Original Title: Crypto Truths & Lies: Lessons from 2025
Original Author: Ignas, DeFi Research
Plain Language Blockchain
One year ago, I wrote "Truth and Lies of the Crypto Market in 2025."
At that time, everyone was sharing higher target prices for Bitcoin. I wanted to look for a different framework, to identify where the crowd might be wrong, and to position myself differently. The goal was simple: to find ideas that already existed but were overlooked, disliked, or misunderstood.
Before sharing the 2026 edition, let's take a clear look back at what truly mattered in 2025. What did we get right, what did we get wrong, and what lessons should we learn from it? If you don't examine your own thinking, you're not investing—you're just guessing.
Quick summary
"BTC peaks in the fourth quarter":Most people expected it, but it looked too good to be true. It turned out they were right and I was wrong (and I paid the price for it). Unless BTC surges from now on and breaks the 4-year cycle pattern, I admit defeat this time. "Retail investors prefer memecoins" — fact.
Retail investors don't actually prefer cryptocurrencies.They bought gold, silver, AI stocks, and anything that is not cryptocurrency. A supercycle for meme coins or AI agents has also not emerged.
"AI x Crypto Remains Strong":Mixed results. The project continues to deliver, the x402 standard is evolving, and funding is ongoing. However, the token has failed to maintain any upward momentum.
"NFT is Dead":Yes.
These are all easy to look back on. The real insights lie in the following five broader themes.
1. Spot ETFs are the foundation, not the ceiling.
Since March 2024, long-term Bitcoin holders (OGs) have sold approximately 1.4 million BTC, worth about $12.117 billion.
Imagine the chaos in the crypto market without ETFs: despite the price decline, BTC ETF inflows remain positive (26.9 billion USD).
The approximately $95 billion gap is exactly why BTC has underperformed almost all macro assets. BTC itself is not the problem, and there's no need to delve into unemployment rates or manufacturing data to explain it—it's simply the "big rotation" by large holders and the "four-year cycle believers."
More importantly, the correlation between Bitcoin and traditional risk assets such as the Nasdaq has dropped to its lowest level since 2022 (-0.42). While many hope for an upward breakout in correlation, in the long term, this is bullish as an uncorrelated portfolio asset sought after by institutions.
There are signs indicating that the supply shock has ended. Therefore, I dare to predict that the BTC price in 2026 will reach $174,000 (equivalent to 10% of gold's market capitalization).
2. Airdrops are clearly "not" gone.
The crypto community (CT) has once again claimed that airdrops are dead. However, in 2025, we witnessed airdrop distributions totaling nearly $4.5 billion:
Story Protocol (IP): ~$1.4B
Berachain (BERA): ~$1.17B
Jupiter (JUP): ~$7.91M
Animecoin (ANIME): ~$7.11M
The changes include: integral fatigue, stronger witch detection, and downward valuation. You also need to "sell immediately upon receiving" to maximize profits.
2026 will be a big year for airdrops, with heavyweights like Polymarket, MetaMask, and Base (?) preparing to launch their tokens. This will not be a year to stop clicking buttons, but a year to stop blindly betting. Airdrop "hunting" will require focused, high-stakes strategic investment.
3. The Fee Switch is not the engine driving up prices, but rather the baseline.
My prediction is: Cost switching will not automatically drive up the price of cryptocurrencies. The income generated by most protocols is insufficient to support their large market capitalizations.
"Cost switching doesn't affect how high a token can rise, but rather sets a 'floor price.'"
Observing the projects ranked on DeFillama for "Holder Revenue": apart from $HYPE, the performance of all high-income-sharing tokens has been better than ETH (although ETH is currently the benchmark everyone wants to challenge).
Surprisingly, $UNI. Uniswap has finally flipped the switch, even burning $100 million in tokens. UNI initially surged 75%, but then erased all of its gains.
Three Insights:
Token buybacks set a price floor, not a ceiling.
Everything is a trade this cycle (refer to the sharp rise and fall of UNI).
Buybacks are only one side of the story; sell pressure (unlocking) must also be considered. Most tokens are still in low circulation.
4. Stablecoins have captured the market's attention, but "agency trading" is difficult to profit from.
Stablecoins are becoming mainstream. When I rented a motorcycle in Bali, the owner even asked for payment in USDT on the TRON network.
Although Tether (USDT)'s market dominance has declined from 67% to 60%, its market capitalization is still growing. Citi Bank predicts that the total market capitalization of stablecoins could reach between $1.9 trillion and $4 trillion by 2030.
In 2025, the narrative has shifted from "transactions" to "payment infrastructure." However, the stablecoin-for-transactions narrative has proven challenging: Circle's IPO, after an initial surge, erased all its gains, and other representative assets have also underperformed.
A truth in 2025 is: Everything is just a transaction.
Currently, encrypted payment cards are booming due to their convenience in bypassing banks' strict AML requirements. Every card swipe corresponds to a transaction on the blockchain. If peer-to-peer payments can bypass Visa/Mastercard directly by 2026, it would represent an opportunity with potentially tenfold or even hundredfold returns.
5. DeFi is more centralized than CeFi.
This is a bold claim: DeFi's business and TVL concentration is higher than that of traditional finance (CeFi).
Aave holds over 60% of the lending market share (by comparison, JPMorgan holds only 12% in the U.S.).
L2 protocols are mostly multi-signature (Multisig) wallets worth billions, operating without regulation.
Chainlink controls almost all of DeFi's value oracles.
In 2025, the conflict between "centralized equity holders" and "token holders/DAOs" becomes evident. Who truly owns the protocol, intellectual property rights, and revenue streams? Aave's internal disputes reveal that the rights of token holders are fewer than we imagined.
If "Labs" ultimately prevails, many DAO tokens will become non-investable. 2026 will be a critical year for aligning the interests of equity holders and token holders.
Summary
2025 has proven one thing: everything is a transaction. The window to exit is extremely short. No token holds long-term conviction.
As a result, 2025 marks the end of HODL (hold for the long-term) culture, DeFi has transformed into Onchain Finance, and with improved regulation, DAOs are shedding their "pseudo-decentralized" facades.
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