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2025 – The Mainstream Year For Crypto
A glance at the headlines in the last 12 months indicates a pattern of institutional and retail acceptance of cryptocurrencies. At the start of the year, Donald Trump launched his memecoin before his inauguration as US President, sparking a frenzy among retail investors.
Within hours of the launch, the TRUMP coin reached a market capitalization of over $14 billion. Melania Trump also launched her memecoin, pulling impressive metrics to clinch a peak market cap of over $8 billion.
The start of Trump’s administration saw the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shut down a string of high-profile cases against leading cryptocurrency providers. Things reached a crescendo after Trump granted a presidential pardon to Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ).
Trump’s Executive Order for a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve marked a major inflection point for the industry. Meanwhile, the rollout of a crypto innovation exemption policy and green-lighting pension funds to invest in digital assets signaled a broad acceptance by the Trump administration.
 
Still on the regulatory side, the signing of the GENIUS Act to introduce a comprehensive stablecoin framework triggered a new wave of optimism for the industry. Recall, stablecoin issuer Circle went public with a strong debut that far exceeded its IPO valuation.
A key feature of 2025 was the rise of digital asset treasuries (DATs), with stock-crypto correlation logic becoming the core of market speculation. Meanwhile, stock tokenization soared in 2025 while prediction markets recorded an impressive upswing in the second half of the year.
Black Swan Events Dampen Optimism
Amid the milestones reached in 2025, market enthusiasm took quite a pummeling. Early in the year, Bybit suffered the largest-ever crypto hack that cost it nearly $1.5 billion worth of digital assets.
As prices recovered through the year, the industry faced a steep market crash on October 11 with single-day liquidation exceeding $19 billion.
Bitcoin erased its yearly gains, falling from its all-time high of $126K to reach lows of $86K in what has been a torrid quarter for the largest cryptocurrency. Other cryptocurrencies did not fare any better with ETH, BNB, XRP, SOL, and ADA indicating underwhelming price performances since the start of the year.
Source: https://zycrypto.com/recap-here-are-the-biggest-stories-that-shaped-crypto-in-2025/