2025 Crypto Boom: Fresh BTC ATH Sparks Wave of Market Milestones

Bitcoin's latest all-time high isn't just a number—it's a detonator. The crypto market's gearing up for a chain reaction of breakthroughs as institutional FOMO meets retail frenzy.

DeFi's sleeping giants wake

With BTC as the rising tide, altcoins are finding their legs again. Ethereum's layer-2 solutions finally deliver on their speed promises, while Solana's outage-free streak hits triple digits—much to everyone's surprise.

The institutional floodgates creak

BlackRock's crypto AUM doubles in 90 days as pension funds scramble to allocate before the train leaves the station. Meanwhile, Goldman traders joke about 'getting rekt' in the break room—some things never change.

Regulators fumble the bag (again)

The SEC's 'regulation by lawsuit' approach collapses under its own weight, leaving a patchwork of state-level frameworks. Wyoming's digital asset laws suddenly look prescient—take that, Wall Street.

This isn't 2021's bull run—it's the mainnet launch of crypto's real-world economy. Just don't look at the stablecoin yields unless you enjoy existential dread.

From there, Glover said he expects a subsequent correction to between $91,000 and $109,000 over time before ultimately moving higher again. 

Benchmark’s Mark Palmer sees the most significant upcoming catalyst for the broader crypto ecosystem as the CLARITY Act — a framework to determine whether crypto tokens are commodities or securities — becoming law. Casey told us about “Crypto Week” approaching.  

“With the possibility of a huge regulatory rug-pull removed, institutional investors WOULD have a green light to invest in the space in earnest,” Palmer told me. 

When it comes to M&A in the space, an Architect Partners report highlights that the 78 crypto M&A transactions in Q2 was by far a record. You might recall us writing about Ripple’s buy of Hidden Road being one of a growing number of crypto-TradFi intersections. A big crypto-crypto deal was Coinbase acquiring derivatives giant Deribit.

Architect Partners founder Eric Risley believes we’re at the beginning of a long-term uptrend in crypto M&A as the value prop for crypto/blockchain has gained broader acceptance.

“Certainly quarter to quarter will fluctuate, but the fundamental strategic drivers of M&A are now quite clear,” he told me. “Participants will include existing crypto businesses and more importantly, traditional financial services organizations of all stripes — banks, traditional broker-dealers and payment businesses.”

A major open question, Risely added, is what the next generation of dapps look like — beyond those focused on price speculation and payments.

As we chew on that one, the assets under management in crypto investment products hit an all-time peak of $188 billion at the rough halfway point, CoinShares data shows. 

And that was before this week. It’s been 18 months (to the day) since spot bitcoin ETFs made their US debut; net inflows stand at $51 billion (after yesterday’s near-record daily mark of ~$1.2 billion). US ether ETFs also saw their second-best daily inflow total yesterday, at $383 million.

More crypto ETFs (single-asset and index) are expected to come this year, but timelines remain up in the air. On that, Grayscale shared some feelings with the SEC.

Investors preferring crypto exposure via equities will be watching for more public listings after Circle’s IPO. We’ll keep an eye on companies like Gemini and Kraken.

And continuing the tokenization conversation, Bitwise and VanEck execs had predicted the tokenized securities market to hit $50 billion in 2025. It’s about halfway there. 

“If Robinhood is rolling out tokenized trading, you can bet that Charles Schwab and others are studying it aggressively,” Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan wrote in a memo this week. “I’d expect a wave of additional announcements this Fall.”

A Schwab spokesperson didn’t have specific plans to share, but told me the company is “actively tracking and exploring a number of opportunities in the digital asset space, including tokenization.”

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