After Seventeen Years, Crypto Is Attracting Confidence

India is among the countries which is seeing aggressive adoption

Traditional Institutional players are ramping up quickly to meet demands

The year 2025 was a good one for crypto, global crypto adoption and digital assets. The total crypto market cap crossed the $4 trillion threshold for the first time, marking the industry’s broad progress. The number of crypto mobile wallet users also reached all-time highs, up 20% from last year.

The shift from a hostile regulatory environment to a much more supportive one, alongside accelerating adoption of these technologies — from stablecoins to the tokenization of traditional financial assets to other emerging use cases — will define the next cycle, according to industry experts.

In the last three years, crypto builders weathered a major market drawdown and political uncertainty — but continued to make significant infrastructure improvements and other advancements. Those efforts bring us to today, a moment when crypto is becoming a meaningful part of the modern economy.

• Traditional financial incumbents, like Visa, BlackRock, Fidelity, and JPMorgan Chase — and tech-native challengers like PayPal, Stripe, and Robinhood — are offering or launching crypto products.
• Blockchains now process over 3,400 transactions per second (100x+ growth in the last five years).
• Stablecoins power $46 trillion ($9 trillion adjusted) in annual transactions, rivaling Visa and PayPal.
• Over $175 billion sits in Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded products.

Crypto Adoption Rising Across Global Markets

Crypto is global, but different parts of the world appear to use it in different ways. Mobile wallet usage, an indicator of on chain activity, is growing fastest in emerging markets like Argentina, Colombia, India, and Nigeria, according to industry analysts.

2025: The Year of Institutional Adoption

2025 is the year of institutional adoption. Stripe said it plans to acquire stable coin infrastructure platform Bridge. The race was on: Traditional finance companies were ready to make public stable coin moves, too. A few months later, Circle’s billion dollar IPO marked the arrival of stable coin issuers as mainstream financial institutions.

Institutional adoption has ramped up quickly. Traditional institutions — including Citigroup, Fidelity, JPMorgan, Master card, Morgan Stanley, and Visa — are now offering (or planning to offer) crypto products directly to consumers, allowing them to buy, sell, and hold digital assets, alongside equities, exchange-traded products, and other traditional instruments. Platforms like PayPal and Shopify, meanwhile, are doubling down on payment and building fintech infrastructure for daily transactions between merchants and customers.

Blockchain Infrastructure Is Almost Ready for Prime Time

Beyond direct offerings, major fintechs — including Circle, Robinhood, and Stripe — are actively developing or have announced plans to develop new blockchains, focusing on payments, real-world assets, and stable coins. These initiatives could bring more payment flows on chain, encourage enterprise adoption, and ultimately create a bigger, faster, and more global financial system.

These companies have massive distribution. If development continues, crypto could become deeply integrated into the financial services we use every day.  All of this activity wouldn’t be possible without major advances in blockchain infrastructure. In just five years, aggregate transaction throughput across major blockchain networks has increased more than 100x.

Then, blockchains processed fewer than 25 transactions per second. Now they process 3,400 transactions per second, on par with completed trades on the Nasdaq or Stripe’s global throughput on Black Friday — and at a fraction of the historical cost.

AI and Crypto Are Converging

Among other advancements, the launch of Chat GPT in 2022 brought AI and crypto to the forefront of public attention — with clear opportunities for crypto. From tracking provenance and IP licensing to providing payment rails for agents, crypto may be the solution for some of AI’s most pressing challenges, noted an industry analyst.

What Comes Next

Where does that leave us? With greater regulatory clarity on the horizon, a path is clearing for tokens to generate real revenue via fees. TradFi and fintech adoption of crypto will continue to accelerate; stablecoins will upgrade legacy systems and democratize financial access globally; and new consumer products will bring the next wave of crypto users on chain.

Global Crypto Adoption will continue to expand as institutional investment, blockchain scale, regulatory clarity and AI collaboration reshape the financial future.