firms emerged like bamboo shoots after rain, with their share prices fluctuating wildly.

In the current phase of transition from initial FOMO to market cooling, ETH DAT companies like Bitmine face billions of USD in paper losses, while many BTC reserve companies and others without real business support see their market cap and crypto assets inverted, with dozens of DAT companies’ mNAV (crypto assets to market cap ratio) falling below 1.

The peak summer of crypto saw DAT companies celebrating, still unaware of the Stoic quote “All gifts in fate are secretly marked with prices,” and that price being a sharp decline in share value.

Of course, as death often brings new life, amid the frenzy of DAT, the wave of stock tokenization has gradually reached the crypto market, becoming an unstoppable trend. Even Nasdaq couldn’t ignore it and had to join this “capital feast” in a self-revolutionary manner.

Crypto Autumn: Stock Tokenization, On-Chain Perp DEXs, and Stablecoin Public Chains “Battle for Supremacy”

After Circle (CRCL) launched on US stocks at the end of June and achieved a milestone of “10x stock price increase,” the enthusiasm of traditional financial markets for stablecoins and crypto concept stocks soared.

Supported by positive news, Hong Kong’s stablecoin sector and brokerage sector surged, including major tech companies like JD.com and Ant Group announcing their upcoming entry into the stablecoin arena, attracting much attention. See “Hong Kong Stock Meme Season Arrives, Can Crypto Concept Stocks Support the Bull Market?”

Taking this opportunity, the RWA (Real-World Asset) sector finally reached a turning point—stock tokenization was just in time.

In early July, exchanges Kraken and Bybit announced support for stock tokenization trading via the xStocks platform, supporting popular US stocks like AAPL, TSLA, NVDA, etc., in tokenized form. Since then, xStocks, which promotes itself as an “on-chain US stock tokenization platform,” became the sole focus of market attention. Meanwhile, MyStonks (now renamed MSX.com) attracted a large number of users and investors.

If the debut of BTC spot ETFs in early 2024 and ETH spot ETFs in July of that year allowed crypto traders to enjoy the title “Distinguished US Stock Trader,” then the emergence of stock tokenization platforms this year truly paved the “last mile” of US stock on-chain trading, making it possible for even a “crypto trader” like me to diversify assets via on-chain tokenization.

Odaily Planet Daily previously detailed the mechanism behind xStocks and tokenized US stock trading in the article “10 Questions for xStocks: What Are We Really Trading When Trading US Stock Tokens?” Looking back, the core principles and asset management models remain largely unchanged. What’s different now is that traditional giants are beginning their awakening after numerous US stock tokenization platforms.

10 Questions for xStocks summary

First, major crypto asset managers like Galaxy have actively issued stock tokens; second, the NASDAQ, with a quarterly trading volume of around 10 trillion USD, has proactively submitted “tokenized stock trading applications” to the SEC. In the broad arena of asset issuance and trading, traditional giants are highly perceptive.

Meanwhile, two major segments dominate the crypto native market:

One is the “on-chain Perp DEX war” following Hyperliquid—Aster on BNB Chain contributed another wealth-building miracle with a fierce “price push,” with many claiming they “sold millions of USD worth of assets.”

The other is the two major wealth-building wonders in the stablecoin sector: one is Plasma, supported by “Tether CEO,” launching “wealth management savings activities” that offered generous airdrops, with some deposits of just 1 USD earning over 9000 USD worth of XPL tokens—an ROI of over 900x; the other is Trump’s family crypto project WLFI, which officially launched, leveraging its stablecoin USD1’s momentum, where early public offerings at 0.05 USD and 0.15 USD saw returns of up to 6x.

Today, looking at the prices of XPL and WLFI, it’s hard not to feel nostalgic. According to Coingecko, XPL is now around 0.17 USD, down nearly 90% from its peak of 1.67 USD; WLFI is around 0.15 USD, down nearly 50% from its peak of 0.33 USD.

In those moments of opportunity, many did not realize that a “legendary epic” of massive liquidations was waiting for the crypto industry—far surpassing any previous crashes like 3.12, 5.19, or 9.4—actual forced liquidations involved at least 30 to 40 billion USD.

Of course, risk contains opportunity. As Odaily Planet Daily mentioned in “Who Is Making Billions from the ‘Knife-Edge’ Crash? Opportunities for Wealth Are Right in Front of You,” and “The Whale Duel Behind the Largest Crash in Crypto History: The Air Force Drinks and Draws Swords,” whether through high leverage shorts or bottom-fishing, many have profited from this chaos.

Risk also signifies opportunity

When the “TACO” style trading (Trump Always Chicken Out) was once again validated, the crypto market began a slow recovery. Unlike before, many traders had already lost most of their assets during that “Black Friday” and could not recover, leaving the scene in gloom.

In such a bleak environment, prediction platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi gradually became one of the few hot spots and trading stages in the crypto market. Their valuations soared within months. After completing a new Series E funding round led by Paradigm, Kalshi’s valuation skyrocketed to 11 billion USD; Polymarket, which previously raised 2 billion USD from ICE Group, is seeking a new round of funding valued at 12 to 15 billion USD.

In the cycle, the crypto market has returned to Polymarket—successfully predicting Trump’s election in the 2024 US presidential race—and the process of mainstreaming and popularizing crypto continues.

What’s the future? US regulation and traditional finance still largely determine the tide’s direction and the duration of seasons. As crypto prospectors, we can only follow the waves, assess the situation, and perhaps find our own treasure. Original / Odaily Planet Daily