Crypto: The Next Market Cycle Could Trigger Historic Adoption—Here’s Why (2025)
- Is the Crypto Market One Cycle Away from Mass Adoption?
- Beyond Speculation: How Daily Blockchain Use Could Seal the Deal
- Challenges and Opportunities: The Road to 5 Billion
- FAQs: Your Crypto Adoption Questions Answered
The crypto world is buzzing with a bold prediction: the next bull run might not just be another price surge but a tipping point for mass adoption. Experts at the WAIB Summit 2025, including Thomas Prévot (Crypto.com) and Roy van Krimpen (OKX), argue that one more market cycle could catapult crypto users from 659 million in late 2024 to 5 billion within a decade. This isn’t just about speculation—it’s about real-world utility, blockchain maturity, and institutional buy-in. Below, we break down the key drivers, challenges, and what this means for the future of finance.
Is the Crypto Market One Cycle Away from Mass Adoption?
At the WAIB Summit 2025 in Monaco, Thomas Prévot, Crypto.com’s French operations lead, dropped a bombshell:He emphasized this wouldn’t just mean dormant wallets or casual traders but daily crypto use,For context, Crypto.com’s user base grew 300% in 2024 alone, per CoinMarketCap data. The panelists highlighted four catalysts:
- Speculation as a short-term engine: Roy van Krimpen (OKX) noted how the 2021 bull run saw prices quadruple in months purely on hype.
- Market cycles: Prévot predicts adoption will surge post-next bear market, when media attention peaks anew.
- Infrastructure readiness: Exchanges like BTCC and OKX now handle 10x the traffic of 2021, per TradingView metrics.
- Psychological thresholds: Crossing 1 billion users could mirror the internet’s 2000s household breakthrough.
Beyond Speculation: How Daily Blockchain Use Could Seal the Deal
Van Krimpen stressed that reaching 5 billion users requiresThink payments, ID verification, and peer-to-peer transfers—areas where projects like Ethereum’s LAYER 2s are making strides. Chintan Turakhia (Coinbase) added that user-friendly designs are critical:Meanwhile, analyst Willy Woo crunched the numbers:But let’s not ignore the elephant in the room—scalability, regulation, and education remain colossal hurdles.
Challenges and Opportunities: The Road to 5 Billion
Scaling blockchains without compromising decentralization is like threading a needle blindfolded. Then there’s regulation: the EU’s MiCA framework helped in 2024, but Asia and the Americas lag. On the flip side, institutional interest is snowballing. BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF hit $20B AUM in Q2 2025, and Visa’s stablecoin integrations are onboarding merchants fast. As for retail, emerging markets—where 1.4 billion lack bank accounts—are low-hanging fruit. Remember El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment? It’s now a tourism slogan ().
FAQs: Your Crypto Adoption Questions Answered
How realistic is the 5-billion-user target?
It’s ambitious but plausible. Internet users grew from 738 million in 2000 to 3.4 billion by 2016. Crypto’s adoption curve could mirror this if infrastructure keeps pace.
Which cryptocurrencies will lead adoption?
Bitcoin (store of value) and ethereum (smart contracts) are frontrunners, but watch for Solana and Cardano in payments and identity solutions.
What’s the biggest barrier to mass adoption?
User experience. Most wallets still feel like programming a VCR in 1995. Projects simplifying onboarding (e.g., MetaMask’s “one-click” updates) will thrive.
