Forward the Original Title‘The Crypto Landscape in 2025: What’s Working and What’s Not’

Crypto is in a more mature and defined stage than ever before. While hype cycles still exist, many areas of the industry have signs of product-market fit (PMF), showcasing real-world utility beyond speculation. Others remain in an experimental or problematic phase, with unresolved challenges holding back adoption.

This post attempts to break down the key enablers driving adoption, the verticals that have succeeded, and those that still face significant roadblocks.

Core Tech Enablers: The Foundation for Crypto’s Growth

1. Cheap Block Space: L2s and High-Throughput L1s

One of the biggest advancements in crypto has been drastically lower transaction costs. The introduction of scalable Layer 2 (L2) rollups and high-throughput Layer 1 (L1) blockchains has made it easier for developers to build efficient, user-friendly applications.

• L2 Scaling Solutions — Ethereum rollups like Arbitrum (arbitrum.io), Optimism (optimism.io), and Polygon (polygon.com) provide faster, cheaper transactions in a near maximally permissionless and decentralised fashion.
• Alternative High-Throughput L1s — Solana (solana.com), Aptos (aptosfoundation.org), and Sui (sui.io) leverage parallel execution and alternative decentralisation design trade-offs to enable high-speed, low-cost transactions.

🔹 Why it’s growing: Lower transaction costs remove barriers for both developers and users, leading to increased adoption across DeFi, gaming, and tokenisation.

2. Wallet Advancements & Frictionless UX

One of the largest barriers to crypto adoption has been complicated onboarding, but that mostly changed and improving further in coming months.

• Smart contract wallets like Safe (safe.global) and Coinbase Wallet (coinbase-smart-wallet) introduce features like gasless transactions, auto-recovery, and multi-signature security, sponsoring of user gas fees and chain abstraction.
• Social logins and passkey authentication (via tools like Web3Auth, Privy and others) allow email and phone number-based wallet access, removing the need for seed phrases.
• Crosschain intents— Cutting edge wallets and DApps support cross-chain infrastructure and EIP such as erc7683 enabling seamless multiple chain balance spending and execution through intent based mechanisms.

🔹 Why it’s growing: Lowering friction removes barriers to entry, bringing in non-technical users and making crypto applications feel as smooth as traditional fintech.

Crypto 2025 Landscape: Proven Crypto Use Cases with Strong Growth

Bitcoin ETFs: The Institutional Adoption Catalyst

One of the biggest financial milestones for Bitcoin has been the approval and launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US, which have triggered massive institutional investment. For the first time, regulatory clarity is helping crypto rather than hindering it.

• BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale now offer regulated Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, making it easier for hedge funds, pension funds, and retail investors to gain exposure.
• Inflow of capital — These ETFs have led to billions in inflows, further cementing Bitcoin as a new primitive for the financial industry. Appearing particularly favourable in the current times of uncertainty.
• Legitimacy in traditional finance — ETFs give institutions a regulated, tax-efficient way to hold Bitcoin & Ethereum, mirroring gold’s early ETF adoption. Other crypto based ETFs will inevitably launch over the next few years.

🔹 Why it’s growing: Bitcoin is now seen as “digital gold”, Ethereum may be seen as “yield earning Bonds”. Broad institutional interest has validate its role as a long-term hedge against inflation and fiat instability. With clearer rules, institutions feel safer entering the space, leading to more liquidity, broader adoption, and increased integration between crypto and traditional finance.

Stablecoins: The Killer Application for Payments

Stablecoins have become crypto’s most widely used financial product, solving real-world inefficiencies in payments and remittances.

• $220B+ in circulation — USDT (tether.to) and USDC (circle.com) dominate global transactions.
• Payments & remittances — Apps like Strike (strike.me) use stablecoins to send money across borders instantly with near-zero fees.
• Adoption in TradFi —Coinbase with Base bridging TradFi to DeFi, PayPal launched PYUSD, and banks are exploring tokenised deposits.
• Better rails — SpaceX utilises USDC to manage payments from Starlink customers in countries with volatile or less stable currencies. Effectively mitigating foreign exchange risks and streamlines the payment process.

🔹 Why it’s growing: Stablecoins are a better, faster, and cheaper way to move money than traditional banking. IThe end user will never know what rail they are on, but stable coins will undoubtedly replace old, slow and less composable money rails.

DeFi: The Foundation of On-Chain Finance

Despite hacks and volatility, DeFi protocols remain the backbone of on-chain finance. A continued growing industry which I remain a firm believer in its advantages in permissionless, fair financial services.

• On-chain lending & borrowing — Aave (aave.com) and Compound (compound.finance) and many others enable instant, permissionless credit markets.
• Automated market makers (AMMs) — Uniswap (uniswap.org) and Curve (curve.fi) process billions in daily swaps without intermediaries.
• Real-world asset (RWA) tokenisation — Ondo Finance (ondo.finance) and Maple Finance (maple.finance) bring traditional finance on-chain.

🔹 Why it’s growing: Faster, more efficient, and globally accessible financial rails, with higher yields than traditional banks. Composable money enables new, interesting and novel models alongside leveraging existing concepts.

Tokenised Real-World Assets (RWA): The Future of Institutional Adoption

RWAs represent one of the biggest areas of institutional interest, with major players tokenising bonds, real estate, and private credit.

• Private Credit & Bonds — Companies like Centrifuge (centrifuge.io) tokenise debt instruments, making capital more accessible.
• Fractionalised Ownership — Platforms allow users to own fractions of real-world assets like real estate.
• Collectibles as RWA — Players such as countyard.io enable vaulting, tokenisation and trading of collectibles.

🔹 Why it’s growing: Bringing traditional finance on-chain makes capital markets more liquid, efficient, and transparent.

Memecoins: Speculation as a Feature

Despite criticism, memecoins are currently crypto’s most persistent speculative asset.

• Tokens like PEPE, DOGE, and SHIBA achieve multi-billion dollar valuations. Thousands of new MEMEs launching daily in some cases.
• Trading volume on meme coins often outpaces “serious” tokens with even Presidents and their entourage joining in on the game!

🔹 Why it’s growing: Speculation is a core human behavior. Memecoins tap into virality, culture, and the gamified casino aspect of crypto trading. “Meme Coins” and “Meme Infrastructure” will continue to ebb and flow through the ecosystem into the future.

Digital Product Passports (DPPs) & Tokenised Goods

Luxury brands and enterprises are using blockchain-based verification systems for authenticity and supply chain transparency.

• DPP as a Service (DPPasS) — Platforms like Arianne, Crossmint along with several non-blockchain DPP as a Service (DPaS) platforms.
• Luxury at the forefront — LVMH, Prada, Breitling and Cartier have embraced this technology along with many other giants of the luxury world.
• EU Regulation — a strong driver through European wider DPP adoption however if the EU does deregulate, I could imagine DPP regs being pushed back. Regardless of this, the medium of blockchain still enables many use cases and requirements of product passports.

🔹 Why it’s growing: Enterprises want transparent, anti-counterfeit tracking, and upcoming regulations (like the EU’s DPP initiative) are pushing adoption.

What’s Still Problematic?

While some sectors have proven their value, other areas of crypto remain uncertain, overhyped, or stuck in early-stage experimentation. These sectors face technical, regulatory, or adoption challenges that must be solved before they can reach mainstream viability.

🔸 DAOs — Governance participation is low, decision-making is slow, and treasury mismanagement is common. While some DAOs (ENS, Gitcoin) function well, most struggle to balance decentralisation with efficiency. I am bullish on the blend on “AI & DAOs” as a possible path to solve these inefficiencies. Irony being that it may actually require that it needs AI to really show the true colours of the DAO movement.

🔸 AI & Crypto — Beyond speculation, practical use cases remain limited from first impressions. Decentralised AI projects like Bittensor and Render Network are interesting but niche, and most AI tokens lack real adoption beyond extractative MEME AI bots. The intersection of AI and crypto still needs a breakthrough use case.

🔸 Gaming & Metaverse — Web3 gaming hasn’t lived up to its promises. Play-to-earn is mostly dead, and blockchain integration often makes games worse. The metaverse hype has faded, with high-profile failures (Meta’s VR pivot, Decentraland’s stagnation) proving that users don’t want digital worlds just for the sake of it. I am hopeful that wearable glasses more focus on augmented reality may provide a hybrid meta-metaverse.

Final Thoughts: What’s Next?

As crypto evolves, the next wave of growth is likely to be shaped by major breakthroughs, regulatory shifts, and emerging narratives that are still forming. Some speculative thoughts on the future …

🔹 On-Chain Finance Will Expand — Stablecoins continue to grow at speed, tokenised RWAs will merge traditional capital markets with DeFi, potentially attracting trillions in institutional money movements. The question is how fast regulation will enable this shift.

🔹 Bitcoin’s Role Will Transform — With ETFs opening up institutional investment, Bitcoin could chip away at the world’s digital reserve asset market cap — or remain an unscalable store of value, overshadowed by more functional blockchains.

🔹 Staked ETH ETFs Will Disrupt TradFi — Once staking-enabled ETFs launch, Ethereum could be the first crypto asset treated like a yield-bearing security, reshaping investment portfolios and challenging bond markets.

🔹 Identity Will Become Critical — As AI deepfakes, fraud, and bot-driven activity surge, crypto-native identity solutions (zk-proofs, WorldCoin, DID standards) will either gain traction — or remain a regulatory nightmare and we will become slaves to our AI puppet masters or simply corporation and governments.

🔹 Tokenised Goods & Consumer Adoption — Will NFTs evolve beyond collectibles and become embedded in real-world commerce? If brands and enterprises successfully integrate Digital Product Passports and find enough value for customers, blockchain could quietly become a standard in retail for several ecommerce use-cases.

🔹 Memecoins & Speculation Aren’t Going Anywhere — Despite criticism, memecoins prove that crypto thrives on gambling, community, and viral narratives. Whether this leads to new forms of social finance or just endless cycles of speculation remains to be seen, I would not bet against the casino though.

The next few years will define whether crypto fully integrates into the global financial system or remains a high-risk, high-reward niche. Which of these narratives will dominate the next cycle? The answer is still being written. 🚀

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