The crypto market had strong momentum heading into 2025, with a total capitalization up more than 40% year-to-date (YTD), fueled by bullish developments across major assets.
However, the tailwinds cooled off during the first quarter, causing the total market cap to drop by nearly 19% before rebounding again in the second quarter.
Supported by regulatory clarity in the U.S., landmark stablecoin bills, and growing institutional adoption, the renewed momentum generally continued in the summer.
While the general picture does appear positive, the details naturally vary among different sectors, with some of them exponentially outperforming the others YTD and virtually carrying the market, based on data published by Binance Research on August 28.
DeFi, tokenized equities, and stablecoins dominate
This year, stablecoin supply rose 35%, hitting a record $277.8 billion amid renewed inflows and expanding use cases.
Corporate treasuries are also accelerating adoption, with public company Bitcoin (BTC) holdings reaching 1.07 million BTC, around 5.4% of circulating supply, across 174 firms. Overall, stablecoins gained 38.6% YTD.
Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) also hit a record market share, now accounting for more than 23% of spot and 9.3% of futures volumes, although their average daily volume remains relatively low at $1.9 million as of August.
More notably, decentralized finance (DeFi) lending climbed some 65%, reaching $79.8 billion in total value locked, while tokenized equities are approaching $350 million, driven by stronger issuer infrastructure and clearer regulation.
The growth is showing no sign of slowing down, with the number of active on-chain holders nearly tripling from 22,400 in July to 66,500 in August.
In total, DeFi gained 44.6% YTD, while real-world tokenization (RWA) saw 38.7% returns over the same period.
Bitcoin and Ethereum still holding strong
Bitcoin has outperformed traditional benchmarks this year, delivering 19.8% YTD.
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have emerged as a leading catalyst, with U.S. spot BTC and Ethereum (ETH) products drawing $28 billion in net inflows.
Still, it bears mentioning that capital rotation toward altcoins has picked up as Bitcoin dominance dropped to 57.2% from June highs of 65.1%.
In the meantime, Ethereum staking hit a record 35.8 million ETH, nearly 30% of the supply. Overall, layer-1 (L1) protocols have seen a 24.6% return YTD.
Conversely, meme coins have performed rather poorly, losing 7.4% YTD, as have layer-2 (L2), gaming, and artificial intelligence (AI) oriented projects, which saw 26.9%, 43.6%, and 55.4% in losses, respectively.
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