TBW - 5 crypto trends to watch in 2025
Return of ICOs
With the advent of platforms such as Echo and Legion, it seems that ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) will be on a steep rise in 2025. This method of financing had already experienced a wave of euphoria in 2017, marked by numerous projects taking advantage of the credulity of new investors to raise funds quickly. However, ICOs also have the potential to create a committed community over the long term. In future, access to ICOs could become increasingly meritocratic, rewarding the most active or relevant participants. Despite this, this type of investment remains extremely risky: the funds invested can be tied up for several years, and there is no guarantee that the projects will see the light of day.
AI agents
AI agents saw a significant surge in popularity at the end of 2024, and this trend is expected to continue into 2025. Artificial intelligence and crypto are two rapidly evolving sectors, and there is growing interest in their intersection. AI agents have a dual appeal: their entertainment aspect, which brings them closer to memecoins, and their potential to play a key role in DeFi-related activities. This unique combination paves the way for them to occupy an increasingly important place in the crypto ecosystem. Currently Virtuals is at the heart of this narrative as a platform for launching and monetising AI agents.
New airdrop standard brought by Hyperliquid
Hyperliquid marked a turning point in the ecosystem with a historic airdrop, distributing more than 30% of its tokens in a single operation. For some users, these distributions represented sums of money that truly changed their lives. The project, which was entirely self-financed by its team, was distinguished by its lack of recourse to financing from venture capital funds. However, beyond its innovative tokenomics, Hyperliquid stands out above all for the quality of its product, acclaimed by many traders. In the future, token launches will need to re-establish a bond of trust with their community, for example Rogue wants to create a Based Rollup where all tokens are distributed to network participants with no allocation for the team or investors.
From infrastructure to applications
The year 2024 has been marked by a form of saturation in the face of the multiplication of funding for infrastructure projects, to the detriment of applications with which users interact directly and whose use cases are easier to grasp. It seems that Web3 infrastructure has reached a certain maturity, offering an abundance of block capacity at very low cost. This advance means that most applications can now focus fully on their business, without fear of encountering the limitations of their infrastructure. In 2025, we can look forward to the emergence of new applications with concrete use cases, for example around payment with cards offered by Bleap and Etherfi (read the crypto cards comparison).
Corporate treasury in bitcoin
More and more companies are considering incorporating bitcoin into their treasury, inspired by the success of MicroStrategy, recently floated on Nasdaq. This trend is also appealing to companies such as Metaplanet in Japan and The Blockchain Group in France (read the interview with its number 2 Alexandre Laizet), which are adopting similar strategies. In addition, discussions have already taken place within major technology companies such as Microsoft, although their adoption is still uncertain. Depending on bitcoin's performance between now and 2025, it is likely that this topic will resurface regularly in boardrooms.
