2025 In Review: Crypto Grew Up — From Speculation to Infrastructure

2025 wasn’t the year crypto made headlines for price action or hype cycles. It was the year the infrastructure finally caught up, and that changed everything.

Transaction throughput jumped 136x. L2 costs dropped from $24 to pennies. Stablecoins hit half of Visa’s volume (with bots and wash trading filtered out). Institutions like Stripe, BlackRock, and JP Morgan moved from “crypto-curious” to full adoption.

More importantly, regulatory clarity arrived. The GENIUS Act, Clarity Act, and executive orders on digital assets gave institutions the confidence to build. Argentina saw 16x growth in crypto adoption — not for speculation, but as a savings mechanism against 140% inflation.

In this talk, João Zamith breaks down what actually happened in crypto in 2025. The metrics that matter. The institutions that moved. The regulatory shifts that unlocked adoption. And the narrative change from “what crypto could be” to “what crypto is.”

For builders: the infrastructure is here. The use cases are real. This is your 2025 landscape review.