Reflecting on 2025: The Year in Crypto

As 2025 comes to a close, cryptocurrency continued its steady transition from a niche market into a more established part of the global financial system. The year brought meaningful steps forward in regulatory clarity, deeper institutional involvement, and important technical progress across major networks. At the same time, the market reminded investors that volatility and risk remain core features of this asset class.

Below is a balanced look at the developments that defined crypto in 2025 and how these developments could inform discussions in 2026. 

Regulation remained a major story in 2025, but the tone shifted from uncertainty toward clearer frameworks in several key jurisdictions.

In the United States, lawmakers advanced and passed significant legislation for VRCAs, commonly known as stablecoins. The GENIUS Act, reported as signed into law in July 2025, introduced the first comprehensive federal rules for payment VRCAs, including oversight standards and issuer requirements. Broader market-structure efforts, including the CLARITY Act, also moved forward, aiming to better define the line between securities and commodities in crypto, though full implementation will take time.  

Across Europe, the rollout of MiCA continued to bring a more uniform licensing and compliance environment for crypto service providers across EU member states, helping reduce fragmentation for institutions operating region-wide.  

Globally, the regulatory divide didn’t disappear. Some regions doubled down on becoming crypto hubs, while others maintained tighter restrictions. Overall, though, 2025 felt like a year where policy began to provide more structure—without removing the need for careful investor judgment. 

Institutional adoption continued to expand in 2025, building on the ETF momentum that began in 2024.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted substantial capital over the year, reinforcing Bitcoin’s growing role in investor portfolios. However, flows were not one-directional. As prices corrected late in the year, ETFs saw notable outflows, underscoring how closely crypto markets seem tied to broader risk sentiment.  

A symbolic milestone came when traditionally conservative firms softened their stance. Vanguard, began allowing clients access to certain third-party crypto ETFs in 2025, highlighting how investor demand and market infrastructure have matured.  

For Canadian investors, these global shifts matter because they shape liquidity, price discovery, and long-term adoption trends. But they also reinforce the importance of using regulated platforms and staying informed as the market evolves. 

VRCAs continued to strengthen their role in market infrastructure in 2025. With clearer rules emerging in the U.S. and other jurisdictions, VRCAs increasingly served as settlement tools for trading, cross-border payments, and on-chain financial products.  

While the market remains concentrated among a few large issuers, the broader direction was clear: VRCAs are becoming less of a “crypto-only” tool and more of a bridge between digital assets and traditional finance. At the same time, VRCA systems still depend on trust, transparency, and sound reserves—areas regulators are now targeting more directly. 

2025 was another year of noticeable technical maturation, especially around usability and transaction costs.

Ethereum’s Layer-2 ecosystem continued to expand, with networks like Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and zkSync driving cheaper and faster transactions than Ethereum mainnet alone could support. This trend helped keep Ethereum central to DeFi and on-chain activity while improving the end-user experience.

Restaking also emerged as a notable Ethereum-native innovation in 2025. Protocols such as EigenLayer gained traction by allowing staked ETH to secure additional services. This introduced new ways for networks and users to participate in security, along with additional complexity and risk considerations. As the space grew quickly, it drew more attention to how restaking may concentrate or redistribute security across the ecosystem.

Outside Ethereum, high-throughput Layer-1 networks kept competing on speed, cost, and developer tools. The result was a broader market where users increasingly had viable choices depending on the use case. 

Tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) expanded meaningfully in 2025, especially in areas like U.S. Treasuries, private credit, and regulated funds. Various industry estimates put RWA tokenization in the tens of billions of dollars, large enough to matter, but still early compared to traditional capital markets.  

The importance of this trend isn’t only size, it’s direction. Institutions are experimenting with on-chain settlement and fractional ownership because it offers faster settlement, more transparent accounting, and wider access. If regulatory alignment continues, RWAs may become one of the clearest long-term adoption paths for blockchain. 

Crypto markets in 2025 reflected both the asset class’s growing maturity and its persistent instability. Bitcoin set fresh highs during the year, reaching a peak around $176,000 CAD before turning lower later in 2025. By early December, Bitcoin was trading in the mid-$110,000s to high-$120,000s after a sharp downturn. The drawdown highlighted how leverage, macro conditions, and shifting ETF flows can amplify moves in both directions. Historical price levels are included for context only, can vary across venues and timeframes, and past performance is not indicative of future results.

Ethereum retained its position as the primary smart-contract platform, as indicated by its dominance in total value locked (68%) and VRCA circulation (54%). Meanwhile, several altcoin categories saw cycles of strong speculation followed by rapid cooling—an ongoing reminder that fundamentals and liquidity still vary widely across the market.  

Sustainability remained an active topic of discussion in 2025. Proof-of-Stake networks continued to see development progress, highlighting ongoing innovation in lower-energy consensus models, even as Proof-of-Work networks, led by Bitcoin, remained the largest segment of the market. Meanwhile, Bitcoin mining saw continued investment in renewables and methane-capture strategies in some regions, though environmental debates remain part of the long-term landscape.

On the social side, blockchain use in remittances, peer-to-peer payments, and transparent fundraising continued to grow—less visible than price headlines but meaningful for real-world adoption. 

2025 reinforced that cryptocurrency is maturing. Technically, institutionally, and regulatorily. VRCA frameworks and tokenization growth showed how crypto rails are increasingly intersecting with traditional finance. Scaling improvements and restaking innovations pushed networks toward better usability. Yet market volatility, leverage risk, and uneven global regulation remained very real constraints.

As we head into 2026, the industry’s direction appears less like a question of survival and more like a question of integration, in our view: how quickly will crypto infrastructure blend into everyday financial systems, and under what rules? The answers will depend on technology progress, market structure, and evolving regulation.

At Ndax, our focus remains the same as the market evolves: providing Canadians with access to digital assets through a regulated platform, transparent operations, and tools designed to support informed decision-making in both calm and volatile markets.