[TL;DR]
- In 2025, the crypto market surpassed a total market cap of $4T, blockchain throughput increased more than 100× over five years, and with the full-scale entry of traditional financial institutions like BlackRock, J.P. Morgan, and Visa, the industry has entered maturity for the first time in 17 years.
- Stablecoins process $46T in annual transactions—now on par with Visa and PayPal—and with the passage of the U.S. GENIUS Act providing regulatory clarity, institutional allocations have surged, pushing on-chain crypto holdings past $175B.
- Korea shows high volumes and participation but remains exchange-centric. If a KRW stablecoin, BaaS/WaaS infrastructure, and a clear regulatory framework are established, there is an opportunity to lead with globally competitive dApps and consumer apps.
1. Introduction: Crypto Comes of Age
1.1 2025—Crypto moves from adolescence to maturity
a16z’s “State of Crypto 2025” report opens by declaring that “this is the year the world goes on-chain.” When a16z released its first crypto report, the industry was still immature: the overall crypto market was about half today’s size, blockchains were slow, costly, and less reliable. Over the next three years the industry endured a major downturn and political uncertainty, yet developers kept improving the infrastructure.
The result is 2025. The report stresses that crypto is now a meaningful part of the modern economy. Traditional financial institutions—Visa, BlackRock, Fidelity, J.P. Morgan—are launching or preparing crypto products. Tech firms like PayPal, Stripe, and Robinhood are too. What was once unthinkable is now reality.
The specific figures make the shift tangible. Blockchain throughput has increased more than 100× versus five years ago, now handling 3,400+ transactions per second. Stablecoins process about $46T annually, rivaling Visa and PayPal. More than $175B is now allocated to Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded products.
a16z sums up 2025 in a single word: maturation. Crypto is no longer an experiment. Seventeen years of accumulated technology and experience are congealing into systems that operate in the real economy. To track this transition, a16z also released, for the first time, a “State of Crypto Dashboard.”
1.2 What crossing $4T in market cap means
According to the report, 2025 is the first time the crypto market surpassed a total market capitalization of $4T. That’s more than a big number—it reflects broad-based progress. Mobile crypto wallet users hit an all-time high, up 20% year over year.
Regulation played a major role. The report finds that a once-hostile regulatory climate has turned far more constructive, accelerating adoption across use cases from stablecoins to tokenization of traditional assets. This inflection is likely to define the next cycle.
a16z estimates active crypto users at roughly 40–70 million, up by about 10 million from last year. By contrast, crypto owners are estimated at 716 million, up 16% YoY. Meanwhile, monthly active on-chain addresses are around 181 million, down 18% YoY.
This reveals a notable gap: passive holders who don’t transact on-chain versus active on-chain users. For builders, that gap is an opportunity—there’s substantial room to convert existing owners into active users.
1.3 What “maturity” actually means
Maturity isn’t just bigger numbers—it’s a change in how the industry operates. Speculation and pure tech experiments are giving way to applications that create real economic value.
The report introduces “real economic value” as a key metric—how much people actually pay to use blockchains. Today, Hyperliquid and Solana account for 53% of revenue-generating activity, a sharp shift from the era dominated by Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The developer landscape is also diversifying. Per a16z’s investing team, crypto remains multi-chain, with Bitcoin, Ethereum (plus its L2s), and Solana attracting the most developers. Combined, Ethereum + L2s brought in the most new developers in 2025, while Solana saw a 78% rise in developer interest over two years, making it one of the fastest-growing ecosystems.
Maturity also means integration with existing systems. Crypto is becoming part of traditional finance rather than a parallel world. Citigroup, Mastercard, Morgan Stanley and others are beginning to offer crypto products to consumers. PayPal and Shopify are building payments infrastructure for everyday transactions. Circle, Robinhood, and Stripe have launched or announced their own blockchains. As these firms bring their massive distribution to bear, crypto will embed deeply into daily financial services.
2. The Global Market’s Major Turn
2.1 Growth at scale: 716M owners; Bitcoin tops $126,000
The report concludes that crypto is big, global, and still growing. About 716 million people worldwide own crypto (up 16% YoY). Mobile wallet usage hit record highs, up 20%.
While users are global, usage patterns differ by region. Mobile wallet growth is fastest in emerging markets like Argentina, Colombia, India, and Nigeria. In Argentina’s currency crisis, mobile wallet usage rose 16× in three years.
Conversely, analysis of token-related web traffic shows more interest from developed markets like Australia and Korea, where activity skews more toward trading and speculation. Same market, very different behaviors.
Bitcoin’s performance stands out. It still represents over half of total crypto market cap, reinforcing its store-of-value status and hitting an all-time high above $126,000. Ethereum and Solana have also recovered substantially since 2022.
2.2 Institutions arrive: Visa, BlackRock, J.P. Morgan embrace crypto
2025 is the year of institutional adoption. Just five days after a16z said last year that stablecoins had found product-market fit, Stripe announced plans to acquire a stablecoin infrastructure platform (Bridge). The race was on, and traditional finance began making visible moves on stablecoins.
Months later, Circle’s $10B IPO signaled a stablecoin issuer joining mainstream finance. In July, the bipartisan GENIUS Act became law, giving developers and institutions the clarity they needed. In the following months, mentions of stablecoins in SEC filings rose 64%, and announcements from major financial institutions accelerated.
Institutional adoption is rapidly compounding. Citi, Fidelity, J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, Morgan Stanley, and Visa are offering or planning consumer crypto products. Consumers can now buy and hold digital assets alongside stocks, ETPs, and other traditional products. Platforms like PayPal and Shopify are focusing on payments infrastructure for everyday commerce.
Per the report, Circle, Robinhood, and Stripe are actively building or planning new blockchains focused on payments, real-world assets, and stablecoins. These efforts can push more payment flows on-chain, encourage enterprise adoption, and build a faster, larger, more global financial system. With their distribution, continued development will deeply integrate crypto into mainstream services.
2.3 The stablecoin revolution: $46T annual volume
The report declares stablecoins mainstream. They process $46T in annual transactions (and $9T on an adjusted basis), now comparable to Visa and PayPal. This isn’t just volume—stablecoins have become core financial infrastructure.
Cross-border payments are a standout: instead of days and high fees, stablecoin transfers settle instantly at a fraction of the cost—fueling rapid adoption in emerging markets as both a store of value and a medium of exchange.
Corporate stablecoin efforts are ramping. Some institutions plan to issue their own; others will integrate existing stablecoins. With GENIUS Act clarity, momentum should accelerate.
Stablecoins are reshaping the broader payments industry. As programmable money, they enable automated payments, conditional transfers, and micro-transactions—use cases legacy rails couldn’t support—democratizing financial access worldwide.
2.4 The U.S. rises: Friendly rules and a surge in institutional flows
Crypto is stronger than ever in the U.S. The biggest shift is policy. A previously hostile climate has pivoted to a more supportive one, accelerating adoption from stablecoins to tokenization.
Exchange-traded products (ETPs) are a key driver of institutional flows. On-chain crypto holdings now exceed $175B, up 169% from $65B a year ago. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust is cited as the most-traded Bitcoin ETP launch ever; Ethereum ETPs have also seen notable inflows.
The report clarifies that these products registered on SEC Form S-1 as ETPs (not traditional ETFs whose portfolios are securities), underscoring how regulators classify crypto.
More clarity invites more institutions. Asset managers once deterred by uncertainty are now adding crypto products. If this continues, the U.S. will further entrench itself as a global crypto hub.
3. Infrastructure Matures
3.1 3,400 TPS today (100× in five years)
The report emphasizes that none of this would be possible without leaps in blockchain infrastructure. In five years, aggregate network throughput rose 100×: from <25 TPS to around 3,400 TPS—comparable to Nasdaq’s completed trade throughput or Stripe’s global Black Friday processing.
Even more impressive: costs have fallen dramatically. The old view that blockchains are slow and expensive is no longer supported by data. With constraints easing, true large-scale apps are now viable.
A new yardstick—real economic value—tracks how much people pay to use blockspace as scaling improves, fee markets mature, and new apps emerge. Hyperliquid and Solana account for 53% of revenue-generating activity—very different from the Bitcoin/Ethereum-dominant past.
And it’s not just speed or cost. The report argues blockchains are almost ready for prime time—some gaps remain, but given recent progress, closing them looks like a matter of time.
3.2 Solana vs. Ethereum L2s
Solana has become one of the most prominent ecosystems. Its high-throughput, low-fee architecture now supports everything from DePIN to NFT marketplaces, with $3B in app-level revenue over the past year. Planned upgrades could double capacity by year-end.
Developer interest confirms the rise: per a16z, Solana developer interest rose 78% over two years. High throughput and low fees are attractive for apps requiring frequent transactions.
Meanwhile, Ethereum continues its scaling roadmap. Most of Ethereum’s economic activity has moved to L2s like Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism. Average L2 fees fell from about $24 in 2021 to under $0.01 today, making Ethereum-connected blockspace cheap and abundant.
Together, Ethereum + L2s attracted the most new developers in 2025. Ethereum’s modular L2 strategy is working—preserving security and decentralization while scaling. Solana’s monolithic high-performance approach and Ethereum’s modular L2 approach reflect different philosophies, both advancing the state of blockchain infrastructure.
3.3 Bridges, privacy, and ZK advances
Interoperability is increasingly critical. Bridges connect chains. Protocols like LayerZero and Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol let users move assets across multi-chain systems. Hyperliquid’s canonical bridge recorded $74B in volume this year.
Privacy is returning to the forefront—and may be essential for broader adoption. Signals include a spike in Google searches for crypto privacy in 2025, Zcash’s shielded pool approaching 4M ZEC, and Railgun flows surpassing $200M per month.
More signs: The Ethereum Foundation formed a new privacy team; Paxos partnered with Aleo on USAD, a compliant but privacy-preserving stablecoin. The U.S. OFAC lifted sanctions on the decentralized privacy protocol Tornado Cash. As crypto goes mainstream, these trends are expected to gather steam.
Zero-knowledge proofs and succinct proof systems are rapidly moving from decades of research to key infrastructure. ZK systems now power rollups, compliance tooling, and even mainstream web services—Google’s new ZK identity system is one example. Blockchains are also accelerating post-quantum roadmaps: about $750B in Bitcoin sits at addresses vulnerable to future quantum attacks, and the U.S. plans to migrate federal systems to post-quantum algorithms by 2035.
3.4 AI × Crypto begins
The report highlights AI × crypto as a major trend. ChatGPT’s 2022 launch put AI in the spotlight; for crypto it creates clear opportunities—from provenance and IP licensing to payments rails for agents.
Decentralized identity will be pivotal. Systems like World have already verified 17M+ people, offering proof-of-personhood to distinguish humans from bots. The x402 protocol standard is emerging as a financial backbone for autonomous AI agents, enabling micro-transactions, API access, and settlement without intermediaries. Gartner estimates this agent economy could reach $30T by 2030.
At the same time, AI’s compute layer is concentrated among a few giants, raising centralization and censorship concerns. OpenAI and Anthropic control 88% of AI-native company revenue; AWS, Microsoft, and Google hold 63% of cloud infrastructure; NVIDIA commands 94% of data-center GPUs. While this concentration buoyed the Magnificent 7’s earnings, the rest of the S&P 493 hasn’t kept pace with inflation.
Blockchains can counterbalance AI’s centralizing forces. Though some developers moved from crypto to AI (a16z estimates ~1,000 roles shifted post-ChatGPT), that was offset by inflows from traditional finance and tech into crypto. Net, crypto did not lose talent—it diversified it.
4. Korea’s Perspective: Where Are We?
4.1 Global trends vs. Korea’s current position
The global maturation is striking, but Korean investors and companies should assess where we stand. Korea has long been one of the world’s most active crypto trading markets. Exchanges like Upbit and Bithumb often rank near the top by daily volume, and participation rates are high.
Yet through the lens of real usage, Korea looks different. In emerging markets, mobile wallet adoption is surging and stablecoins are used for remittances and savings. In Korea, activity remains exchange-centric and speculative. On-chain activity, DeFi usage, and stablecoin utility are comparatively limited.
Several factors drive this: a highly developed domestic financial system and fast bank transfers reduce the need for stablecoins; KRW stability lowers demand for USD-pegged coins. But this also risks missing out on core infrastructure development in the global crypto economy.
Looking ahead, growth will come less from price cycles and more from real use cases—stablecoin payments, on-chain financial services, and tokenized assets. If Korea fails to convert trading strength into innovation and value creation, it could drift to the periphery of the global crypto economy.
4.2 Regulatory environment: U.S. vs. Korea
A major 2025 shift is the U.S. policy pivot. The GENIUS Act provides clear rules for stablecoin issuers and developers. A 64% rise in stablecoin mentions in SEC filings suggests firms are no longer deterred by uncertainty. That clarity underpins bold moves by BlackRock, J.P. Morgan, Visa, and others.
Korea is different. While the Virtual Asset User Protection Act strengthens exchange oversight, clear guidance for stablecoins and DeFi remains lacking. Issuing or distributing stablecoins domestically is effectively impossible—shutting Korean firms out of a $46T stablecoin economy.
Tax policy also matters. In the U.S., long-term capital gains and ETPs provide structured access; $175B+ of inflows into BTC/ETH ETPs rode on that foundation. Korea’s crypto taxation remains deferred, but without a clear long-term direction, uncertainty persists.
More fundamentally, regulatory philosophy differs. The U.S. is shifting toward innovation-friendly risk management—sandboxes and clearer guidance that let companies try and learn. Korea maintains a conservative, investor-protection-first approach. Both are important, but the balance point determines the industry’s pace. Given the global acceleration, Korea’s regulators should reassess the balance between speed and safety.
4.3 Global opportunities Koreans should target
The stablecoin economy is the standout. $46T in annual volume isn’t just a stat—it’s infrastructure millions use daily. Korean fintechs, especially in remittance and payments, should target this market. Even with domestic limits, overseas stablecoin services are feasible.
Solana and Ethereum L2 growth is another opportunity. Solana’s developer interest is up 78%, and L2 fees are < $0.01. Rather than building new mainnets, Korean projects may find more leverage by building apps on mature ecosystems—especially in gaming and entertainment, where Korea is strong.
AI × crypto should not be missed. The report projects the agent economy could reach $30T by 2030. Korea has world-class AI capabilities. Coupling them with crypto payment rails could put Korean firms at the forefront of agent economies—identity, micro-payments, programmable money are all within reach.
Institutional expansion is also a signal for Korean finance. BlackRock, J.P. Morgan, and Visa won’t wait. Korean banks and brokerages should prepare custody, tokenized asset trading, and digital-asset advisory within current rules. The more we delay, the higher the opportunity cost.
4.4 Korea’s challenges—and opportunities
Korea’s biggest challenge is moving from trading to usage. Real economic value measures what users actually pay to use blockspace. In Korea, most activity still occurs inside exchanges; on-chain ecosystems are thin. Participation in DeFi, NFTs, and on-chain gaming lags global averages.
This isn’t just a user issue. Korea has world-class developers and founders, but projects often remain domestically scoped. As Ethereum and Solana attract global builders, Korean teams should target the world from day one by building on those ecosystems for greater impact.
Regulatory upgrades are essential to move beyond an exchange-centric market—clear frameworks for stablecoins, DeFi, and tokenized assets. Like the GENIUS Act, Korea needs balanced rules that enable innovation while managing risk—expanded sandboxes and more room for experimentation.
There are positive signals. KRW stablecoin efforts lay groundwork for Korea’s participation in the stablecoin economy. Even with constraints, technical readiness now can enable rapid go-to-market when rules improve.
BaaS and WaaS matter, too. These platforms let enterprises offer digital-asset services without handling crypto complexity directly—lowering onboarding friction and realizing the report’s theme of integration with existing systems. With such infrastructure, banks and retailers can embed crypto-powered services naturally.
Privacy tech is also advancing in Korea. KYC + ZKP pilots aim to reconcile compliance with user privacy. As the global report underscores ZK’s rising importance, Korean firms investing here can gain a foothold for global expansion.
If these infrastructure initiatives spread into real services, Korea can lay the foundation for a distinctive on-chain ecosystem. High awareness and participation remain major assets. If we channel that energy from speculation to usage, Korea can build Asia’s most vibrant on-chain economy, blending crypto with strengths in entertainment, gaming, and e-commerce to create globally competitive services. In this coming-of-age moment, Korea has the ingredients—it needs direction and execution.
5. Conclusion: Crypto, an adult at 17—what’s next?
5.1 The great upgrade of finance begins
The report says we’re at an inflection point. With regulatory clarity unlocking revenue-generating tokens, and adoption by traditional finance and fintech accelerating, the message is simple: infrastructure is ready, distribution exists, and policy is improving. Now it’s time to bring crypto fully mainstream.
Over 17 years, throughput rose from ~25 TPS to ~3,400 TPS; fees fell from ~$24 to <$0.01 on L2s. Stablecoins now process $46T annually. As BlackRock, J.P. Morgan, Visa, and others step in, crypto is no longer a fringe experiment—it’s part of the financial system.
AI × crypto foreshadows the next stage: a potential $30T agent economy by 2030, advancing privacy tech, and post-quantum readiness—all setting the stage for the next decade’s leap.
5.2 Implications for Korea
Korea has high awareness and participation and world-class tech talent—but remains exchange-centric and loosely connected to the global on-chain economy. To catch up with global trends, a strategic pivot is needed.
Positive signals are here: KRW stablecoins, BaaS/WaaS platforms, KYC + ZKP privacy solutions—core infrastructure is already being built. The missing piece is clear regulation.
We’ve seen how the GENIUS Act unlocked growth in the U.S. If Korea clarifies rules for stablecoin issuance, DeFi, and tokenized assets, prepared infrastructure can catalyze globally competitive projects—especially in our strength areas like gaming and entertainment, enabling world-leading dApps and consumer apps.
Korean financial institutions must also move. Given the pace of global banks and brokers, passive observation is no longer viable. Within what’s allowed today, start custody, tokenized markets, and digital-asset advisory. Every quarter of delay widens the gap.
5.3 The next chapter beyond adolescence
Crypto has withstood market crashes, regulatory pressure, and technical limits—and is now present tense, not future promise. Real economic value shows maturity: people are paying to use blockchains, at growing scale.
Success isn’t automatic. We still need better UX, real problem-solving, constructive engagement with regulators, and trust-building. The technology is ready; turning it into meaningful services is up to builders and entrepreneurs.
Korea stands at the crest of this wave. Infrastructure is forming, talent is here, participation is high. What remains is regulatory clarity and execution. If we shift from trading to usage, Korea can play a major role in the global crypto economy. The transformation described in “State of Crypto 2025” is already underway. Where Korea lands in that future depends on the choices we make now.
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