The Coffee Leaf Research Institute's 2025 review shows that cryptocurrencies continue to move towards industrialization: regulation, stablecoin settlement pathways, institutional access, and cash flow generation are as critical as price performance.
Bitcoin is increasingly behaving as a macro asset, with demand and liquidity flowing through regulated channels such as spot ETFs and corporate asset allocation, even as activity metrics at the underlying layer have weakened.
The 2026 outlook in the report is based on a more constructive policy environment and a growing number of on-chain "mainstays"—stablecoins, revenue-generating DeFi, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, and applications with user relationships.
Coffee Leaf Research Institute has released its annual report, summarizing the key characteristics of the crypto market in 2025 and outlining the themes for 2026. This article highlights the most decision-making insights from the report, emphasizing structural signals: a clearer regulatory framework, expanded institutional access, the scaling of stablecoins as settlement infrastructure, the maturation of DeFi as a cash flow industry, and the transition of tokenization from pilot programs to production processes.
2025: Structural Progress and Macroeconomic Drivers of the Market
2025 marked a milestone year in a volatile market. The total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies surpassed $4 trillion for the first time, with Bitcoin reaching a new high of $126,000. However, market performance was dominated by macroeconomic uncertainties such as monetary policy, trade frictions, and geopolitical risks. Coffee Leaf Research Institute called it a "year of data fog," citing factors including a new US government, the impact of Liberation Day tariffs, and government shutdowns that blurred economic signals. Crypto asset prices fluctuated significantly, with total market capitalization ranging from approximately $2.4 trillion to $4.2 trillion, closing down about 7.9% for the year.
A more optimistic interpretation is that structural progress continued even when prices were not aligned, one of the most prominent signs of maturity in the report. Progress was made in areas such as access, settlement pathways, and regulation, and the areas with the greatest growth potential were increasingly linked to practical applications rather than speculation.
Crypto Market Industrialization
One of the most important themes of 2025 was industrialization: the market increasingly focused on infrastructure and compliant access pathways. Particularly with clearer regulations regarding stablecoins and the expansion of regulated investment products, institutional and professional investor participation increased significantly. Simultaneously, the economic focus of the ecosystem continued to shift towards more compliant and user-friendly foundational modules: stablecoins for settlement, Treasury tokens for on-chain cash management, and applications that can be continuously monetized rather than one-off speculative plays.
Therefore, "activity volume" itself became a weaker indicator. The report consistently distinguished between raw usage data and economic relevance: the key lies in whether the network or protocol can capture sustainable value, generate stable fees or revenue, and support reliable settlement and transactions.
Bitcoin's Macro Assetization
In 2025, Bitcoin exhibited a divergence between market demand and foundational layer activity. BTC maintained a market capitalization advantage of approximately 58%-60%, approaching $1.8 trillion, with liquidity and demand flowing more through off-chain financial channels.
Two sets of data in the report highlighted this shift:
US spot BTC ETFs saw net inflows exceeding $21 billion.
The company's holdings have exceeded 1.1 million BTC, accounting for approximately 5.5% of the total supply.
Meanwhile, active addresses declined by approximately 16% year-over-year, and transaction volume failed to reach previous highs. This isn't because the base layer is insignificant, but rather because Bitcoin's market role increasingly depends on how it's traded and held within macro portfolios and regulated channels. Cybersecurity continues to improve—hashrate has jumped to 1 ZH per second, and mining difficulty has increased by approximately 36% year-over-year—and even as usage returns to normal, Bitcoin's security budget continues to grow.
In short, Bitcoin is moving towards a highly liquid, institutional-grade macro asset status, rather than simply being transaction-network oriented.
DeFi's "Blue Chip Moment"
In 2025, DeFi shifted away from incentive-driven growth towards capital efficiency and compliance. TVL (Total Value Locked) stabilized at approximately $124.4 billion, but the funding structure clearly leaned towards stablecoins and yield-generating assets rather than inflationary tokens. Simultaneously, the DeFi economy strengthened: protocol revenue reached $16.2 billion, which the report considers comparable to the revenue of mainstream traditional financial institutions.
A key trend is that tokenization is shifting from narrative to collateral. Real-world assets (RWA) have reached a value locked of $17 billion, surpassing decentralized exchanges (DEXs), primarily driven by the tokenization of Treasury bonds and stocks. This shift is fundamentally reshaping the collateral base of on-chain finance. As collateral moves towards yield-bearing, real-world assets, DeFi's financial needs become more sustainable.
The report also notes continued improvement in on-chain execution, with DEXs reaching nearly 20% of spot trading volume on CEXs. While this percentage fluctuates, the overall trend is that decentralized exchanges are increasingly becoming a crucial arena for specific fund flows, driven by improved liquidity and availability of stablecoins and RWA collateral.
Stablecoins Enter the Era of "Internet Fiat Currency"
Stablecoins will be the true mainstream segment of cryptocurrencies by 2025, having become a stable settlement infrastructure.
Key points of the report on stablecoins are as follows:
Total market capitalization of stablecoins grew by nearly 50% to over $305 billion.
Daily trading volume reached approximately $3.54 trillion.
Annual trading volume reached $33 trillion, far exceeding Visa's approximately $16 trillion.
Regulatory clarity has accelerated under the impetus of the US GENIUS Act.
The competitive landscape has broken out of a duopoly: BUIDL, PYUSD, RLUSD, USD1, USDf, and USDtB have all surpassed a market capitalization of $1 billion.
The optimistic argument is quite clear: stablecoins are increasingly becoming the default medium of exchange in the crypto market and are gradually becoming a solid foundation for cross-border settlements, payments, and fintech applications. In many scenarios, stablecoins allow users and businesses to access the crypto space while shielding them from price volatility that can be daunting for newcomers.
Public Chain Layer: Monetization is King
In the public chain (Layer-1) space, 2025 once again validated that transaction volume is still insufficient to generate value. Many networks failed to translate activity into fees, value capture, or long-term token performance. Differentiation stemmed more from sustainable monetization flows such as trading, payments, and institutional settlement.
Ethereum still dominates in developer activity, DeFi liquidity, and total value, but fee compression caused by Rollup executions impacted ETH's performance relative to BTC.
Solana boasts high user activity, an expanding stablecoin supply, generates significant protocol revenue even as speculation recedes, and has received approval for a US spot ETF, enhancing institutional availability.
FL benefits from strong individual trading demand and market narratives, supporting large-scale stablecoin settlement flows and RWA deployments. The report also defines FL as the best-performing mainstream crypto asset in 2025.
Layer-2 solutions handle over 90% of Ethereum-related executions, benefiting from upgrades that reduce data availability costs. Activity and transaction fees are concentrated in a few Rollups like Base and Arbitrum, while other platforms are declining due to weakened incentives. The fragmentation of over a hundred Rollups and the uneven decentralization of sorters remain constraints, further reinforcing one of the themes of 2026: value capture may shift to the application layer with user relationships, rather than remaining confined to the block space layer.
2026 Outlook: Risk Resurgence and Adoption-Driven Growth
The report's outlook for 2026 is based on a more positive policy environment and a shift towards adoption-driven growth.
At the macro level, three policy tools may stimulate risk appetite: monetary easing, fiscal stimulus with cash and tax rebates, and deregulation. Risk assets often benefit when financial conditions ease, and the crypto market has historically been extremely sensitive to changes in global liquidity. The report also raises the possibility of a policy catalyst for the US strategic BTC reserve.
Regarding product and market structure, the focus is not on a single narrative, but on a continuous focus on user scenarios:
PayFi: Emerging banks and wallets merge, with yield-generating stablecoins supporting next-generation consumer finance applications.
Institutionalization: On-chain money markets, Treasury bills, and RWA settlements are integrated into workflows.
Value Capture: With declining block space costs, applications such as wallets, aggregators, decentralized exchanges, and prediction markets can capture more value.
Smart Agent Finance: AI-driven execution, automated processes, and trust tools.
Prediction Markets: Information pricing replaces opinion-driven narratives.
In other words, 2026 may favor verifiable, compliant systems built around sustainable utility.
Summary: In 2025, the crypto industry continued to progress despite macroeconomic headwinds. Bitcoin demand gradually flowed through regulatory channels, stablecoins scaled up to become settlement infrastructure, DeFi matured and grew into a revenue-generating industry, and tokenization became increasingly integrated into production-grade financial applications. The Coffee Leaf Research Institute report's 2026 outlook is built on these foundations: further institutional consolidation, accelerated application-level adoption, and a potentially more relaxed macroeconomic environment.
Global Digital Trading Platform Center
2026-01-01 10:00:35