The 25 Events That Reshaped Crypto and Global Markets in 2025

2025 didn’t deliver one single “crypto story.” It delivered a chain reaction – policy, macro, technology, and market structure all pushing on each other.

In the span of twelve months, the U.S. went from selling seized coins to treating Bitcoin like a strategic asset, stablecoins moved toward a bank-grade rulebook, Europe flipped on a continent-wide licensing regime, and institutions doubled down through ETFs, tokenization, and prime brokerage consolidation. At the same time, the market reminded everyone it still lives and dies by leverage, liquidity, and global headlines.

U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

The biggest policy shock of the year landed on March 6, when President Donald Trump signed a formal directive establishing the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, following an executive order issued earlier in January. With that signature, the United States effectively became the largest state holder of Bitcoin, consolidating more than 200,000 BTC obtained through forfeitures into a permanent reserve structure. The change was more than symbolic: it reframed government-held Bitcoin from an asset that would eventually be sold into the market to an asset meant to stay off the market.

The directive also created a dedicated office inside the Department of the Treasury to run the reserve and manage custody, and it imposed a strict “HODL” policy that blocks any sale of deposited Bitcoin except in narrow legal scenarios. Alongside the main reserve, the administration established a separate U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile meant for other confiscated cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, XRP, and Solana – a second bucket designed to handle non-BTC holdings more flexibly. To grow the Bitcoin reserve without widening the deficit, the order authorized the Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce to develop budget-neutral acquisition approaches that do not rely on taxpayer funding. In practical terms, the policy ended the era of routine government liquidations of seized digital assets and replaced it with a long-term thesis: Bitcoin as an inflation hedge and a tool tied to national economic security.

The GENIUS Act Sets America’s Stablecoin Rules

On July 18, the GENIUS Act was signed into law and immediately became one of the most important U.S. financial market developments of the year, not just a crypto headline. It created the first comprehensive federal stablecoin framework, demanding 100% reserve backing in liquid assets and explicitly opening the door for banks to issue stablecoins. In effect, it pushed stablecoins closer to traditional payment infrastructure and nudged the market toward deeper “digital dollar” behavior.

The law’s biggest impact was clarity. It stated that compliant payment stablecoins are not securities or commodities, removing them from the SEC and CFTC tug-of-war and replacing that with a dual oversight design. Large issuers (above $10 billion in market cap) fall under primary federal supervision through agencies such as the OCC, Federal Reserve, and FDIC, while smaller issuers can choose state-level supervision as long as the state framework is deemed substantially similar to federal standards. The Act also forced monthly public reporting of reserve composition, banned interest-bearing stablecoins by prohibiting issuers from paying interest, and upgraded consumer protection by granting stablecoin holders priority claims above other creditors if an issuer becomes insolvent. Put together, the GENIUS Act didn’t just regulate stablecoins – it gave them a clear lane to become a mainstream financial instrument.

The Longest U.S. Government Shutdown in History

From October 1 to November 12, the U.S. federal government entered what became the longest shutdown in American history, lasting 43 days. The cause was a budget impasse tied to the extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies scheduled to expire at year-end. The Republican-controlled House pushed for a “clean” funding bill, while Senate Democrats insisted the healthcare provisions be included, and the deadlock dragged on long enough to hit daily life in visible ways.

Roughly 900,000 federal employees were furloughed, while another two million essential workers continued without pay. National parks were disrupted, economic data releases were delayed, and air travel delays worsened as staffing shortages spread. Food assistance programs for millions of Americans were pushed toward risk, and investors were forced to operate with less reliable macro data at exactly the time tariff shock and market volatility were already rising. The shutdown ended with a temporary funding bill that financed most agencies until January 30, 2026, and promised a separate vote on the healthcare subsidies – preventing a collapse of government services, but leaving the political risk unresolved.

MiCA Becomes Fully Operational Across the EU

Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation became fully operational across all 27 EU member states, turning the bloc into a unified regulatory zone for crypto activity. The “passport” system changed the competitive landscape overnight: once a firm is authorized, it can operate across the entire EU under the same license instead of navigating a patchwork of national rules. For companies focused on scale, that single framework became one of the most commercially meaningful regulatory developments of the year.

The implementation introduced three distinct license types built around how businesses actually operate. E-money tokens (EMTs) were defined for stablecoins referencing a single fiat currency, asset-referenced tokens (ARTs) for those backed by baskets of assets, and broad crypto-asset service provider (CASP) licenses for exchanges, custody, and advisory functions. A major friction point emerged around reverse solicitation, which strictly limits non-EU firms from actively marketing services to EU citizens without local authorization – forcing many global firms to seek licensure or stop serving EU customers. At the same time, the unified framework accelerated the race for compliant “travel rule” infrastructure, since CASPs are required to share originator and beneficiary data for transactions above minimal thresholds as part of anti-money-laundering enforcement.

Bitcoin and Major Altcoins Hit New All-Time Highs

Bitcoin’s 2025 rally came in two clear waves, and both left lasting fingerprints on market psychology. In January, Bitcoin pushed past $100,000 for the first time, fueled by political optimism and steady ETF inflows that kept buy-side pressure elevated even as volatility remained high. Later, the move intensified into a fresh peak: Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of $126,038 on October 6, cementing the idea that institutional demand had moved from “testing the waters” to “structural allocation.”

The mechanics behind the rally were widely discussed. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs absorbed billions of dollars in net inflows and pulled Bitcoin further into conventional portfolio construction, shifting it from a fringe asset into a standard institutional exposure. That demand collided with the post-halving supply environment stemming from April 2024, helping create sustained upward momentum. The rally also fit a broader macro theme: investors hunting for non-fiat hedges during uncertainty and a weaker U.S. dollar, with Bitcoin increasingly treated as a digital store-of-value narrative comparable to gold. Despite the major surge, BTC’s price went through a significant correction, declining below $90,000 as of the time of writing.

Altcoins had their own victories, but the year still belonged to Bitcoin. Ethereum surged above $4,900 in mid-August, Solana peaked around $295 in January, and BNB delivered the most dramatic headline by reaching roughly $1,370 in October – briefly threatening its market-cap ranking in the top tier. Yet the classic, synchronized “altcoin season” never truly arrived. Instead, Bitcoin dominance climbed toward 65% mid-year, and the rest of the market traded in a fragmented, selective way rather than a broad speculative wave like 2017 or 2021.

The Trump Memecoin Launch Turns Politics Into a Liquidity Event

Mid-2025 saw the memecoin market hit a new extreme with the official launch of $TRUMP, the first digital asset directly endorsed by the Trump family through the World Liberty Financial platform. Unlike the countless unofficial tokens that often trade on vibes and branding alone, this one arrived with an added layer of narrative power and a governance angle – holders could vote on platform-specific initiatives – even if speculation remained the main engine of demand.

The debut on decentralized exchanges triggered a rapid surge in activity, and within three weeks the token’s market capitalization had climbed to about $14.2 billion, making it one of the largest political-branded digital assets ever created. The launch also ignited controversy that never really faded: critics questioned the ethics of sitting political figures promoting private financial products, and pressure built on the SEC to clarify whether the token’s utility and governance design could trigger securities-style oversight. Even with that noise, $TRUMP became a liquidity magnet across the second half of 2025, frequently posting daily trading volumes that rivaled or surpassed long-established memecoin benchmarks like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu.

The Great October Crash and the Largest Liquidation Event Ever

If October 6 was the high, October 10-11 became the brutal reminder of what leverage can do to any market that runs too hot. Just days after the peak, crypto suffered what was described as the largest liquidation event in history. The trigger was macro, not crypto-native: new trade tariffs aimed at China hit risk sentiment hard. In roughly 24 hours, more than $19 billion in leveraged positions were wiped out, and Bitcoin fell back into the mid-$80,000 range as forced selling cascaded across venues.

The scale of the damage went beyond liquidations. Over $660 billion was erased from total crypto market capitalization, and the speed of the move exposed the market’s weak points under stress. Open interest had been elevated, long positioning was crowded, and once panic selling began, major market makers pulled liquidity – turning order books thin and creating a “liquidity vacuum” where price gaps became unavoidable.

Automated liquidation engines then sold into that illiquid environment, accelerating the downside. Infrastructure problems made it worse: outages at exchanges limited traders’ ability to manage risk, and Ethena’s USDe stablecoin temporarily de-pegged on Binance due to a collateral valuation flaw, adding another layer of chaos. Although institutional buying helped stabilize the market and prices began to rebound within days, the episode became a defining lesson of 2025: crypto is now tightly connected to macro headlines, and high-leverage structure can turn a headline into a market-wide avalanche.

Gensler Steps Down and Paul Atkins Takes Over the SEC

The most meaningful change in the U.S. regulatory tone began on January 20, 2025, when Gary Gensler stepped down as the 33rd Chair of the SEC on the same day President Trump was inaugurated. His tenure had been defined by aggressive enforcement actions against the crypto sector, and his departure instantly changed expectations for how the SEC would approach digital assets.

Trump nominated Paul S. Atkins, a former SEC Commissioner under President George W. Bush with a reputation as a more crypto-friendly voice. During the transition, Republican Commissioner Mark Uyeda served as Acting Chairman. Atkins was confirmed by the Senate on April 9 and sworn in on April 21. The shift signaled a pivot away from regulation-by-enforcement and toward clearer rulemaking, lighter burdens where possible, and a policy posture that explicitly prioritized innovation alongside compliance. For the market, the leadership change functioned like a macro catalyst: sentiment improved because regulatory uncertainty is a pricing input, and 2025 repeatedly showed how quickly that input can change valuations.

Strategy’s Bitcoin Buying Spree Becomes a Corporate Playbook

Michael Saylor and the rebranded Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) spent 2025 doing what it has become famous for – but on an even larger scale. The company kept using a playbook built around issuing both debt and equity, effectively leveraging market access to convert capital into BTC. The underlying philosophy remained consistent: cash is a “melting ice cube,” while Bitcoin is treated as a long-term hedge against inflation and monetary debasement.

The scale in 2025 was staggering. Strategy added approximately 225,027 BTC during the year alone, a volume that exceeded the estimated total Bitcoin production from the mining network over the same period. By year-end, the company’s holdings reached about 672,497 BTC, acquired at a cumulative cost of more than $50.44 billion and an average purchase price near $74,997 per bitcoin. That level of accumulation turned Strategy into the dominant corporate Bitcoin holder globally and made its balance sheet a major reference point for market narratives about institutional conviction.

Saylor’s approach also sparked a broader corporate trend that became one of the quieter but most important shifts of 2025. More than 200 public companies – up from just a handful in prior years – moved to establish digital asset treasuries as part of their core business strategy. New entrants or major expanders included Japan’s Metaplanet and the Trump Media & Technology Group, signaling that corporate acceptance of Bitcoin as a legitimate reserve asset was no longer confined to one high-profile outlier. In practical terms, Strategy’s model helped normalize the idea that BTC could sit next to cash, bonds, and other treasury instruments – and that “Bitcoin treasury strategy” could become a repeatable corporate identity.

Bybit Security Breach Becomes a Global Wake-Up Call

On February 21, one of the largest hacks in crypto history hit Bybit, with North Korean-linked attackers stealing roughly $1.5 billion in digital assets. What made the breach particularly alarming was not only the size, but the method: a highly sophisticated supply chain compromise that targeted Safe{Wallet}, a third-party multisignature platform widely trusted for securing large transfers.

According to the details that circulated, the attackers – linked to the Lazarus Group and its “TraderTraitor” subunit – began by compromising a developer workstation through social engineering, then injected malicious JavaScript into the wallet interface. That code allowed them to intercept what appeared to be a routine transfer of 401,000 ETH intended for a cold wallet and redirect it elsewhere, while internal signers saw a legitimate-looking transaction on their screens. Bybit covered the loss using internal reserves and bridge loans to protect solvency, but the consequences were bigger than one exchange. The incident escalated into an international security crisis, with the FBI and blockchain analysts linking laundering flows through mixers and decentralized venues like THORChain and eXch to funding illicit weapons programs. For the industry, the hack exposed a harsh reality: even high-end custody setups can fail if the software supply chain is compromised.

Crypto ETFs Expand Into Solana and XRP

ETF adoption accelerated in 2025 as the SEC moved faster on approvals for new exchange-traded crypto products, pushing digital assets deeper into mainstream access channels. The standout developments came late in the year with the launch of the first Solana (SOL) and XRP ETFs, while a smaller cluster of Dogecoin ETFs also emerged. By year-end, total assets held in crypto ETFs exceeded $130 billion, changing how institutions and retail alike could gain exposure – and how pricing and flows could shape the market.

The Solana products gained traction quickly, and by the end of the year assets under management had climbed to just under $1 billion, helped by first-mover demand and the appeal of being the first staking-enabled crypto ETPs. XRP ETFs also attracted substantial interest, reaching roughly $1.24 billion in AUM shortly after their November launch. Dogecoin’s ETF story looked very different: U.S.-listed spot DOGE ETFs ended December with about $5.4 million in net assets, a fraction of what SOL and XRP attracted. The gap told its own story about investor preferences in 2025 – regulated access mattered, but so did perceived institutional use cases and the broader legal and infrastructure narrative around each asset.

Circle and HashKey Go Public

Two public listings in 2025 served as milestones for crypto’s relationship with traditional capital markets. In the U.S., Circle – issuer of USDC – completed its IPO on the NYSE on June 5, raising $1.05 billion. In Asia, HashKey Group listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on December 17, becoming the first licensed crypto exchange group to go public in the region.

Together, the listings were seen as proof that regulated crypto businesses could access public markets in a credible way, turning “compliance as a strategy” into a capital markets advantage. Circle’s IPO, under ticker USDC (changed from the initially proposed CRCL), was widely interpreted as a validation of stablecoins as a regulated financial instrument, and it was followed by inclusion in major tech indices like the Nasdaq-100. That sequence helped establish a template for other mature U.S. crypto firms aiming to raise public capital. HashKey’s listing carried similar significance on the other side of the world: it reinforced Hong Kong’s position as a regulated hub for digital assets and offered a blueprint showing how licensing frameworks can coexist with deep capital market participation. The broader message from both listings was consistent – crypto companies were no longer just building products, they were building public-market-grade institutions.

Ethereum and Solana Deliver Major Protocol Upgrades

On the technology side, two ecosystems delivered upgrades that weren’t just “developer news” – they altered cost structures and performance expectations in ways the market could feel. Ethereum implemented the Pectra upgrade in May and followed with Fusaka in December, both designed to optimize the network for the Layer 2 era. Pectra introduced EIP-7702 for account abstraction, allowing regular wallets to temporarily act like smart contracts and enabling features such as gas sponsorship and transaction batching. It also increased the maximum effective validator balance from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, a major shift that made institutional staking more capital-efficient.

Fusaka in December built on those foundations by rolling out Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS). Instead of forcing validators to download entire data blobs, PeerDAS allows validators to verify rollup data by sampling smaller portions, cutting bandwidth needs for node operators by an estimated 85% and pushing Layer 2 fee reductions further, by roughly 40-60%. Meanwhile, Solana activated Firedancer in December, a new validator client developed by Jump Crypto that introduced true client diversity and reduced single-point-of-failure risk – a key weakness behind prior network outages. Written in C++ to run alongside the existing Agave client, Firedancer also raised Solana’s theoretical throughput ceiling to over one million transactions per second, strengthening the case for the chain as a high-performance venue for both retail and institutional activity.

SEC vs. Ripple Ends With a Settlement That Reshapes the Map

A four-year legal fight that influenced exchange listings, token classifications, and market sentiment finally ended in August, when the SEC and Ripple agreed to drop their appeals. The resolution left intact the 2023 ruling that retail sales of XRP on public exchanges were not securities transactions, delivering the kind of clarity the industry had been demanding for years.

The final settlement also reshaped the financial terms of the case. The original fine imposed in August 2024 was $125 million, but under the final agreement the SEC retained only $50 million, while the remaining $75 million held in escrow was returned to Ripple. By abandoning the appeal, the SEC effectively cemented Judge Torres’s distinction that XRP itself is not a security and that programmatic sales on exchanges to retail investors do not constitute investment contracts. That outcome helped major U.S. exchanges permanently relist XRP with less litigation risk and set the conditions for the XRP spot ETF filings that followed later, since the settled legal status improved the custody and surveillance comfort level for institutional sponsors. More broadly, the case created a precedent that constrained regulation-by-enforcement and increased pressure on lawmakers to define digital asset boundaries through legislation.

Trump’s Tariffs Become a Macro Shock That Hit Crypto Directly

In October 2025, the Trump administration launched a sweeping protectionist trade agenda, rolling out significant new global tariffs across a wide set of imported goods. The goal was to rebalance trade agreements and support domestic manufacturing, but the market impact was immediate: uncertainty surged, and global partners began recalculating their exposure.

Tensions escalated sharply on October 10, when Trump announced an additional 100% tariff specifically targeting Chinese imports in response to China imposing export controls on critical rare earth minerals. Had the measure fully played out, total effective tariff rates on certain goods could have moved well above 130%. The geopolitical fallout was fast and severe, straining international relations and reshaping expectations for global growth and inflation. In the end, a trade truce late in the month temporarily lowered reciprocal tariffs to 10%, but the damage to market confidence had already been done – and crypto’s October liquidation spiral became one of the clearest examples of how macro policy can detonate leveraged digital asset positioning.

Terraform Labs Founder Do Kwon Sentenced

Another long-running crypto saga reached a decisive end when Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon was sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to fraud charges tied to the TerraUSD and LUNA collapse. In August 2025, Kwon pleaded guilty to two U.S. counts – conspiracy to defraud and wire fraud – admitting he misled investors about TerraUSD’s stability and about claims that the Korean payments app Chai used Terraform’s blockchain technology for transactions.

At the December sentencing, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer described the scheme as a “fraud on an epic, generational scale” and handed down a 15-year term, exceeding the 12 years prosecutors had requested. The goal, according to the framing around the decision, was deterrence and proportional punishment given the scale – roughly $40 billion in investor losses. Kwon also agreed to forfeit more than $19 million in illegal proceeds, and the outcome left open the possibility of additional legal consequences: he must serve at least half of his U.S. sentence before he could potentially be transferred to South Korea, where separate capital markets charges could bring further penalties. For the market, the message was direct: founder accountability had moved from theory to reality.

Trust Wallet Suffers a Major Supply Chain Attack

Right at the end of the year, another security disaster hit – this time targeting retail users in a way that revived fears around browser-based custody. On Christmas Day 2025, Trust Wallet’s Google Chrome extension (version 2.68) was compromised through a supply chain attack. Hackers used a leaked API key to bypass the internal review process and push a malicious update that hid a backdoor inside what looked like a routine analytics module.

Once installed, the code quietly intercepted mnemonic seed phrases and private keys the moment users unlocked the extension or imported a wallet, then transmitted that information to a fake domain designed to resemble legitimate tracking infrastructure. Over the next 48 hours, roughly $7 million in assets – including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana – was drained from more than 2,500 wallets. Mobile users were not affected, but the impact still rippled through the market: Trust Wallet Token (TWT) fell about 8%. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao stated losses would be covered using internal reserves so users remained “SAFU,” and the team rushed out version 2.69 to patch the exploit. The bigger takeaway was uncomfortable: browser-based custody can carry structural supply-chain risk that many users underestimate.

Visa Integrates Solana for USDC Settlement

In December, Visa took a meaningful step beyond pilots and into commercial reality by officially launching USDC settlement services on the Solana blockchain for U.S. clients. The move signaled that high-performance public blockchains were no longer just experimental rails but could function as real clearing layers for modern payments.

By integrating Visa Direct with a Circle-managed treasury on Solana, Visa enabled around-the-clock USDC settlement with significantly faster completion times – compressing processes that often take days on traditional banking rails into minute-level settlement on-chain. Strategically, the implication was bigger than faster payments. Visa’s move openly positioned high-performance Layer-1 networks as viable alternatives to legacy clearing systems such as SWIFT or ACH for certain institutional flows, and it pushed other payment giants to treat stablecoin infrastructure more urgently, including renewed competitive pressure for Mastercard and others to accelerate their own efforts.

Presidential Pardons Put Politics at the Center of Crypto

Two presidential pardons in 2025 were read by the market as political signals, and not subtle ones. On his first day in office in January, President Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Road founder who had been serving a sentence of two life terms plus 40 years without parole after his 2015 conviction tied to a marketplace that facilitated more than $200 million in illicit drug sales. For years, crypto advocates and libertarians framed his punishment as government overreach and pointed to Silk Road as one of Bitcoin’s earliest real-world adoption moments, even if controversial. The pardon capped a long-running campaign that turned Ulbricht into a rallying symbol for a segment of the industry.

Later in the year, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) also received a pardon. Unlike Ulbricht, Zhao’s original sentence was only four months for pleading guilty to failing to maintain effective anti-money-laundering programs, and he had already completed that sentence by the time he was pardoned. The extreme contrast in the severity of their underlying cases – and the fact that both ended with pardons – amplified the perception of a shifting political climate. Across the industry, the pardons were widely interpreted as evidence of a more crypto-friendly administration and a move away from the enforcement-heavy posture associated with prior years.

Ripple Buys Hidden Road and Builds an Institutional Stack

In October 2025, Ripple closed a major institutional pivot by finalizing its $1.25 billion acquisition of Hidden Road, a multi-asset prime broker clearing more than $3 trillion annually. The deal was Ripple’s largest ever and effectively made it the first digital asset firm to own and operate a global multi-asset prime broker – now rebranded as Ripple Prime.

Strategically, the acquisition fit Ripple’s goal of building an end-to-end institutional financial stack rather than remaining narrowly defined by payments. The integration plan centered on embedding RLUSD as a primary collateral asset across Ripple Prime’s brokerage products while migrating post-trade workflows onto the XRP Ledger. By pairing on-chain clearing with bank-grade custody and prime brokerage capabilities, Ripple positioned itself as a more direct competitor to crypto prime players like Coinbase Prime and FalconX, while also challenging parts of the traditional brokerage model with a faster settlement narrative.

Coinbase Completes the Deribit Acquisition

One of the largest corporate moves in crypto history was Coinbase’s acquisition of Deribit. Announced in May and finalized on August 14, the deal was valued at roughly $2.9 billion, structured as a mix of cash and stock – $700 million in cash plus 11 million Coinbase shares. The goal was straightforward: dominate crypto derivatives, the segment that represents the bulk of global trading volume.

Deribit’s scale made it a crown jewel. It had posted over $1 trillion in trading volume in 2024 and carried more than $60 billion in open interest, giving Coinbase immediate leverage in options – a market known for deeper institutional participation and different revenue characteristics compared with spot. With Deribit integrated, Coinbase strengthened its pitch as a one-stop platform across spot, futures, perpetuals, and options. The move also aimed to diversify Coinbase’s revenue base and smooth cyclicality, since options revenue is often viewed as less dependent on simple “up-only” retail flows than spot trading.

RWA Tokenization Becomes the Most Profitable Narrative

Tokenization of real-world assets emerged as the most profitable and strategically important narrative of 2025, mainly because it created a bridge that traditional finance could actually use. The total value of tokenized assets on public blockchains (excluding stablecoins) grew to just over $33 billion by year-end, and the sector produced an average return of 185.8% – a performance profile that pulled attention even when broader altcoin momentum was uneven.

The drivers were practical, not hype-based. Institutional giants such as BlackRock and JPMorgan pushed deeper into tokenization as investors looked for predictable yields from instruments like U.S. Treasuries and private credit, but with the advantages of 24/7 accessibility and faster settlement. Tokenized U.S. Treasuries climbed above $7.4 billion in AUM by year-end, while private credit remained a major category supporting the broader trend. Regulatory clarity – especially from frameworks like MiCA and the GENIUS Act – reduced legal ambiguity and made it easier for institutions to participate without the same “unknown unknowns.” For many market observers, this was the year blockchain stopped being framed as a speculative playground and started being treated as financial infrastructure.

The Stock Market Rally Becomes an AI-Driven Runaway Train

While crypto swung between euphoria and leverage-driven panic, U.S. equities put together a persistent rally that pushed major indices to repeated all-time highs. The S&P 500 ended 2025 up around 17%, the Nasdaq Composite led with gains above 21%, and the Dow finished up roughly 14%. It marked the third consecutive year of double-digit gains for the S&P 500, and the fuel was overwhelmingly concentrated: AI.

The rally culminated on October 29, when Nvidia became the first publicly traded company in history to cross a $5 trillion market valuation, cementing its role as the market’s defining symbol of the AI era. Investors didn’t just chase AI software narratives – they chased the “picks and shovels” too, piling into storage and infrastructure names tied to data center expansion. Sandisk was the top performer in the S&P 500, surging over 596%, while Western Digital gained nearly 299%.

Micron climbed more than 250%, Seagate rose over 226%, and the broader momentum was amplified by expectations of Federal Reserve rate cuts and strong earnings. Outside pure hardware, Robinhood gained about 215% after its addition to the S&P 500, and Alphabet outperformed most of the “Magnificent Seven” with a rise above 67%. The equity story mattered for crypto because risk appetite and liquidity conditions shaped flows across all speculative assets, and 2025 repeatedly showed that when stocks are flying, crypto narratives tend to strengthen – until macro shock snaps the chain.

The Fed Starts Cutting Rates and Sets the Tone for 2026

After a multi-year tightening cycle, the Federal Reserve began cutting interest rates in 2025, launching a new easing phase with direct consequences for risk assets. The first cut arrived in September, followed by additional cuts in October and December, bringing the federal funds target range down to 3.50% to 3.75% by year-end. The December meeting minutes highlighted how divided policymakers were, yet a majority still supported easing as the labor market softened and inflation pressures cooled.

The Fed’s approach remained cautious and data-dependent. Policymakers signaled that nothing was guaranteed, and the median projection implied only one additional cut in 2026. Still, many officials acknowledged that more easing would be appropriate if inflation continued to fall as expected. For markets, the takeaway wasn’t only “rates are lower.” It was that the policy regime had flipped, and once the direction changes, valuation frameworks change with it – affecting everything from AI multiples in equities to long-duration risk appetite in crypto.

Gold and Silver Post Historic All-Time Highs

2025 will also be remembered as a shock year for precious metals, with gold and silver delivering record-breaking performance that outpaced most other asset classes. Gold rose roughly 74% and reached an all-time high near $4,562 per ounce just before Christmas – its best annual gain since 1979. The drivers combined safe-haven behavior with structural demand: persistent geopolitical tensions, strong central bank accumulation, and firm ETF buying amid global uncertainty.

Silver turned into the standout winner. Prices surged over 175% for the year and hit a historic high around $83.62 per ounce. The rally was powered by a rare blend of safe-haven demand and a structural supply deficit tied to industrial consumption, including clean energy buildouts and the rapid expansion of AI data centers. In a year where investors debated whether Bitcoin was “digital gold,” real gold and silver reminded the market that physical hedges still carry enormous weight when macro risk is alive and well.

The AI Boom Becomes Global Infrastructure, Not a Buzzword

In 2025, artificial intelligence moved from “next big thing” to something closer to a baseline layer of modern business. Investment surged across the world’s largest companies, and AI adoption became mainstream at a pace few other technologies have matched. Estimates put the global AI market around $371 billion to $391 billion in 2025, with roughly 88% of organizations reporting that they used AI in at least one business function.

The spending wave turned into a global arms race. Giants like Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia poured billions into infrastructure, while OpenAI alone finalized infrastructure commitments totaling about $1.4 trillion. Hardware bottlenecks became a defining constraint, particularly for Nvidia’s H200 chips – where demand from Chinese customers was reported to be more than double available supply, pushing Nvidia and TSMC to accelerate production. Beyond capital spending, the technology itself shifted too: more autonomous “AI agents” gained traction, and businesses focused less on flashy demos and more on practical applications like customer service and cybersecurity. That mattered for markets because AI became the core equity narrative driving valuations, capital flows, and risk appetite – and in 2025, those flows influenced everything else.

The information provided in this article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. Coindoo.com does not endorse or recommend any specific investment strategy or cryptocurrency. Always conduct your own research and consult with a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

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