Could 2025 be the year crypto go mainstream?

Since the birth of crypto in 2009/10, there’s been several key events that has affected its adoption with major ones been:

1. Hacks and fraud
2. Centralization
3. Scalability and Complexity: most network and chain at that time were reliant on PoW consensus mechanism (esp Bitcoin and Ethereum) which affected mass accessibility.
4. Regulatory landscape

Within this 14 years period, 2022 and 2024 stands out as the most significant for contrasting reasons:

• 2022 witnessed the period of highest amount of fraud (an estimated $2.57 billion of users fund was lost to hacks and fraudulent schemes during this period), black swans and regulatory backlash resulting in the fall of FTX, Celsius, 3AC, TerraLuna, Voyager, the high-flying NFT market and a few others.

  • These incidents birthed a more amplified need for better regulatory framework. Several high GDP countries like the US, China and some EU countries began outlawing crypto.
  • In response to this, the crypto market had its worst bear during this period with a dip below the $1 trillion market cap and a 'fear & greed index' below 6.
  • Most crypto assets saw their lowest low in this period with BTC ($18k), ETH ($800), SOL ($11) and others.

• 2024 saw the introduction of scalable chains and networks like the L2s, use of blobs, upgrades to DAGs etc.

  • With L2s, Arbitrum and ZK tech became scalability powerhouse in the Ethereum ecosystem leveraging the highly liquid ecosystem.
  • Solana’s fire-dancer upgrade saw network adoption soar too.
  • Then, the BTC spot ETF (with the options market already begun in Q4 2024) factor enters the debate seeing a multiple approval and halving set a new adoption race (attracting mainstream financial actors into crypto).

However, one of the 4 major factors remain prevalent heading into Q4 of 2024 (regulatory landscape) but has already seen significant sway of sentiment with the:

• outcome of the 2024 US Presidential elections,
• upcoming resignation of SEC Chairman Gary Gensler
• court ruling of BTC as a legal asset in China
• adoption and use of MiCA (EU crypto regulatory framework) begining from December 30, 2024
• impending approval of ETH and SOL spot ETFs

Also, the introduction of BTCfi and Ethereum restaking might open the crypto ecosystem to more institutional investors heading into 2025. With all these events and more ecosystem upgrade expected in coming months, could 2025 finally be the year for that huge improvement in crypto adoption?