2025 Reflections: The Year Crypto Rewrote the Financial Rulebook

Crypto didn't just rally in 2025—it staged a hostile takeover of traditional finance's narrative. Forget cautious optimism; this was the year digital assets moved from the fringe to the financial core, proving the skeptics weren't just wrong—they were obsolete.

The Institutional Floodgates Swing Wide Open

What started as a trickle became a deluge. Major asset managers, once hesitant, launched dedicated crypto funds. Pension funds quietly allocated single-digit percentages—a move that translated into billions. The infrastructure built during the 'Crypto Winter' finally bore fruit, handling volume that would have crippled systems just two years prior. It wasn't just adoption; it was normalization.

DeFi Eats the World (Starting with Stodgy Middlemen)

Decentralized finance protocols didn't ask for permission. They built parallel systems for lending, trading, and asset management that operate 24/7, cut out traditional custodians, and offered yields that made savings accounts look like a joke—a cynical jab at finance's favorite pastime: paying you nothing for your money while lending it out for profit. Real-world assets, from treasury bonds to real estate, flooded onto chains, creating a new, transparent market for everything.

The Regulatory Reckoning: Clarity or Control?

Global regulators stopped debating *if* and started scrambling on *how*. A patchwork of frameworks emerged, with some jurisdictions offering clear licensing (looking at you, forward-thinking FSA-style regimes) while others defaulted to blunt enforcement. The tension between innovation and investor protection defined the political theater, but the underlying message was clear: crypto is a permanent, regulated fixture.

Beyond the Hype: Utility Finds Its Footing

The conversation shifted decisively from price speculation to practical utility. Tokenization moved beyond NFTs for profile pictures to representing shares, credentials, and supply chain artifacts. Scalability solutions delivered, finally making micro-transactions and complex smart contracts feasible for millions. The tech stopped being the bottleneck.

So, as 2025 closes, the reflection is stark. The question is no longer if crypto will survive, but how thoroughly it will transform the architecture of value itself. The old guard can adapt, or be bypassed. The market has already voted.

We’re making our next big bet.

The theme of the last decade can be described as “assets moving onchain.” $300B moved into stablecoins. $100B moved into DeFi. Another $50B flowed into perps and related markets.

Now, we’ve entered a new era. 

We believe the theme of the next decade will be real businesses building onchain.

If you squint, you can see what it looks like. Startups like Hyperliquid, Pump, and AAVE generate hundreds of millions of revenue with just dozens of employees. Fintechs like Robinhood, Stripe, and Klarna launched their own chains and stablecoins. Institutions like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, JPMorgan all transact on open, public blockchains. 

The world is moving onchain. Slowly at first, then all at once. 

In the next decade, we will go from $10 billion in onchain revenue today to more than $1 trillion. 

Combined with AI, that shift onchain will create an explosion of opportunity and entirely new types of companies that have never existed before.

We’ve spent this past year positioning ourselves to win what we believe is the biggest opportunity we have ever seen since starting Blockworks.

The problem as we see it today: Even the most talented teams have to run multibillion-dollar protocols and onchain businesses on a patchwork of block explorers, internally built dashboards, and broken spreadsheets. 

There is no single operating system and software platform for teams to run their business on. 

Blockworks is going to solve that. 

Our next phase is about turning the data platform we have built into a true operating system for onchain businesses. 

We are building for a world where Blockworks is running the Core data and workflows for millions of onchain businesses. 

More on this in 2026!

2025 by the numbers

Thanks to our team, 2025 was our strongest year in our history. A few highlights:

Day after day

When we started Blockworks in December 2017, the mission was simple: Build the best source of crypto insights and information for investors and professionals. 

Since then, we’ve built a global team of nearly 100 people. Millions of people listen to our podcasts. Tens of thousands have attended our events. Hundreds of institutions read our research and consume our data. 

If you zoom out, the story of Blockworks is not a string of funding rounds, product launches, or headline hires. We are a company that has survived multiple bear markets, stayed default alive, and quietly compounded into something much more ambitious than we ever believed possible.

As we head into 2026, we are more convinced than ever that crypto will improve the world by broadening access to assets, increasing transparency, and reducing financial friction. Blockworks will play an instrumental role in that world.

For those that want it, the crypto opportunity has truly never been bigger or more important to humanity.

See you in the trenches,

Jason and Mike

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