Forward the Original Title: Decoding the 2024-25 Crypto Yearbook: Old and New Powers Join Forces at the Table, 12 MEMEs Chronicle a Year of Opportunities

12 memes images telling a whole year of opportunities and fun stories.

After reading so many annual reviews and outlooks from various institutions, are you feeling a bit fatigued?

Recently, CoinMarketCap released a 2024-25 Crypto Market Yearbook, summarizing the major innovations, market-shaking moments, and unforgettable milestones of the past year, while also providing insights into 2025.

But what’s interesting is that this yearbook appears lively and interactive:

In the review section, CMCpresents the major events of the past year with a more creative, vibrant, and unconventional design style; while in the outlook section, instead of relying on expert predictions like other institutions, CMC hands over the decision-making to the market – you get to vote on the trends that might happen in 2025.

For example, which projects do you think will make big headlines in 25 years? Will it be the purely meme-based Fartcoin, or the Trump-related World Liberty Financial?

Additionally, the yearbook contains numerous charts and analyses that are worth collecting. TechFlow has carefully curated and interpreted them, presenting the key insights as follows.

Suits & Ties vs. Laser Eyes – Both Are Winners

Throughout 2024, from the perspective of leeks, you may be thinking about the rise and fall of certain coins; and amid the turbulence of the entire crypto market, the yearbook summarizes a more macro trend —- “Suits & Ties VS Laser Eyes”.

This is indeed a very accurate cultural comparison.

Suits & Ties represent the traditional financial world (Wall Street) and symbolize conservative, professional, and established financial institutions; typical representatives include traditional financial institutions such as BlackRock and Goldman Sachs.

Laser Eyes is an iconic cultural symbol in the cryptocurrency community. It originated from the meme of Bitcoin supporters adding red laser eyes to their avatars on social media. It represents cryptocurrency believers and emerging digital asset supporters.

In 2024, both groups of people are actually winners.

Two seemingly opposing groups have achieved true integration for the first time in terms of assets:

Traditional financial institutions (such as BlackRock) began to launch Bitcoin/Ethereum ETFs; Meme coins reached a billion-dollar market value and gained mainstream recognition.

Perhaps, Wall Street and Web3 are no longer adversaries but rather partners influencing each other at the same negotiation table.

As the previous opposition shifts toward sharing the pie, the crypto market has entered a new phase of maturity.

Best Crypto Story of the Year: The Rise of TON

Amid the wave of AI Agents, have you forgotten the success of TON last year?

Telegram’s corresponding Layer 1 blockchain experienced astronomical growth: its user base skyrocketed from 100,000 to an astonishing 17.4 million, securing the 8th spot on CoinMarketCap. With 1,400 dApps and seamless integration with Telegram’s 950 million users, TON has proven that it is not just another Layer 1 blockchain – it’s a movement.

And this movement also extends beyond the crypto community.

On August 24, 2024, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris, facing charges related to platform activity control. This news could have sent shockwaves of uncertainty, but instead, it sparked a fire.

The Telegram community rallied together, sharing messages of support across social platforms and launching a meme project that became a rallying cry for justice.

CMC’s yearbook also elevated the significance of this event:

“This was a declaration of the crypto spirit. It reminded people that decentralization is power, and the purest form of technology is a tool for freedom, not for misuse. At that moment, the TON community demonstrated to the world that it is more than just a blockchain – it is a revolution driven by resilience, unity, and unwavering belief.”

Although TON’s momentum has somewhat subsided, it remains one of the many shining highlights of last year.

Best Asset Class of the Year: Meme Coins Leading the Way with Diverse Growth

According to the yearbook, the top-performing asset classes and projects, considering their popularity, are as follows:

1. MEME Coins：

• MEW: The fifth largest Memecoin, leveraging unique token economics, 90% of LP tokens are destroyed, driving a stable price floor and market confidence.
• Popcat: The first cat-themed memecoin on Solana, reaching a $1 billion market cap and achieving a valuation of $120 million, pioneering the “cat coin” trend.
• WIF: Became the third-largest memecoin after DOGE and SHIB within four months, driven by strong community engagement and Elon Musk’s endorsement, reaching a $3 billion market cap.

1. Application Sectors:

• Polymarket: Leading the decentralized prediction market with $3.3B invested in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, dominating the space through smart contract automation and a KYC-free approach.
• Pump.fun: A revolutionary platform for memecoin creation on Solana, facilitating the launch of 3 million+ tokens, attracting 150,000 users, and generating substantial revenue. While impactful, the platform has also been controversial, sometimes fueling the most extreme meme culture.
• Binance Lauchpool: Enhance user engagement with innovative farming mechanisms for new tokens, including successful launches like Notcoin, Scroll, and Catizen.

1. Rising stars to watch:

• Story Protocol: Pioneering blockchain-based IP management, attracting over 100 projects while revolutionizing creator rights with programmable IP licensing infrastructure.
• Monad: The next generation Layer 1 achieves 10,000 TPS and is confirmed in 1 second, raising $225 million while introducing the innovative MonadBFT consensus mechanism.
• Berachain: Innovative Layer 1 with Proof-of-Liquidity Consensus Launches Artio Testnet, Attracting 230 active developer teams with unique DeFi integration.

And when it comes to innovation, from AI-enhanced DeFi to real-world asset platforms, from decentralized infrastructure to core scaling solutions – here are some projects pushing the boundaries of what’s possible on-chain:

AI Sector:

• Bittensor: Building a framework for decentralized AI development, scaling to 64 subnets while achieving full Ethereum compatibility and launching complex AI models.
• Prime: Leading the AI ​​gaming frontier with flagship games Parallel TCG and Colony, backed by OpenAI integration and the Wayfinder protocol for autonomous AI agents.
• Near: Build the world’s largest 1.4T parameter open source AI model, launch the Nightshade 2.0 upgrade, and achieve a 400% increase in transaction speed through innovative sharding.

DeFi sector:

• LIDO: Maintaining liquidity staking dominance by staking 9.8 million ETH, launching institutional solutions and reducing validator requirements from 32 ETH to 2.4 ETH.
• Pendle: Innovative yield tokenization in DeFi, increasing TVL from $230 million to $1 billion through liquidity re-collateralization of tokens and launch of Boros margin trading platform.
• EigenLayer: Dominated re-staking with 80% market share, TVL reached $12.9B, re-staking 4.5 million ETH, while completely changing the security model of Ethereum.

DePIN section:

• Render: The leading decentralized GPU rendering service has successfully migrated to Solana, expanding to live streaming and dynamic NFTs while serving major entertainment and architecture customers.
• Arweave: a permanent storage solution that maintains stable growth amid market fluctuations and pioneers the “pay once, permanent storage” data storage model.
• Aethir: A decentralized cloud computing platform that turns GPU power into a shared resource for gaming and AI, backed by a $100 million ecosystem fund and major partnerships with Nvidia and Filecoin.

RWA sector:

• Ondo: The first platform to tokenize over $500 million in U.S. Treasuries in four months, capturing over 25% of the market through partnerships with BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase.
• Clearpool: Redefined institutional liquidity in DeFi with over $500M in loans and launched Ozean, a layer 2 network built on OP Stack that enables RWA yields.
• Ethena: The synthetic USD protocol becomes the fourth largest stablecoin, pioneering risk management with delta neutral strategies for spot and short positions.

Infrastructure:

• SUI: Build the world’s largest 1.4T parameter open source AI model, launch the Nightshade 2.0 upgrade, and achieve a 400% increase in transaction speed through innovative sharding.
• Wormhole: Build the world’s largest 1.4T parameter open source AI model, launch the Nightshade 2.0 upgrade, and achieve a 400% increase in transaction speed through innovative sharding.
• Arkham: Launched an on-chain sustainable trading platform that leverages intelligence data, pioneering entity-based blockchain analytics.

Note: The selection of these projects reflects the yearbook’s perspective. Interested readers can visit the official website to explore each project’s details, accompanied by short explanatory videos.

Due to space limitations, some of the projects in different ecosystems will not be explained in detail. The nominations are as follows.

6 Must-See Charts to Navigate Through 2024

It’s well known that CoinMarketCap (CMC) excels in data analysis and visualization.

The yearbook also selected 6 pictures to depict the changes in the encryption market in 2024 from different data perspectives.

• The best and worst performing sectors: smart contracts and storage

Smart contract-related projects topped the list with a 6,000% return, while the worst performer was the storage sector, with an annual return of -24%.

• Bitcoin’s post-halving rally continues

Bitcoin halved in 2024, and the current price is around 63,000; everyone has witnessed what is happening now, from an experiment to 100,000 US dollars, throughout the 16 years of BTC’s continuous run.

-vTaking history as a guide, it seems that the turning point for the bear has not yet arrived.

Bitcoin and the broader market basically have a 3-4 year cycle. It can be clearly seen from the comparison in the figure below that the black line is the new cycle of 24 years, and the price of Bitcoin has not shown an obvious downward trend.

• Taking the lead in MicroStrategy, an overview of the Bitcoin holdings of global institutions/countries

MicroStrategy leads with an overwhelming 440,000 BTC, surpassing all other institutions and even exceeding any single country’s holdings. Meanwhile, the U.S. and China remain neck and neck in terms of Bitcoin reserves.

• The United States remains the country with the largest number of users of CMC websites

Unexpectedly, the second place is India.

• The most popular sector: Meme gradually gains its own value (blue area in the picture below)

12 Memes Images That Capture a Year of Opportunities and Fun Stories

There were a lot of opportunities last year. If you managed to seize even one or two, your story would be different today.

If you missed too many chances, take a moment to review the patterns and developments of the past year through these meme images.

• January: SEC is slower than hackers. The SEC’s Twitter was hacked, announcing Bitcoin ETF approval, and a few hours later, the real announcement followed.
• February: ETF approval means prices will rise? Bitcoin remained relatively dull throughout February.
• March: BTC hit a new high of $73K, but the degens were busy farming airdrops.
• April: Bitcoin holders tried to explain the halving to their friends and family—or just pulled them into it.
• May: Thought Ethereum was bearish? The SEC approved the ETH ETF!
• June: Iggy launched a token, kicking off the celebrity coin trend—call her “Mother.”
• July: The “real or fake Satoshi” debate resurfaced, with Craig Wright’s identity case making headlines again.
• August: Telegram’s founder was arrested in France, sparking memes and a new wave of political coins.
• September: CZ (Changpeng Zhao) returned, and so did market optimism.
• October: The famous “October pump” didn’t happen…
• November: Donald Trump made a comeback, giving crypto a seat in Washington and the White House.
• December: Interest rate cut expectations were gradually fulfilled, making the crypto market feel hopeful again.

Looking Ahead to 2025: What Are Your Choices and Predictions?

In this section, CoinMarketCap has taken an open voting approach, handing over the decision-making power for 2025 projections to users. Essentially, it acts as a market survey to see which sectors and projects people are optimistic about.

At the same time, some of the design issues in the outlook are as follows. Which projects do you think will win?

• Which projects do you think will come out on top?

Nominees: ETH, PEPE, Monad, Fartcoin, World Liberty Financial (Trump related).

• Which narrative will dominate the scene this year?

Nominees: NFT/Games, Quantum Computing Resistant Tokens, Crypto IPOs, RWAs, and AI Agents.

• Which assets will get ETF approval?

• Which project will quietly make it into the top 30 by market cap?

Nominees: Virtuals, FET, Pengu, Ethena, Ondo.

• Which old coins will bloom?

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