As 2025 comes to an end, the crypto and blockchain industry looks markedly different from just a year ago. And it seems to us that our crypto digest is an ideal section in order to summarize some results and highlight the most striking news for this year!
From record-breaking adoption of stablecoins to high-profile security incidents, this year has reshaped how digital assets are used, regulated, and perceived. So here it is, a concise recap of the biggest crypto news and trends that defined 2025.
Before diving into our last digest in 2025, take a moment to explore how Evercode Lab can support your Web3 ambitions. With our white-label solutions, you can develop and launch your own crypto or Web3 product faster, easier, and with full technical support at every stage: from concept to release.
Stablecoins Go Mainstream
One of the most transformative stories of 2025 was the mass adoption of stablecoins across major crypto payment systems. Believe us, it’s hard for us to count how many times we’ve talked about this topic in our weekly news. We even wrote a separate article on this topic, it was so popular!
USDT, USDC, and newer regulated stablecoins became default settlement assets for cross-border payments, remittances, and on-chain commerce.
Payment giants such as Visa and Mastercard established strategic partnerships with companies like Circle and MoonPay, launching pilots that enabled stablecoin settlement on public blockchains. These initiatives aimed to bypass slow and costly ACH and SWIFT rails, replacing them with near-instant on-chain settlement.
Banks and fintechs followed quickly. Institutions like JPMorgan and BNY Mellon expanded stablecoin infrastructure for dollar and euro-denominated payments.
At the same time, fintech platforms such as Stripe, which acquired Bridge in May 2025, and PayPal, with its PYUSD stablecoin, integrated stablecoins directly into their core consumer and merchant offerings.
As a result, global payment processors and fintech platforms significantly reduced transaction costs and settlement times.
In several regions, stablecoin volumes rivaled, and in some cases surpassed, traditional card networks for international transfers, proving stablecoins to be the missing link between blockchain efficiency and real-world usability.
Bitcoin’s Volatile Year: New Highs, Sharp Corrections
Following next with some BTC highlights. Bitcoin’s price action in 2025 reflected both growing institutional maturity and persistent market volatility.
During the year, Bitcoin reached peaks above $120,000, with some rallies pushing prices potentially beyond $126,000 in October, driven by strong ETF inflows and continued institutional accumulation.
These highs were followed by notable pullbacks. Bitcoin’s year-to-date low settled around $74,500, a level that previously marked the March 2024 cycle high.
By December, prices hovered in the mid-$80,000s to $90,000s, pressured by profit-taking and year-end tax-loss selling.
Despite these corrections, sustained institutional demand highlighted a complex market dynamic in 2025, one defined by long-term structural growth alongside sharp, sentiment-driven pullbacks.
$1.5B Bybit Hack and North Korean Cash-Outs
Security remained a major concern in 2025, underscored by the $1.5 billion Bybit hack, one of the largest crypto breaches to date.
Investigations linked the attack to North Korean state-sponsored hacking groups, which reportedly cashed out hundreds of millions of dollars using sophisticated laundering techniques.
The incident reignited debates around exchange security, custody models, and geopolitical risks in crypto.
It also accelerated demand for stronger compliance tooling, on-chain monitoring, and institutional-grade security standards across centralized and decentralized platforms.
Ethereum’s Pectra and Fusaka Upgrades
Ethereum delivered two of its most important protocol upgrades to date with Pectra and Fusaka.
Pectra (May 2025) improved validator operations, staking efficiency, and overall network performance, laying critical groundwork for future scaling.
Fusaka (December 2025) built directly on this foundation by introducing PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling), a key milestone for massive Layer-2 data scaling. PeerDAS significantly boosted throughput, reduced costs for L2s, and prepared Ethereum for future danksharding, making the network faster and more capable of supporting global demand.
Together, these upgrades reinforced Ethereum’s role as the backbone for DeFi, NFTs, tokenized assets, and enterprise blockchain use cases, while improving performance across the broader Layer‑2 ecosystem.
Mass Tokenization of Stocks Gains Traction
Perhaps the clearest signal of blockchain’s integration into traditional finance was the mass tokenization of stocks and real-world assets in 2025.
Tokenized stocks experienced a remarkable 2,695% increase in value, outperforming other tokenized assets such as commodities and funds. By late August 2025, the total value of all tokenized real-world assets on public blockchains surpassed $26 billion.
Institutional adoption accelerated rapidly, with major players including BlackRock, JPMorgan, Franklin Templeton, and Robinhood moving beyond pilot programs to launch and expand production-scale tokenization initiatives.
This momentum was reinforced by growing regulatory clarity, driven by efforts such as the U.S. GENIUS Act and clear regulatory frameworks in the EU and Singapore.
All together, these developments bridged TradFi and DeFi, attracting both retail users and institutional investors.
Looking Ahead
The crypto industry in 2025 proved that adoption and risk often move in parallel. Stablecoins entered everyday payments, Bitcoin matured as a macro asset, Ethereum reinforced its technical leadership, and tokenization reshaped finance, all while security threats remained real.
As we move into 2026, the focus shifts from experimentation to execution. The foundations laid in 2025 are set to define the next phase of global blockchain adoption.
Stepping into 2026, stay tuned with Evercode Lab for more weekly insights into blockchain trends, and explore how our white-label solutions can help your business innovate and thrive in the fast-moving Web3 ecosystem.