2025 Blockchain Beyond Crypto
A) The stablecoin success story will provide new micropayment infrastructure
Arguably, one of the biggest success stories in crypto so far is stablecoins, coins backed by traditional assets such as money market funds or fiat cash. In particular, their consumer-facing versions, such as Circle USDC or Tether USDT, have become widely successful in crypto markets, enabling mostly crypto trading and, to a smaller extent (approximately ten percent), cross-border payments.[1]
As a new global fiat-payment rail, stablecoins have become a success story in cross-border payments within Emerging Markets. They are slowly threatening VISA and Mastercard with their hefty fees.
Having a competitor to expensive credit card and cross-border payments is a massive global use case that has attracted various competitors from Ripple to PayPal.[2] Stablecoins have shown great potential to become a new global micropayment layer.
While stablecoins have been chiefly a retail success story, they have only made small inroads into the traditional financial industry, as they do not provide any yield. However, financial institutions from the US, such as Digital Asset, or Switzerland, such as SDX, have been working on a blockchain-based settlement layer for financial transactions based on fiat currencies.[3]
According to Yuval Rooz, founder and CEO of Digital Asset, which runs the Canton Network, wholesale stablecoins for the financial market promise to increase efficiency, improve liquidity, and deliver yield for financial institutions.[4] This will be transformational.
Overall, consumer-facing or for financial institutions, the maturing blockchain infrastructure promises a more efficient global transaction layer that increases speed and lowers costs.
We are just at the beginning of a new international and highly decentralized 24/7 infrastructure that is highly secure. With more privacy-enhanced blockchains, such as Digital Asset’s Canton Network, more and more financial institutions, such as Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan, will build on the blockchain infrastructure.[5]
Prediction
With the change in US administration and the departure of SEC Chair Garry Gensler, the US will work hard to become the dominant force in stablecoin for retail and financial institutions.
I fear that Europe, as so often, will not seize the opportunity and lose out to the US.
In recent months, financial centers such as Hong Kong and Singapore have been building a new, more efficient financial infrastructure based on blockchain technology.
B) Privacy-enhanced wallets will supercharge blockchain adoption
Bitcoin is mainly known as a financial instrument, often labeled as digital gold. In the media, the speculative aspect of crypto garners the most attention. However, this is just the surface of a much broader adoption of blockchain technology that is decentralized and built on highly secure encryption mechanisms.
The speculative aspect of the blockchain industry, for all its bad behavior, from pump-and-dump to meme-coin speculation, fired the starting gun to a global open-source, decentralized, and 24/7 technology that now powers applications far beyond financial assets.
According to the US National Security Agency (NSA), any digital network is corrupted by adversaries and bad actors.[6]
The NSA calls this a “zero-trust environment” or “you cannot trust anyone online.” This means that cloud services are corrupted and at risk. The question is how to secure sensitive information online.
In recent years, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has rolled out a blockchain-based data security approach that fundamentally changes how data security is achieved. The DoD changed from a perimeter-centric to a data-centric approach based on blockchain technology with wallets as entry gates. The US-Swiss company Via Science is one of the pioneering actors in this space, working with several branches of the US Armed Forces.[7] The company also works with the energy and automotive industry to deliver data security in decentralized and heterogeneous networks.
A central component of this success is its privacy-enhanced and quantum-proof digital wallet, which is superior to current public crypto wallets. The wallet is institutional-grade and protects users' privacy.
The adoption of stablecoins has also led to the spread of the digital wallet as an entry point into this new decentralized infrastructure. Smartphone wallets have become a global digital infrastructure’s new identification and security layer.
Prediction
Privacy-enhanced blockchain technology will reach a tipping point in industrial adoption across the energy, supply chain management, sustainability, and automotive sectors. Spurred by crypto and stablecoins, we will see global growth in digital wallet adoption, leading to network effects and global adoption at scale.
Stablecoins secured by institutional-grade wallets will be the foundation of a new global financial infrastructure.
C) Crypto as a 24/7 tech innovation lab
Crypto has become, often rightfully so, a byword for speculation and fraud. However, at the same time, it has become a hotbed for global innovation in the financial industry and beyond. It has pushed large traditional banks and exchanges to credit card companies to improve the efficiency of their services.
Crypto has always been at the cutting edge of innovation, from decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) to stablecoins to NFTs. The current AI wave has also spurred innovation in the crypto sector, leading to many experiments with Generative AI.
Regulators struggled to develop a suitable regulatory framework as the underlying blockchain technology can be used for everything from fiat-currency-based stablecoins to meme-coins. Switzerland was a very early adopter, with its ICO guidelines in 2018. The EU followed up with its Markets in Crypto Assets regulation in 2024.
This year will be critical as the US is set out to change its “regulation by litigation” mindset to a more innovation-friendly approach.
With its leading financial market, the US will clearly be a major player, competing with other jurisdictions such as Hong Kong, Singapore, or Dubai.
Prediction
Cryptocurrency and AI are both built on data. With the rise of AI, data security concerns have increased globally. Balancing innovation with privacy and compliance will be a big challenge in 2025. It will require a forward-thinking, responsive regulator and sensible lawmaking.
Despite its new regulation, Europe lacks a common financial market that will drive scale and adoption. As often before, the European common market approach will not succeed against the US dominance. This is a view that Mario Draghi voiced in 2024.[8]
Switzerland, a crypto pioneer, risks losing out to the US and Europe because its new gargantuan bank, UBS, is not an innovation leader in blockchain.
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/16/ripples-new-stablecoin-for-payments-will-be-available-to-trade-tuesday.html and https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/manage-money/crypto/pyusd
[3] https://www.digitalasset.com/use-cases/collateral-and-asset-mobilization and https://www.finews.ch/news/finanzplatz/65780-finanzplatz-schweiz-tokenisierung-schweizer-franken-six-nationalbank-david-newns
[4] https://tokenized.simplecast.com/episodes/2025-predictions-institutional-crypto-stablecoins-bank-layer-2-blockchains
[5] https://tokenized.simplecast.com/episodes/2025-predictions-institutional-crypto-stablecoins-bank-layer-2-blockchains
[6] https://media.defense.gov/2024/May/22/2003470825/-1/-1/0/CSI-APPLICATION-AND-WORKLOAD-PILLAR.PDF
https://www.solvewithvia.com
[8] https://www.csis.org/analysis/draghi-report-strategy-reform-european-economic-model