Decoding the Crypto Market in 2024 and 2025
After reading numerous institutional annual reviews and forecasts, are you feeling a bit fatigued? Recently, CoinMarketCap also released a 2024-25 Crypto Market Yearbook, which highlights the major innovations, market-shaking moments, and unforgettable milestones of the past year, while also looking ahead to the next 25 years.
Interestingly, this yearbook is vibrant and interactive. In the review section, CoinMarketCap brings the major events of the past year to life with a more visually appealing and lively style. In the forecast section, different from the expert predictions of other institutions, CoinMarketCap hands the decision-making power to the market — you get to vote for the trends that may occur in the next 25 years. For example, which projects do you think will make big news in 25 years? Will it be the pure meme coin Fartcoin or the Trump-related World Liberty Financial?
Furthermore, the yearbook contains some valuable charts and analyses. TechFlow has carefully curated and interpreted them, as shown below.
Suits & Ties vs. Laser Eyes, Both are Winners
Throughout 2024, while you may have been pondering the rise and fall of certain coins from a retail investor perspective, the yearbook captures a more macro trend in the crypto market — “Suits & Ties vs. Laser Eyes.” This is indeed a precise cultural contrast. Suits & Ties represent the traditional financial world (Wall Street), symbolizing conservatism, professionalism, and established financial institutions such as BlackRock and Goldman Sachs. Laser Eyes, on the other hand, are the iconic cultural symbol of the crypto community, originating from Bitcoin supporters adding red laser eyes to their profile pictures on social media, representing cryptocurrency enthusiasts and supporters of emerging digital assets. In 2024, both of these seemingly opposing groups are winners. The two groups, in terms of asset significance, have achieved true integration for the first time: traditional financial institutions (such as BlackRock) have started launching Bitcoin/Ethereum ETFs, while meme coins have reached billion-dollar market caps and gained mainstream recognition. Perhaps Wall Street and Web3 are no longer adversaries, but partners influencing each other at the same negotiating table. The crypto market has entered a new stage, transitioning from past opposition to splitting the cake for each group.
Story Protocol: Pioneering blockchain-based IP management, attracting more than 100 projects and fundamentally changing creator rights through programmable IP licensing infrastructure.
Monad: The next-generation Layer 1 achieving 10,000 TPS and settling within 1 second, raising $225 million and introducing the innovative MonadBFT consensus mechanism.
Berachain: Innovative Layer 1 with liquidity proof of stake consensus, launching the Artio testnet, attracting 230 active development teams through unique DeFi integration.
Please note that due to space limitations, some projects within different ecosystems are not further interpreted. The nominations for these projects are as follows.
6 Treasure Charts Taking You Through 2024
As we all know, CoinMarketCap has a knack for data analysis and visualizing charts. The yearbook also selects 6 charts to depict the changes in the crypto market in 2024 from different data dimensions.
Best and Worst Performing Tracks: Smart Contracts and Storage
Smart contract-related projects topped the list with a 6,000% return rate, while the worst-performing track was storage with a -24% annual return rate.
Bitcoin’s Post-Halving Rise Continues
After 24 years since Bitcoin’s halving, with a price of around $63,000, we have collectively witnessed its journey from an experiment to $100,000, spanning 16 years of Bitcoin’s wild ride.
Learning from History, the Bearish Turning Point Seems Unlikely
Bitcoin and the market generally have a cycle of 3-4 years. From the graph below, it can be clearly seen that in the new 24-year cycle, Bitcoin’s price did not exhibit a significant downward trend.
MicroStrategy Leading the Way, an Overview of Global Institutional/Country Bitcoin Holdings
MicroStrategy’s holdings of 440,000 Bitcoins have put it ahead of other global institutions, surpassing the Bitcoin holdings of any single country. However, the gap in Bitcoin holdings between China and the United States remains relatively small.
The United States Still Has the Most Users on CoinMarketCap
Surprisingly, the second place goes to India.
The Most Popular Track: Meme Gradually Proving Its Value
12 Memes Tell the Story of a Year Full of Opportunities and Fun
There were many opportunities last year. Seizing one or two of them would have made your story different. If you missed out on too many opportunities, you can review the context and development of the opportunities in these meme images.
Looking Forward to 2025, What Are Your Choices and Predictions?
In this section, CoinMarketCap opens up the voting process, giving users the power to decide on the 25-year outlook. It’s like a market survey to see which tracks and projects people believe will succeed. The following topics were designed for the outlook section. Which projects do you think will make headlines this year? The nominees are ETH, PEPE, Monad, Fartcoin, and World Liberty Financial (Trump-related).
Which narrative will ignite the market this year? The nominees are NFT/Gaming, Quantum Resistance Tokens, Crypto IPOs, RWA, and AI Agents.
Which asset will be approved by an ETF?
Who will quietly enter the top 30 in market capitalization? The nominees are Virtuals, FET, Pengu, Ethena, and Ondo.
Which old coin will blossom?
Please note that the selection of all the projects mentioned above represents the viewpoints of the yearbook. Interested readers can visit the original website to view the introduction of each project, which is thoughtfully accompanied by a video.
Translation by: CoinMarketCap China