As the year comes to a close, it marks the usual time for reflection. We look back at the battles fought with unwavering focus, always keeping our mission front and center: to service institutions on their digital asset journey.

2025 has been marked by contrasts: strong institutional adoption alongside some native market weakness, record stablecoin growth despite broader sentiment challenges, and a historic liquidation event on October 10th, exposing vulnerabilities even as the market absorbed the shock without systemic breakdown.

This is not the simple bull or bear narrative of past years. Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi infrastructure, and stablecoins are demonstrating resilience and growing integration with traditional finance. Crypto exchanges are positioning themselves as alternative financial franchises and leading the tokenization of financial assets. Prediction markets have emerged as one of the year's most dynamic areas. Meanwhile, altcoins and speculative tokens are facing significant headwinds. The market is splitting: capital is consolidating into larger, higher-quality assets and regulated structures, while the speculative edges have underperformed.

B2C2 2025: The On-Chain Liquidity & Settlement Layer for Global Markets 

Our aim to provide institutions with an On-Chain Liquidity & Settlement Layer for Global Markets has made tangible progress. We've partnered with more clients than ever before, doubling our footprint across institutional finance.

Client trade volume surpassed $200 billion, with over $1 billion in loans issued. We expanded our derivatives offering to become a top provider, and saw significant growth in our solutions business addressing increasingly complex client needs.

We've also expanded internationally with new locations in Singapore, Brazil, and Poland, creating partnerships with stablecoin issuers and Layer 1/2 protocols while welcoming new traditional finance players.

We now process well over 1,000 settlements per day across venues and time zones. We also deployed PENNY, our instant stablecoin swap solution. With it, we are supporting faster, more efficient value transfer and collateral movement for FX, cross-border payments, and treasury optimization.
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Institutionalization: How Adoption is Actually Happening

Institutional adoption has continued at a material pace, though in ways that differ from what many native players initially expected. The early hope for immediate conversion of traditional assets onto public blockchains has evolved into a more pragmatic reality: wrapping and securitizing digital assets into familiar products that fit existing risk, settlement, and regulatory frameworks.

The numbers really tell the story. Combined net flows into Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) ETFs reached around $31 billion, with trading volume now roughly 25% of the spot market.

The industry has matured through significant IPOs—Circle, Bullish, and Gemini—with others like Kraken and Bitcoin widely expected to follow in 2026. These successful infrastructure IPOs highlight strong demand for the "picks and shovels" of the ecosystem. Though exchange listings have seen more volatility, the appetite for core infrastructure remains clear.

Retail and technology giants are actively building on digital asset rails, but institutions have been slower to fully embrace the underlying technology and the possibilities of instant settlement. Nonetheless, progress has been made thanks to intensive regulatory discussions in the U.S., particularly around stablecoins and digital assets more broadly, with new proof points such as the acceptance of digital assets as collateral in certain contexts.

The Native Ecosystem: A Contrasting Picture

After a volatile year marked by price highs and increased derivatives activity, year-end sentiment on the native side feels deflationary. Markets are testing lows with systemic leverage significantly reduced. The ecosystem is still digesting October 10th liquidations —Bitcoin lost roughly 35% from its high in a couple of weeks— and subsequent corrections are pushing many to reconsider their risk appetite, especially as stocks and gold reached new highs.

Macro conditions (ISM, interest rates, liquidity) are typically catalysts for retail engagement in crypto. But, as traditional assets exhibit strong, persistent trends, crypto may remain on the sidelines until its relative value proposition becomes overwhelmingly attractive again.

In token terms, ETF and DAT holdings are broadly unchanged at highs, pointing to persistent institutional interest. Stablecoin assets under management remain elevated. Rather than exiting the ecosystem, many participants appear to be rotating into safer or more regulated structures.

Stablecoins: The Native Asset That Stayed Bid

One major exception to this deflationary tone is stablecoins. Despite outflows post-October 10, the stablecoin market cap grew 70-80% this year from about $200 billion in January to roughly $300 billion today, near all-time highs. Circle's successful IPO reinforced the narrative that stablecoins are critical financial infrastructure.

Stablecoins sit at the intersection of native and institutional adoption. While most innovation and usage remains on the native side, they increasingly feature in institutional discussions as a core settlement and collateral layer. The bulk of crypto trading settlements, a large share of DeFi flows, and an increasing share of cross-border and micro-payments now run through stablecoin rails. Even as speculative appetite faded elsewhere, demand for dollar-like, on-chain settlement assets has never been higher.

The Left Aside

The picture isn't all sunny, and the part of the crypto ecosystem which hasn't yet benefited from institutional adoption is under pressure. Meme coins have become largely irrelevant. Altcoins have underperformed, while major coin dominance has grown and numerous chains trade at depressed valuations.

The ICO market is a shadow of its former self—our analysis of 117 tokens shows only 17 trade above their launch valuations, with around 40% down 90% or more. This signals a need for realistic valuations and stronger alignment between token economics and value creation. 

DeFi Markets

In 2025, DeFi pushed decisively towards institutional scale. Total value locked (TVL) rose from roughly $100 billion in January 2025 to around $140 billion today, according to DeFiLlama estimates, even after a sharp late‑year drawdown, underscoring how much more durable on‑chain liquidity has become.

DeFi captured roughly 25% of global perpetual futures trading by year‑end, up from a low‑teens market share at the start of 2025, marking a structural shift from experimentation to genuine competition with centralized venues.

Lending protocols rebounded to $55bn+ in total value locked, with around $26bn in active loans, representing approximately 35–40% of total DeFi TVL, driven by renewed leverage, arbitrage strategies, and robust stablecoin borrowing demand. The user base has expanded to an estimated 7.8 million lending users. These flows are increasingly underpinned by liquid staking tokens and tokenized real-world assets, strengthening the link between on-chain and off-chain economies.

Exchanges and Prediction Markets

Exchanges have fully embraced their role as alternative financial franchises, leveraging their client bases and technological advantage.

The race is now clearly between traditional exchanges upgrading to digital asset rails, and blockchain-based exchanges securing market share with fundamentally different models of custody, participation, and settlement.

Alongside that, prediction markets have emerged as one of the most dynamic areas into year-end. Platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket have launched or grown rapidly, while existing platforms and exchanges—including Coinbase, Crypto.com, and Robinhood—are entering or expanding in this space.

While prediction markets may not fit the classic long-term investment thesis, they respond directly to demand for short-horizon, event-driven and time-bound bets. They present a new and exciting way for users to express views on politics, macro data, sports, and cultural events. This is one of the clearest examples of how digital asset rails enable new market structures and behaviours that do not map neatly onto traditional products.

2025 - a Year of Division

2025 will be remembered as a year of division—between institutional and speculative capital, between infrastructure and experimentation, and between assets built for durability and those built for cycles. We end the year with a mixed but ultimately constructive picture for digital assets. The institutional and regulated segment is gaining momentum, with ETFs, Digital Asset Treasuries, infrastructure IPOs, and bank engagement becoming part of mainstream financial conversation. The native speculative segments are in a corrective phase, with capital consolidating in larger, higher-quality assets and regulated structures. Meanwhile, DeFi and stablecoins are steadily transforming into core financial infrastructure, powering funding, settlement, collateral, and yield across both native and, increasingly, traditional use cases.

Through all of this, our focus remains unchanged: to be the trusted partner for institutions as they continue to navigate and shape the digital asset frontier.

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About B2C2

B2C2 is a global leader in institutional liquidity for digital assets. Founded in 2015, we are trusted by blue chip hedge funds, institutional managers, brokers, crypto exchanges, and crypto foundations. We provide deep, reliable liquidity and pricing in crypto, delivering seamless execution 24/7/365. Majority owned and backed by Japanese financial conglomerate, SBI, B2C2 Ltd is headquartered in the UK, with offices in the US, Japan, Singapore, France and Luxembourg.

B2C2 Ltd is registered in England and Wales under company number 07995888 with its registered office at 86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE. B2C2 Ltd is the parent company of the B2C2 group of companies. Products may be provided by different members of the B2C2 group of companies, depending on the jurisdiction of the client and the regulatory status of the product and/or B2C2 group member. B2C2 is a registered trademark.