Chainfeeds Guide:
In the second half of the year, focus on the Federal Reserve's policy shift, U.S. crypto legislation progress, TradFi and crypto merger wave, stablecoin payment penetration, RWA, and other developments.
Article Source:
https://www.binance.com/en/research/analysis/half-year-report-2025
Article Author:
Binance Research
Insights:
Binance Research: In the first half of 2025, the crypto market experienced fluctuations amid macroeconomic volatility, with a year-to-date (YTD) increase of 1.99%, going through a 18.61% decline in the first quarter and a 25.32% rebound in the second quarter. During this period, the market faced significant disruptions such as tariff conflicts and geopolitical tensions. At the macro level, major economies showed divergence: the U.S. economy slowed down with unexpected inflation decline, while China benefited from strong stimulus policies, with Q1 GDP growing 5.4% year-on-year. Global money supply increased significantly - with the U.S., China, Europe, and Japan injecting approximately $5.5 trillion in liquidity, the largest six-month increase in four years. Notably, there was a brief but intense U.S.-China trade conflict, with tariffs spiking to 145%. In this context, Bitcoin gradually moved away from its safe-haven label towards a high-beta style, yet still achieved a YTD +13% return, outperforming most traditional assets. With spot Bitcoin ETFs continuously attracting institutional funds and over 140 companies holding more than 840,000 BTC, Bitcoin is steadily moving towards a mature macro asset role. Major L1 blockchains each followed distinct growth paths in the first half of 2025. Ethereum maintained its dominance with institutional fund support, completed Pectra upgrade, and leading developer activity. Solana achieved user growth through high throughput, improved network reliability, and the upcoming Firedancer. BNB Chain set new highs in DEX activity and expanded its ecosystem by introducing diverse scenarios like RWA, AI, and memecoins. Chains like Sui, Avalanche, Tron, and TON continued to break through in DeFi and stablecoin domains. Meanwhile, the L2 ecosystem showed signs of market saturation and divergent growth paths, particularly under pressure in blob fee competition, modular challenges, and sequencer decentralization issues. Optimistic Rollups (like Base and Arbitrum) maintained dominance, but ZK Rollups had not yet established an advantage in TVL performance and user stickiness. Overall, future L2 growth requires moving beyond subsidy dependence to achieve economic model sustainability and decentralized governance structures. Stablecoins experienced significant growth in the first half of 2025, with total market cap exceeding $250 billion, a historical high. USDT maintained its lead (around $153-156 billion), while USDC rapidly expanded market share with nearly doubled issuance (to $61.5 billion). Stablecoin on-chain transaction volume exceeded $7 trillion, with Tron, Ethereum, and Solana being the primary active networks. On the regulatory front, the GENIUS Act passed in the U.S. Senate, and MiCA took effect in the EU, providing institutional stablecoin use with regulatory guarantees. Simultaneously, user-side experience innovations continued - wallets evolving into "super apps", DeFi merging with new banks, meme projects and casual games driving cultural traffic, forming an innovation wave parallel to institutional adoption. Additionally, emerging tracks like DePIN, DeFAI, and DeSci, combining decentralization with AI technology, are rising, extending on-chain infrastructure to real economy and physical devices, injecting structural new momentum into the crypto industry. Entering the second half of 2025, the institutionalization of DeFi and stablecoin financialization will run parallel with the emergence of consumer-level products at the user level, driving a dual-track ecosystem leap.
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