Decoding the Cryptocurrency Market in 2024 and 2025
After reading numerous annual reviews and forecasts from various institutions, are you feeling a bit fatigued? Recently, CoinMarketCap released its 2024-25 Cryptocurrency Market Yearbook, which highlights the major innovations, market-shaking moments, and memorable milestones of the past year, while also providing a glimpse into the next 25 years.
But what’s interesting is that this yearbook is vivid and interactive:
In the retrospective section, CoinMarketCap creatively and vibrantly presents the significant events of the past year in a more visually appealing and lively style. In the prospective section, different from the predictions of institutional experts, CoinMarketCap has handed over 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 purely memetic Fartcoin or the Trump-related World Liberty Financial?
In addition, the yearbook contains some valuable charts and analysis. DeepTechFlow has carefully edited 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 the perspective of a “leek,” the yearbook summarized a more macro trend in the cryptocurrency market – “Suits & Ties vs. Laser Eyes.”
This is indeed a very accurate cultural contrast.
Suits & Ties represent the traditional financial world (Wall Street), symbolizing conservatism, professionalism, and well-established financial institutions such as BlackRock and Goldman Sachs.
Laser Eyes are the iconic cultural symbol of the cryptocurrency community, originating from Bitcoin supporters adding red laser eyes to their profile pictures on social media, representing cryptocurrency believers and supporters of emerging digital assets.
In 2024, both of these seemingly opposing groups were winners.
These two seemingly opposing groups have achieved true integration in terms of the meaning of assets:
Traditional financial institutions (such as BlackRock) began to launch Bitcoin/Ethereum ETFs; meme coins reached a market capitalization of billions of dollars and gained mainstream recognition.
Perhaps Wall Street and Web3 are no longer adversaries but partners influencing each other at the same negotiating table.
The cryptocurrency market has entered a new stage, transitioning from past opposition to dividing the cake among themselves.
The Best Cryptocurrency Story of the Year: The Rise of TON
In the wave of AI agents, have you forgotten the soaring success of TON last year?
Telegram’s corresponding L1, TON, experienced astronomical growth: users increased from 100,000 to a staggering 17.4 million, ranking 8th on CoinMarketCap. With 1,400 dApps and seamless integration with Telegram’s 950 million users, TON has proven to be more than just another Layer 1 – it is a movement.
And this movement extended beyond the cryptocurrency community.
On August 24, 2024, Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, was arrested in Paris and faced charges related to platform activities. This news could have caused a wave of uncertainty, but instead, it ignited a fire.
The Telegram community united, expressing support on social platforms and launching a meme project, becoming a rallying cry for justice.
CoinMarketCap’s yearbook also highlighted the value of this event:
“This is a declaration of the cryptocurrency spirit. It reminds people that decentralization is power, and the purest technology is a tool of freedom, not a tool of error. At that moment, the TON community showed the world that it is more than just a blockchain; it is a revolution driven by resilience, unity, and unwavering belief.”
Although TON is no longer in the limelight, it remains one of the many shining events of the past year.
The Best Asset Categories of the Year: Memes Lead the Way, Diverse and Flourishing
Taking popularity into consideration, the yearbook identified the following asset categories and projects as top performers:
MEME:
MEW: The 5th largest memecoin, utilizing unique token economics with 90% of LP tokens burned, ensuring a stable price floor and market confidence.
Popcat: The first meme coin based on cats reached a market capitalization of $1 billion on Solana, achieving a valuation of $120 million and pioneering the concept of “cat coins.”
WIF: Within four months, it became the third-largest memecoin after DOGE and SHIB. Market capitalization reached $3 billion, driven by community participation and Elon Musk’s endorsement.
Application Fields:
Polymarket: Invested $3.3 billion in the 2024 US presidential election, leading decentralized prediction markets and dominating the field through smart contract automation and KYC-free methods.
Pump.fun: The creation of memecoins on Solana brought revolutionary changes, promoting the development of over 3 million tokens and attracting 150,000 users, generating substantial revenue. While the platform has had a significant impact, it has also sparked controversy, sometimes fueling the most serious meme culture.
Binance Launchpool: Enhancing user participation through innovative token farming mechanisms, including successful releases of Notcoin, Scroll, and Catizen.
Noteworthy Rising Stars:
Story Protocol: Pioneering blockchain-based IP management, attracting over 100 projects and fundamentally changing creators’ rights through programmable IP licensing infrastructure.
Monad: The next-generation Layer 1 achieving 10,000 TPS with 1-second finality, 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.
Considering innovation, from AI-enhanced DeFi to real-world asset platforms, from decentralized infrastructure to core scaling solutions, the following projects have surpassed the limits of what is possible on-chain:
AI Sector:
Bittensor: Building a framework for decentralized artificial intelligence development, expanding to 64 subnets, achieving full Ethereum compatibility, and introducing complex AI models.
Prime: Leading AI games with flagship games Parallel TCG and Colony, supported by OpenAI integration and the Wayfinder protocol for autonomous AI agents.
Near: Building the world’s largest 1.4T parameter open-source AI model, launching the Nightshade 2.0 upgrade, achieving a 400% increase in transaction speed through innovative sharding.
DeFi Sector:
LIDO: Maintaining the leading position in liquid staking by pledging 9.8 million ETH, introducing institutional solutions, and reducing validator requirements from 32 ETH to 2.4 ETH.
Pendle: Innovating yield tokenization in DeFi, increasing TVL from $230 million to $1 billion through re-collateralization of tokens and launching the Boros margin trading platform.
EigenLayer: Dominating re-staking with an 80% market share, reaching a TVL of $12.9 billion, re-staking 4.5 million ETH, and fundamentally changing Ethereum’s security model.
DePIN Sector:
Render: The leading decentralized GPU rendering service successfully migrated to Solana, expanding to real-time streaming and dynamic NFTs, while serving major entertainment and architectural clients.
Arweave: A permanent storage solution that maintains stable growth in a volatile market, pioneering the data storage model of “pay once, store forever.”
Aethir: A decentralized cloud computing platform that transforms GPU capabilities into shared resources for gaming and artificial intelligence, supported by a $100 million ecosystem fund and major partnerships with Nvidia and Filecoin.
RWA Sector:
Ondo: The first platform to tokenize US Treasury bonds, surpassing a tokenized scale of $500 million within four months, occupying over 25% of the market through cooperation with BlackRock and JPMorgan.
Clearpool: Redefining institutional liquidity in DeFi, with a total loan amount exceeding $500 million and launching Ozean, a Layer 2 network based on OP Stack, enabling RWA yields.
Ethena: The synthetic USD protocol becoming the fourth-largest stablecoin, pioneering risk management through a spot and short position delta-neutral strategy.
Infrastructure:
SUI: Building the world’s largest 1.4T parameter open-source AI model, launching the Nightshade 2.0 upgrade, achieving a 400% increase in transaction speed through innovative sharding.
Wormhole: Building the world’s largest 1.4T parameter open-source AI model, launching the Nightshade 2.0 upgrade, achieving a 400% increase in transaction speed through innovative sharding.
Arkham: Introducing an on-chain sustainable trading platform utilizing intelligence data, pioneering blockchain analysis based on physical assets.
Note: The selection of all the above projects only represents the standpoint of the yearbook. Interested readers can also visit the original website to view the introduction of each project, which includes a thoughtful video presentation.
Due to space limitations, some projects within different ecosystems are not further elaborated. The nominations are as follows.
6 Treasure Charts Taking You Through 2024
As we all know, CoinMarketCap excels in data analysis and graphical visualization. The yearbook features 6 charts that depict the changes in the cryptocurrency 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 6000% return rate, while the worst-performing track was storage, with an annual return rate of -24%.
The pattern of Bitcoin rising after halving continues
Bitcoin experiences halving roughly every 3-4 years. From the figure below, it is clear that during the new cycle of 2024 (represented by the black line), Bitcoin’s price did not show a significant downward trend.
Learning from history, it seems the turning point for the bear market has not yet arrived
Bitcoin and the overall market tend to follow a 3-4 year cycle. From the chart below, it can be seen that during the new cycle of 2024 (represented by the black line), Bitcoin’s price did not show a clear turning point towards a downward trend.
MicroStrategy leads, a global overview of institutional/national Bitcoin holdings
MicroStrategy takes the lead with a holding of 440,000 bitcoins, surpassing other institutions worldwide and even exceeding the Bitcoin holdings of any single country. Meanwhile, the gap between China and the United States in terms of Bitcoin holdings has not widened.
The United States remains the country with the highest number of CoinMarketCap website users
Surprisingly, the second-ranking country is India.
The most popular track: Memes gradually demonstrate their value (blue area in the figure below)
12 Memes Tell the Story of Opportunities and Fun for the Entire Year
Last year was full of opportunities. Seizing one or two of them would undoubtedly change your story. If you missed too many opportunities, perhaps in these meme pictures, you can examine the context and development of opportunities in the past year.
Looking ahead to 2025, what are your choices and predictions?
In this section, CoinMarketCap conducted an open poll, giving users the power to determine the outlook for the next 25 years. It’s like a market survey to see which tracks and projects people are optimistic about. The design of the prospective section includes the following topics. Which projects will dominate the headlines this year?
Nominees: ETH, PEPE, Monad, Fartcoin, World Liberty Financial (related to Trump).
Which narrative will set the stage on fire this year?
Nominees: NFT/Gaming, Quantum-resistant tokens, Crypto IPOs, RWA, and AI agents.
Which asset will be approved for an ETF?
Nominee: N/A
Who will quietly enter the top 30 in market capitalization?
Nominees: Virtuals, FET, Pengu, Ethena, Ondo.
Which old coin will blossom?
Nominees: N/A
This article is a collaboration and reprinted from DeepTechFlow.