Review of the 10 Hottest Global Crypto Narratives in 2025

SuperEx_Media ✔️ · 2025-12-18T12:42:27Z

#Crypto #CryptoNarratives

December is the final month of 2025, which means it’s time for a round of year-end retrospectives. We started this series with a review of the crypto regulatory progress across major countries and regions in 2025. The follow-up topics in this series will include (but are not limited to): a stablecoin market review, a Memecoin market review, a recap of major crypto security incidents, a SuperEx platform review, and more.

Today is Episode 2 of this series. The theme is: “A Review of the 10 Hottest Global Crypto Narratives in 2025.” It includes ten major narratives from this year — each of which has had a profound impact on the global crypto industry.

1) DAT: Digital Asset Treasury — the most controversial yet most penetrating narrative of 2025

In 2025, the crypto industry saw, for the first time, a truly meaningful wave of Bitcoin and digital asset holdings driven by companies as the primary vehicle. The industry summarized this phenomenon as DAT (Digital Asset Treasury). This is not the traditional idea of “a company buying some coins as an investment,” but rather a new business model that treats digital assets as the core anchor on a corporate balance sheet.

DAT companies represented by Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) no longer view BTC as a “risk asset,” but as a long-term monetary reserve, a capital-structure tool, and a financing lever. In 2025, this model began to be imitated by more listed companies, pre-IPO companies, and SPAC targets — DAT evolved from an isolated case into a broad phenomenon.

The real impact of DAT is that it pushes Bitcoin from a “speculative instrument” into a corporate financial tool. When companies can continuously convert fiat capital into on-chain assets through issuing debt, equity, preferred shares, convertible notes, and other instruments, the demand source for Bitcoin undergoes a structural shift.

Of course, this model also faced intense skepticism in 2025: when markets pull back, stock prices fall, and mNAV approaches 1.0, could DAT companies become a systemic risk? It is precisely this controversy that made DAT one of the most discussed — and most institutionally meaningful — crypto narratives of 2025.

2) Crypto IPOs return to the spotlight: Circle lists in August, marking the official return of the “compliance narrative”

In August 2025, Circle successfully went public under the ticker CRCL, becoming the most symbolic crypto IPO event of the year. This was not merely a financing event, but a shift in market attitude.

After the deleveraging, defoaming, and de-scam cycle of 2022–2024, capital markets in 2025 began asking a question again: “Which crypto companies can truly be accepted by the traditional financial system?”

Circle’s listing provided a standard answer:

clear cash flows
a compliant stablecoin business
deep integration with the traditional banking system
no dependence on high-risk DeFi leverage

From an industry perspective, the meaning of Circle’s IPO is this: the crypto industry no longer proves itself only through ETFs — it also re-enters mainstream capital narratives through public-market pricing at the corporate level. After 2025, “who can IPO” itself becomes an invisible industry screening mechanism.

3) Stablecoins: competition for the “dollar protocol layer”

If you could pick only one 2025 narrative that is the most “invisible yet most important,” it would be stablecoins.

In 2025, stablecoins found true large-scale product-market fit (PMF) for the first time, and they were no longer confined to crypto trading scenarios. Three forces pushed the stablecoin breakout simultaneously:

payment and settlement demand: cross-border, e-commerce, on-chain games, Agent payments
white-label stablecoin issuance: enterprises, banks, and platforms can rapidly customize “their own dollars”
regulatory clarity gradually emerges: stablecoins are increasingly treated as “payment tools” rather than “securities”

Stablecoins in 2025 are no longer just a USDT/USDC duopoly story. They evolve into a “dollar protocol layer” competition: who can issue, who can custody, who can settle, and who can embed into real business flows becomes a new industrial division of labor.

4) A new stage of crypto regulation across countries and regions (already covered in the previous article)

This part has already been systematically reviewed in the previous article, so it will not be expanded here. But it must be emphasized: 2025 is the watershed year when regulation shifts from “crackdown-style” to “structural” regulation.

5) Tokenized deposits: traditional banks’ on-chain attempts

As stablecoins began to erode the payment and settlement domain, traditional banks did not sit still.

In 2025, banking systems in multiple countries began pushing Tokenized Deposits, attempting to introduce on-chain efficiency while retaining regulatory advantages.

The essence of tokenized deposits is: funds remain inside the banking system, but settlement, transfer, and reconciliation happen on-chain. This is the most direct response from banks to stablecoins.

It does not pursue decentralization — it pursues on-chain efficiency under a regulatory framework. And the outcome of this competition may determine who defines “on-chain dollars” over the next decade.

6) Payment networks: from stablecoin competition to network competition

In 2025, the stablecoin war is no longer a war of a single asset — it upgrades into a war of payment networks.

CPN (Crypto Payment Network) and Global Dollar Network represent two different routes:

one is more crypto-native and open-network oriented
one is more institution-led and compliance-first

Meanwhile, stablecoin-native chains begin to rise. They optimize around payments, settlement, low gas, and deterministic finality, rather than pursuing general-purpose smart contracts.

This change means: blockchains are differentiating from “universal computing platforms” into “finance-specific infrastructure.”

7) Everything goes on-chain: tokenized stocks and RWA move from concept to reality

In 2025, RWA is no longer just “a story” — it begins to enter an asset-structure adjustment phase:

tokenized stocks, fund shares, treasuries, and commodity certificates gradually show real trading volume
regulators’ attitude shifts from “whether to allow” to “how to regulate”

This marks the first time blockchains truly touch the underlying structure of global assets, rather than only circulating within the crypto ecosystem itself.

😎 Agentic Commerce truly lands: payments enter the chat box, and “trust” becomes infrastructure

In 2025, AI Agents are no longer just “helping you search for information.” They begin to trade, place orders, pay, and settle on your behalf. When AI enters payment scenarios, the question is no longer “can it transfer value,” but:

who can be trusted
who can represent you to make decisions
who verifies the boundaries of authorization

Here, blockchain, stablecoins, and DID form a closed loop for the first time — and trust begins to be infrastructuralized.

9) Prediction markets return as kings: from betting tools to information markets

In 2025, prediction markets regain attention, but they are no longer simply viewed as “gambling.” They begin to be seen as:

sentiment aggregation tools
risk pricing mechanisms
decentralized information discovery systems

In elections, policy, and macroeconomics, prediction markets demonstrate stronger forward-looking signals than polls. Examples such as Polymarket and Trump Media Company became focal points, signaling the return and expansion of prediction markets.

10) L2 reshuffling: entering the era of “sustainable business models”

In 2025, L2 finally moves beyond the phase of “who has higher TPS.” Capital markets and users ask a question together: how do you make money?

The result is: many L2s are eliminated, while those that focus on specific scenarios and have revenue models remain. You could say that the generic narrative gives way to vertical integration — this is a brutal but healthy reshuffling.