A read on how the 2024-2025 cycle could end
Author: Mark Leontev
Following last year’s write-up, it’s worth clarifying: these predictions aren’t pegged to a calendar year — they’re anchored to “cycle” structure. Time in these markets tends to compress around key events: a halving, a rate cut, an ETF approval, a meme catching fire. What follows are not twelve-month projections, but a read on how the current cycle could end.
Some of these will age well. Others won’t. That’s the nature of attempting to make sense of reflexive systems. The aim isn’t precision, but perspective and fun.
And of course: none of this is financial advice. If it reads like conviction, it’s because we care. If it reads like entertainment, that’s because it is. Use your judgment — we’ll be using ours.
1. Higher
It’s worth entertaining the scenario where SPX approaches 8,000 and BTC tags $200K — and the least consensus this view becomes as 2025 evolves, the more it’s worth considering. The macro bifurcation is simple: either we slip into a recession and inject liquidity in response, or we preemptively inject liquidity and probably end up in some form of recession anyway. In both paths, policy is bound to shift and assets front-run the easing.
With US rates gliding toward 3.5% and the market still carrying scars from 2022–23, positioning remains hesitant — which is precisely what gives the upside its convexity. BTC’s halving is behind us, ETF inflows are only starting to compound, and the world is still underallocated. If we’re heading into the final stretch of the cycle, this is where the reflexivity kicks in.
2. Solana
Solana is on track to effectively double its realized capacity in 2025, with Success non-vote TPS exceeding 1,500 by year-end. This isn’t theoretical scale; it’s observable throughput that reinforces the chain’s position as the closest thing to performant, consumer-grade blockspace.
On-chain application revenue continues to build — the current daily record of $54.3M will likely be eclipsed before Q1 2026 closes, as new categories (payments, stablecoin velocity, and of course memecoins) drive increasingly varied usage.
A U.S.-listed Solana ETF feels all but inevitable. So to make it worth a wager: assume SOL ETF inflows match or outpace Ethereum’s in the months following launch. The setup is there — more favorable macro conditions, a valuation multiple that still invites expansion, and an asset with retail-native momentum. Where Ethereum arrives late and mature, Solana may catch the market at its point of greatest narrative receptivity.
3. ETFs
The U.S. crypto ETF market doubles in size, crossing 50 registered products across spot BTC, ETH, SOL, and multi-asset constructions by year-end. What began as a narrow access point becomes a sprawling catalogue — staking strategies, volatility overlays, risk-parity blends, and thematic bundles. For allocators and wealth managers, it’s no longer about whether to gain exposure, but how.
The bet here isn’t just on inflows — it’s on distribution. As wirehouses and RIAs come online, ETF wrappers become the standardized bridge from legacy capital to digital assets. Not every product will work — XRP may serve as the cautionary tale of liquidity without demand — but the structural effect is clear: indexable access pulls crypto further into the core of portfolio construction. Solana, if greenlit early, may benefit disproportionately from this moment.
4. Memecoins Come Back In Style
The memecoin category, as tracked by CoinGecko, breaks decisively above its prior cycle highs, touching $200B in aggregate market cap before the end of Q1 2026.
DOGE and PENGU ETFs are approved — a formal acknowledgment that cultural liquidity has become investable.
Meanwhile, PumpSwap, the freshly launched meme-focused DEX, 10x’s its current volumes and crosses $5B in daily trading at least once in 2025, driven by reflexive flows and the speculative churn that memecoins reliably generate.
Memecoins will once again refuse to die and will no longer need to justify themselves as jokes or commentary — they function as ecosystem-native attention assets.
5. DePIN
DePIN will step into the spotlight in 2025, with monthly revenue surpassing $100M by February 2026, a 5x jump from today — as tracked by DePIN Ninja (we will provide cross-verification). The growth won’t come from speculation, but from real-world infrastructure going live.
Energy will gain mindshare, with projects like Daylight, Fuse Energy, Glow, and Sourceful rolling out solar grids and tackling deeper layers of energy sector. It’s the rare crypto sector that scales through utility — and it’s just getting started.
6. Decentralised Compute
The subsector — once considered fringe — becomes core infrastructure as demand for decentralized compute, bandwidth, and storage accelerates.
Render, Akash, and io.net collectively 10x their current revenue baselines by Feb 2026, riding a wave of real usage tied to model deployment, inference loads, and distributed GPU sourcing.
What changes is not just demand — but narrative clarity as we realise that “next-gen AI will need 100x more compute than we thought.” The market begins to grasp the mismatch between AI ambitions and available hardware.
Centralized cloud providers can’t scale fast or broadly enough. DePIN emerges not as an alternative, but as a necessary supplement — a parallel market that routes around scarcity with incentives.:
7. Gaming
It’s worth accepting that 2025 may disappoint those betting on a breakout moment for AI-native or Web3 gaming. Despite steady tooling improvements and ample capital, no flagship title emerges to redefine the space. The convergence sounds inevitable in theory, but in practice, the gap between hype and execution remains wide.
The fundamental friction is twofold: AI can’t yet deliver compelling real-time agency, and Web3 mechanics still feel bolted on rather than native to gameplay. Meanwhile, traditional studios have little incentive to disrupt their own monetization engines, and indie teams lack the scale to truly innovate across both fronts.
So while infrastructure matures in the background — smarter NPCs, on-chain identity layers, generative assets — the user experience doesn’t cross the threshold of “must play.” That leaves capital rotating elsewhere, even as the foundations for a future hit quietly solidify. The next major wave may still be inevitable — but it’s not going to happen this cycle.
8. L1s and L2s
It’s worth preparing for a paradox: by 2026, the number of chains will explode — and they will matter less than ever. Following the likes of Soneium and Ink, many large enterprises will spin up branded app-specific chains. But by the end of the cycle, most will show negligible traction — much like the current Unichain dynamics.
All valuable use cases gravitate toward the most robust, cheapest, and fastest execution layer — the one where everyone else already is. Silly labels like “game-specific,” “DeFi-specific,” or “DePIN-specific” fade away as marketing noise. Specialized chains stall out because specialisation can’t compete with scale, and composability doesn’t splinter well. The result is a classic power law dynamic: a few general-purpose chains dominate, while the rest dissolve into a long tail of curiosities.
No major asset issuer will launch on HyperEVM.
No second Base will pop up in L2 realm.
Just a crowd of indistinguishable chains either chasing increasingly niche purposes or leeching on the dying infra meta, while the real activity consolidates where it always does — alongside other major asset issuers.
9. Stablecoins
By the end of 2025, the combined market cap of USDC and USDT will exceed the combined market cap of the two largest volatile crypto assets outside of BTC — whether that’s ETH + SOL, ETH + BNB, or ETH + XRP. The message is clear: in the post-speculation era, dollars-on-chain are more useful than most assets meant to be money.
This isn’t a knock on ETH — it’s an evolution of crypto’s center of gravity. Stablecoins are where commerce happens, where liquidity sits, and where real-world integration accelerates. The $500B milestone is just the visible tip. Settlement, remittance, payments, DeFi — all increasingly orbit around stable value, not native tokens.
10. SocialFi
SocialFi will finally break through in 2025, with at least one not-so-explicitely-trading app generating over $100M in annualised revenue. It won’t be a fork of friend.tech or a gamified trading shell — it will lean into presence, exclusivity, and social context as core primitives, not accessories.
Apps like time.fun hint at the model, and the entrance of seasoned consumer builders like Nikita Bier will raise the bar. Identity, gated access, and real economic alignment between creators and communities will feel native — not forced.
The breakthrough will be enabled by a new class of consumer-grade UX emerging across the Solana stack. Backpack as an operating system, Dialect’s Blinks as native messaging rails, and Solana Mobile as hardware distribution ****will converge to deliver an experience that feels closer to iOS than MetaMask. By the end of 2025, Solana UX will 10x — and for the first time, onchain social will actually feel fun.
In 2025, at least one crypto-native social app will rank among the top 15 projects by annual revenue, marking a breakout moment for the category. It probably won’t look like friend.tech — and it probably will live on Solana, where UX and cost structure finally support mainstream usage.
11. Futarchy
In 2025, futarchy will shift from fringe theory to emerging best practice. While it won’t replace governance wholesale, prediction markets will increasingly be used to guide key decisions — from DAO funding to protocol upgrades.
The number of projects actively using futarchy will double to at least 20, signalling broader experimentation across the ecosystem. $META will break into the top 200 by market cap, riding the wave of adoption and onchain legitimacy.
Governance will start to treat market-based signalling not as a gimmick, but as a serious input. It won’t be the norm yet — but it will no longer be ignored.
12. MEV
In 2025, MEV will move from niche infrastructure to a visible layer of protocol design. The focus will shift away from extraction toward alignment — where value can be captured without harming users or fragmenting liquidity.
DFlow will see adoption by at least 10 major decentralized exchanges, as its conditional liquidity model proves effective in reducing toxicity and tightening spreads. Non-predatory flow becomes a product, not just a principle.
Jito will face growing pressure from new approaches but maintain dominance, adapting as networks optimize around smarter, fairer ordering.
13. Tokenisation
By the end of 2025, the total value of tokenised real-world assets (RWAs) will surpass $60 billion, tripling from approximately $20 billion today. This growth will be driven by the onchain migration of diverse assets, including real estate, commodities, and financial instruments.
A significant development will be the emergence of tokenised equities, with platforms like Base leading the way. Coinbase's initiative to tokenise its own stock, $COIN, will set a precedent for other companies to follow, integrating traditional financial assets into blockchain ecosystems and offering investors seamless access to equities onchain.
Simultaneously, crypto-native companies will explore onchain public offerings, bridging the gap between decentralized finance and traditional capital markets. For instance, Phantom, a leading cryptocurrency wallet provider, may announce initiatives toward an onchain IPO, leveraging its recent $150 million Series C funding at a $3 billion valuation to pioneer this innovative approach.
Looking ahead, within the next decade, a significant portion of global trading is anticipated to migrate onchain, driven by the advantages of decentralized finance and the increasing adoption of blockchain solutions in traditional financial systems.
14. A New US CEX
In 2025, a new U.S.-based centralised exchange will emerge as a credible challenger to Coinbase — with the chaos of FTX, but without the scam. A friendlier regulatory backdrop under the Trump administration will unlock the opportunity, and venture-backed teams will move fast to fill the gap.
It won’t beat Coinbase on trust or brand — but it might outflank on pricing, UX, and narrative. Think lower fees, faster onboarding, retail-first flows, token listings that feel less like Wall Street and more like the internet.
Hyperliquid
It might launch with better incentives, more transparency, or a slicker interface that actually feels crypto-native.
Hyperliquid
Whatever form it takes, it will pull attention — and order flow — away from incumbents.
Hyperliquid
Coinbase won’t stand still, but for the first time in years, it’ll face real pressure on multiple fronts. And retail might start looking elsewhere — not out of distrust, but out of curiosity.
15. JLP $10
In 2025, JLP will emerge as one of the cycle’s high-beta dark horses, riding the Solana wave and Jupiter’s rising dominance in perpetuals. With volumes ramping and onchain speculation heating up, a move toward $10 will shift from improbable to entirely plausible.
It won’t take a miracle — if even half the trends outlined above materialize, a $10 JLP will feel less like a moonshot and more like a logical byproduct of momentum. Reflexivity kicks in, liquidity compounds, and risk-on flows find their outlet.
Some of these will age well. Others won’t. That’s the nature of attempting to make sense of reflexive systems. The aim isn’t precision, but perspective and fun.
And of course: none of this is financial advice. If it reads like conviction, it’s because we care. If it reads like entertainment, that’s because it is. Use your judgment — we’ll be using ours.
1. Higher
It’s worth entertaining the scenario where SPX approaches 8,000 and BTC tags $200K — and the least consensus this view becomes as 2025 evolves, the more it’s worth considering. The macro bifurcation is simple: either we slip into a recession and inject liquidity in response, or we preemptively inject liquidity and probably end up in some form of recession anyway. In both paths, policy is bound to shift and assets front-run the easing.
With US rates gliding toward 3.5% and the market still carrying scars from 2022–23, positioning remains hesitant — which is precisely what gives the upside its convexity. BTC’s halving is behind us, ETF inflows are only starting to compound, and the world is still underallocated. If we’re heading into the final stretch of the cycle, this is where the reflexivity kicks in.
2. Solana
Solana is on track to effectively double its realized capacity in 2025, with Success non-vote TPS exceeding 1,500 by year-end. This isn’t theoretical scale; it’s observable throughput that reinforces the chain’s position as the closest thing to performant, consumer-grade blockspace.
On-chain application revenue continues to build — the current daily record of $54.3M will likely be eclipsed before Q1 2026 closes, as new categories (payments, stablecoin velocity, and of course memecoins) drive increasingly varied usage.
A U.S.-listed Solana ETF feels all but inevitable. So to make it worth a wager: assume SOL ETF inflows match or outpace Ethereum’s in the months following launch. The setup is there — more favorable macro conditions, a valuation multiple that still invites expansion, and an asset with retail-native momentum. Where Ethereum arrives late and mature, Solana may catch the market at its point of greatest narrative receptivity.
3. ETFs
The U.S. crypto ETF market doubles in size, crossing 50 registered products across spot BTC, ETH, SOL, and multi-asset constructions by year-end. What began as a narrow access point becomes a sprawling catalogue — staking strategies, volatility overlays, risk-parity blends, and thematic bundles. For allocators and wealth managers, it’s no longer about whether to gain exposure, but how.
The bet here isn’t just on inflows — it’s on distribution. As wirehouses and RIAs come online, ETF wrappers become the standardized bridge from legacy capital to digital assets. Not every product will work — XRP may serve as the cautionary tale of liquidity without demand — but the structural effect is clear: indexable access pulls crypto further into the core of portfolio construction. Solana, if greenlit early, may benefit disproportionately from this moment.
4. Memecoins Come Back In Style
The memecoin category, as tracked by CoinGecko, breaks decisively above its prior cycle highs, touching $200B in aggregate market cap before the end of Q1 2026.
DOGE and PENGU ETFs are approved — a formal acknowledgment that cultural liquidity has become investable.
Meanwhile, PumpSwap, the freshly launched meme-focused DEX, 10x’s its current volumes and crosses $5B in daily trading at least once in 2025, driven by reflexive flows and the speculative churn that memecoins reliably generate.
Memecoins will once again refuse to die and will no longer need to justify themselves as jokes or commentary — they function as ecosystem-native attention assets.
5. DePIN
DePIN will step into the spotlight in 2025, with monthly revenue surpassing $100M by February 2026, a 5x jump from today — as tracked by DePIN Ninja (we will provide cross-verification). The growth won’t come from speculation, but from real-world infrastructure going live.
Energy will gain mindshare, with projects like Daylight, Fuse Energy, Glow, and Sourceful rolling out solar grids and tackling deeper layers of energy sector. It’s the rare crypto sector that scales through utility — and it’s just getting started.
6. Decentralised Compute
The subsector — once considered fringe — becomes core infrastructure as demand for decentralized compute, bandwidth, and storage accelerates.
Render, Akash, and io.net collectively 10x their current revenue baselines by Feb 2026, riding a wave of real usage tied to model deployment, inference loads, and distributed GPU sourcing.
What changes is not just demand — but narrative clarity as we realise that “next-gen AI will need 100x more compute than we thought.” The market begins to grasp the mismatch between AI ambitions and available hardware.
Centralized cloud providers can’t scale fast or broadly enough. DePIN emerges not as an alternative, but as a necessary supplement — a parallel market that routes around scarcity with incentives.:
7. Gaming
It’s worth accepting that 2025 may disappoint those betting on a breakout moment for AI-native or Web3 gaming. Despite steady tooling improvements and ample capital, no flagship title emerges to redefine the space. The convergence sounds inevitable in theory, but in practice, the gap between hype and execution remains wide.
The fundamental friction is twofold: AI can’t yet deliver compelling real-time agency, and Web3 mechanics still feel bolted on rather than native to gameplay. Meanwhile, traditional studios have little incentive to disrupt their own monetization engines, and indie teams lack the scale to truly innovate across both fronts.
So while infrastructure matures in the background — smarter NPCs, on-chain identity layers, generative assets — the user experience doesn’t cross the threshold of “must play.” That leaves capital rotating elsewhere, even as the foundations for a future hit quietly solidify. The next major wave may still be inevitable — but it’s not going to happen this cycle.
8. L1s and L2s
It’s worth preparing for a paradox: by 2026, the number of chains will explode — and they will matter less than ever. Following the likes of Soneium and Ink, many large enterprises will spin up branded app-specific chains. But by the end of the cycle, most will show negligible traction — much like the current Unichain dynamics.
All valuable use cases gravitate toward the most robust, cheapest, and fastest execution layer — the one where everyone else already is. Silly labels like “game-specific,” “DeFi-specific,” or “DePIN-specific” fade away as marketing noise. Specialized chains stall out because specialisation can’t compete with scale, and composability doesn’t splinter well. The result is a classic power law dynamic: a few general-purpose chains dominate, while the rest dissolve into a long tail of curiosities.
No major asset issuer will launch on HyperEVM.
No second Base will pop up in L2 realm.
Just a crowd of indistinguishable chains either chasing increasingly niche purposes or leeching on the dying infra meta, while the real activity consolidates where it always does — alongside other major asset issuers.
9. Stablecoins
By the end of 2025, the combined market cap of USDC and USDT will exceed the combined market cap of the two largest volatile crypto assets outside of BTC — whether that’s ETH + SOL, ETH + BNB, or ETH + XRP. The message is clear: in the post-speculation era, dollars-on-chain are more useful than most assets meant to be money.
This isn’t a knock on ETH — it’s an evolution of crypto’s center of gravity. Stablecoins are where commerce happens, where liquidity sits, and where real-world integration accelerates. The $500B milestone is just the visible tip. Settlement, remittance, payments, DeFi — all increasingly orbit around stable value, not native tokens.
10. SocialFi
SocialFi will finally break through in 2025, with at least one not-so-explicitely-trading app generating over $100M in annualised revenue. It won’t be a fork of friend.tech or a gamified trading shell — it will lean into presence, exclusivity, and social context as core primitives, not accessories.
Apps like time.fun hint at the model, and the entrance of seasoned consumer builders like Nikita Bier will raise the bar. Identity, gated access, and real economic alignment between creators and communities will feel native — not forced.
The breakthrough will be enabled by a new class of consumer-grade UX emerging across the Solana stack. Backpack as an operating system, Dialect’s Blinks as native messaging rails, and Solana Mobile as hardware distribution ****will converge to deliver an experience that feels closer to iOS than MetaMask. By the end of 2025, Solana UX will 10x — and for the first time, onchain social will actually feel fun.
In 2025, at least one crypto-native social app will rank among the top 15 projects by annual revenue, marking a breakout moment for the category. It probably won’t look like friend.tech — and it probably will live on Solana, where UX and cost structure finally support mainstream usage.
11. Futarchy
In 2025, futarchy will shift from fringe theory to emerging best practice. While it won’t replace governance wholesale, prediction markets will increasingly be used to guide key decisions — from DAO funding to protocol upgrades.
The number of projects actively using futarchy will double to at least 20, signalling broader experimentation across the ecosystem. $META will break into the top 200 by market cap, riding the wave of adoption and onchain legitimacy.
Governance will start to treat market-based signalling not as a gimmick, but as a serious input. It won’t be the norm yet — but it will no longer be ignored.
12. MEV
In 2025, MEV will move from niche infrastructure to a visible layer of protocol design. The focus will shift away from extraction toward alignment — where value can be captured without harming users or fragmenting liquidity.
DFlow will see adoption by at least 10 major decentralized exchanges, as its conditional liquidity model proves effective in reducing toxicity and tightening spreads. Non-predatory flow becomes a product, not just a principle.
Jito will face growing pressure from new approaches but maintain dominance, adapting as networks optimize around smarter, fairer ordering.
13. Tokenisation
By the end of 2025, the total value of tokenised real-world assets (RWAs) will surpass $60 billion, tripling from approximately $20 billion today. This growth will be driven by the onchain migration of diverse assets, including real estate, commodities, and financial instruments.
A significant development will be the emergence of tokenised equities, with platforms like Base leading the way. Coinbase's initiative to tokenise its own stock, $COIN, will set a precedent for other companies to follow, integrating traditional financial assets into blockchain ecosystems and offering investors seamless access to equities onchain.
Simultaneously, crypto-native companies will explore onchain public offerings, bridging the gap between decentralized finance and traditional capital markets. For instance, Phantom, a leading cryptocurrency wallet provider, may announce initiatives toward an onchain IPO, leveraging its recent $150 million Series C funding at a $3 billion valuation to pioneer this innovative approach.
Looking ahead, within the next decade, a significant portion of global trading is anticipated to migrate onchain, driven by the advantages of decentralized finance and the increasing adoption of blockchain solutions in traditional financial systems.
14. A New US CEX
In 2025, a new U.S.-based centralised exchange will emerge as a credible challenger to Coinbase — with the chaos of FTX, but without the scam. A friendlier regulatory backdrop under the Trump administration will unlock the opportunity, and venture-backed teams will move fast to fill the gap.
It won’t beat Coinbase on trust or brand — but it might outflank on pricing, UX, and narrative. Think lower fees, faster onboarding, retail-first flows, token listings that feel less like Wall Street and more like the internet.
Hyperliquid
It might launch with better incentives, more transparency, or a slicker interface that actually feels crypto-native.
Hyperliquid
Whatever form it takes, it will pull attention — and order flow — away from incumbents.
Hyperliquid
Coinbase won’t stand still, but for the first time in years, it’ll face real pressure on multiple fronts. And retail might start looking elsewhere — not out of distrust, but out of curiosity.
15. JLP $10
In 2025, JLP will emerge as one of the cycle’s high-beta dark horses, riding the Solana wave and Jupiter’s rising dominance in perpetuals. With volumes ramping and onchain speculation heating up, a move toward $10 will shift from improbable to entirely plausible.
It won’t take a miracle — if even half the trends outlined above materialize, a $10 JLP will feel less like a moonshot and more like a logical byproduct of momentum. Reflexivity kicks in, liquidity compounds, and risk-on flows find their outlet.