Not funny, but factual: BTC has never closed a year red – until now.

2025 ends with BTC at roughly -6% YTD. History doesn’t repeat, but it does flinch sometimes.

Stablecoin activity during European hours jumped sharply in 2025.

Even under tighter regulation, usage keeps growing – adoption doesn’t wait for perfect policy.

Tokenized stocks just hit a $1.2B market cap ATH.

Feels like stablecoins circa 2020 – niche, misunderstood, and clearly not done yet.

Prediction markets aren’t just about elections anymore.

Open interest hit a new ATH in December 2025, confirming PMF across broader event classes. This category escaped its original box.

Probably not shocking: only ~12% of 2025 token sales are still above their launch price.

Most deals popped early and faded fast, with attention shrinking and holding periods compressing. Token-sale investing turned into a timing game.

In 2021, Coinbase lived almost entirely off trading fees.

By Q3 2025, ~40% of revenue comes from subscriptions and services. Survivors diversify.

Blockspace keeps getting cheaper as throughput scales and fees drift toward cents.

That shift unlocked more consumer flows and high-frequency use cases – sub-$1K USDT and USDC transfers crossed 10M this year, over 3× YoY.

Many 2025 listings are now 90-99% down from ATH FDV.

The euphoric window was short – reality arrived faster than liquidity.

Long-term BTC holders just stopped distributing – first time since July.

Supply pressure eased, which usually sets the stage for a relief move. Market finally gets some breathing room.

RWAs are compounding quietly.

$17B TVL looks small, but it’s already +130% YTD – keep that curve and you’re staring at ~$40B next year and ~$90B by 2027. Exponentials don’t announce themselves early.

Rough year-end for x402.

Average transaction size kept bleeding out, hitting an all-time daily low below $0.05 in late December. Usage is there, value isn’t.

From January to December, TVL jumped 5× while daily perp volume went nearly 30×.

Series A momentum and the GLP launch did the heavy lifting – capital followed incentives fast. Textbook catalyst-driven growth.

DEXs are finally eating CEX territory – especially in perps.

In Q3 2025, Solana DEX volume overtook CEX volume, signaling a structural shift in where leverage lives. The Oct 10 flash crash slowed momentum, but didn’t reverse the trend.

Per Artemis, only two sectors are ending 2025 green: privacy and exchange tokens.

Everything else got chopped up.

U2U kept scaling without drama.

Blocks up 64% QoQ to a new ATH, block times steady at ~1.7s, and gas efficiency improving under load. Boring infra wins again.

ETF flows made it clear: institutions still treat crypto as a risk-on trade.

They piled in when macro looked clean and pulled back once uncertainty hit, flipping inflows to outflows. If rates ease and policy clarity improves in 2026, flows should stabilize – less reactive, fewer headlines.

January's first insights: let's see what the new year has in store for us ↓

General
➖ Galaxy: Weekly Top Stories - 01/02/26

Market
➖ CoinShares: Digital asset fund flows | January 5th, 2026
➖ CoinShares: Equities update | December 29th 2025
➖ Glassnode: BTC Market Pulse: Week 2

DeFi
➖ DL Research: State of DeFi: RedStone Interview

Blockchains & networks
➖ 4pillars: The DApp Survival Formula: Insights from Solana’s Rent Recovery Market

Stablecoins are tracking toward ~$1.6T by 2030, but the structure is already clear.

USDT and USDC still control ~86% of supply, and only ~10 out of 90 stables ever crossed $1B. These aren’t brands — they’re plumbing.

Early January saw ~$900M in stablecoins hit Solana, mostly USDC.

Big print, but nothing exotic — Circle regularly mints $250–500M every few days. Looks like routine rails activity, not a signal.

At ~50ms block times, Aptos is the fastest major L1 running on mainnet.

That kind of latency actually makes onchain HFT viable — not just theoretical. Speed is starting to matter again.