A year ago, I wrote "Truth and Lies in the 2025 Crypto Market".
Back then, everyone was sharing higher Bitcoin price targets. I wanted to find a different framework to discover where the masses might be wrong and position myself differently. The goal was simple: find ideas that already existed but were ignored, disliked, or misunderstood.
Before sharing the 2026 edition, here is a clear review of what truly mattered in 2025. What we got right, what we got wrong, and what we should learn from it. If you don't examine your own thinking, you're not investing; you're guessing.
Quick Summary
"BTC Peaking in Q4": Most people expected it, but it seemed too good to be true. Turns out they were right, and I was wrong (and paid the price). Unless BTC skyrockets from here and breaks the 4-year cycle pattern, I'll concede this one. "Retail Prefers Memecoins": The fact is
retail doesn't prefer cryptocurrency at all. They bought gold, silver, AI stocks, and anything that wasn't crypto. The supercycle for memecoins or AI Agents also did not materialize.
"AI x Crypto Remains Strong": Mixed bag. Projects continued to deliver, the x402 standard evolved, and funding continued. But tokens failed to sustain any rallies.
"NFTs Are Dead": Yes.
These are easy to review. The real insights lie in the following five larger themes.
1. Spot ETFs Are the Floor, Not the Ceiling
Since March 2024, long-term Bitcoin holders (OGs) have sold approximately 1.4 million BTC, worth about $121.17 billion.
Imagine the bloodbath in the crypto market without ETFs: Despite the price drop, BTC ETF inflows remained positive ($26.9 billion).
The gap of about $95 billion is precisely why BTC underperformed almost all macro assets. There's nothing wrong with BTC itself; you don't even need to dig deep into unemployment or manufacturing data to explain it—it's just the "great rotation" by whales and "4-year cycle believers".
More importantly, Bitcoin's correlation with traditional risk assets like Nasdaq fell to its lowest since 2022 (-0.42). While everyone hoped for a breakout to the upside, this is bullish long-term as an uncorrelated portfolio asset sought by institutions.
There are signs the supply shock is over. Therefore, I dare to predict a BTC price of $174,000 for 2026 (equivalent to 10% of gold's market cap).
2. Airdrops Clearly "Did Not" Disappear
Crypto Twitter (CT) once again claimed airdrops were dead. But in 2025, we saw nearly $4.5 billion in major airdrop distributions:
Story Protocol (IP): ~$1.4B
Berachain (BERA): ~$1.17B
Jupiter (JUP): ~$7.91M
Animecoin (ANIME): ~$7.11M
The change lies in: points fatigue, stronger Sybil detection, and lower valuations. You also need to "claim and sell" to maximize profits.
2026 will be a big year for airdrops, with heavyweights like Polymarket, Metamask, Base(?) preparing to launch tokens. This isn't the year to stop clicking buttons, but to stop betting blindly. Airdrop "farming" requires concentrated efforts on high-conviction bets.
3. Fee Switches Are Not Price Appreciation Engines, But a Floor
My prediction was: fee switches don't automatically drive token prices higher. Most protocols don't enough generate revenue to support their massive market caps.
"Fee switches don't affect how high a token can go; they set a 'price floor'."
Look at projects ranked by "holder revenue" on DeFillama: Except for $HYPE, all high revenue-share tokens outperformed ETH (though ETH is now the benchmark everyone challenges).
The surprise was $UNI. Uniswap finally flipped the switch and even burned $100 million worth of tokens. UNI initially surged 75% but then gave back all its gains.
Three revelations:
Token buybacks set a price floor, not a ceiling.
Everything this cycle is a trade (see UNI pump and dump).
Buybacks are only one side of the story; sell pressure (unlocks) must be considered, as most tokens remain low-float.
4. Stablecoins Capture Mindshare, But "Proxy Trading" Is Hard to Profit From
Stablecoins are going mainstream. When I rented a motorbike in Bali, the owner even requested payment in USDT on TRON.
Although USDT's dominance fell from 67% to 60%, its market cap still grew. Citibank predicts the stablecoin market cap could reach $1.9 to $4 trillion by 2030.
In 2025, the narrative shifted from "trading" to "payment infrastructure". However, trading the stablecoin narrative wasn't easy: Circle's IPO gave back all its gains after a surge, and other proxy assets underperformed.
One truth of 2025 is: everything is just a trade.
Currently, crypto payment cards are exploding due to their convenience in bypassing strict bank AML requirements. Every card swipe is an on-chain transaction. If direct peer-to-peer payments bypassing Visa/Mastercard emerge in 2026, that would be a 1000x opportunity.
5. DeFi Is More Centralized Than CeFi
Here's a bold take: DeFi's business and TVL are more concentrated than Traditional Finance (CeFi).
Aave commands over 60% of the lending market share (compared to JPMorgan's 12% in the US).
L2 protocols are mostly multi-billion dollar unregulated Multisigs.
Chainlink controls almost all value oracles in DeFi.
In 2025, the conflict between "centralized equity holders" and "token holders/DAO" became apparent. Who truly owns the protocol, IP rights, and revenue streams? Internal disputes at Aave showed token holders have fewer rights than we thought.
If the "Labs" ultimately win, many DAO tokens will become uninvestable. 2026 will be a key year for aligning the interests of equity and token holders.
Conclusion
2025 proved one thing: Everything is a trade. Exit windows are extremely short. No token has long-term conviction.
The result is that 2025 marked the death of HODL culture, DeFi turned into Onchain Finance, and with improving regulation, DAOs are shedding their "pseudo-decentralized" disguise.
