The Worst Crypto Collapse Ever [What Really Happened]

Hello and welcome to Coin Bureau's official podcast channel.

My name is Guy and if you're seeking unbiased in-depth information about Bitcoin,

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then you've come to the right place. I hope you enjoy today's episode.

2025 was... well, it happened. After what was probably one of the most underwhelming years

in crypto's history, many investors are left scratching their heads.

Wondering what the hell happened to the parabolic gains we were all expecting?

Luckily, a recent report sums up the crypto market in 2025 and it puts everything into perspective.

So today, we're summarizing that report for you in simple terms and telling you what to look

out for in the year ahead. My name is Lewis and you're watching the Coin Bureau.

Before I begin though, you do need to know that I am not a financial advisor and nothing in

this video is financial or investment advice. It's educational content intended to inform you

about a recent crypto report. If that sounds good, prove it by pounding that like button and let's

get into it. So the report we'll be summarizing today is the quote 2025 annual crypto industry report,

which comes from CoinGecko. As always, we'll be giving you the key highlights right here in this

video, but we will leave the link to the full report down in the description for you if you're

interested in that. The report begins with an overview of the crypto industry, which ended 2025

with a $3 trillion market cap. This was actually down 10% from 2024 and marked the first year since

2022 where the total crypto market cap had actually fallen. To be fair though, things were going well

at first. The crypto market hit its all-time high of $4.4 trillion in early 2025, but then in October,

Trump announced 100% tariffs on China and crypto crashed, with almost $20 billion in

liquidations in a single day. This basically wiped out any gains from the previous two quarters,

causing the year to close at an overall loss. Still hurts to think about. The crash was so severe,

in fact, that sentiment quickly flipped to risk off. Many investors rotated out of altcoins

and into stablecoins, ending alt season before it even began. Bitcoin dominance closed the year

at 57.4%, while ETH and almost all altcoins lost dominance. The only exceptions were B&B and,

of course, stablecoins. Late 2025 was also a rough time for cryptos across the board. Even BTC

suffered, dropping by 23%, but Q4 was even worse for altcoins. ETH dropped 28%, XRP dropped 35%,

and Seoul dropped 40%, and, of course, the further down the risk curve you look, the messier it

gets. In the D-fine narrative, Link and Hype dropped 43% and 44% respectively, while Ave dropped 47%.

Then, there's meme coins, where SHIB felled by 42%. Doge dropped 50%, and Pepe tanked by 57%.

It was even a similar story with AI cryptos, which tanked across the board. Put simply, Q4 was a

bloodbath. The same can't be said about gold, which enjoyed a record breaking 62% gain throughout

2025, making it the best performing asset. US equities ranked second, with the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ

gaining 17% and 21% respectively. Conversely, BTC closed the year at a 6% loss, making it the

third worst performer of 2025, only beating crude oil and the US dollar. The report notes that

gold's record year was, quote, driven by a historic perfect storm of central bank accumulation,

geopolitical risk, and uncertainty around tariffs. This put major doubts on Bitcoin as a safe

haven asset, much to the delight of prominent gold bug Peter Schiff. Moreover, BTC's poor Q4

performance caused it to decouple from the stock market. This is significant, because crypto has

historically tracked tech stocks, which drive much of the overall stock market. Bitcoin being left

behind suggests investors are seeking gains elsewhere in the tech sector. Now, the next part of

the report looks at some of the highlights of 2025. Despite the crypto's market overall under

performance, several narratives still emerged as clear winners, and of course, the same will be true

in 2026. However, finding the leading narratives will require you to keep up with the latest crypto

news stories. Luckily, you could easily stay up to date by getting our weekly newsletter

sent directly to your inbox. That's where our research team breaks down the biggest

story shaping the market, and highlights the key catalyst for the week ahead. And best of all,

it's completely free. So, what are you waiting for? Sign up using the link below or scan the QR

code on the screen. Now, let's get back to the report. Believe it or not, but the top crypto

categories in 2025 were meme coins and AI, holding the top spots every quarter, just like in 2024.

That said, interest has faded. meme-related categories fell from 30% of investor

mind share in 2024 to 19% in 2025. Even so, Solana remained the most popular ecosystem, while AI

ticked up slightly from 15% to 17%, pretty underwhelming, giving all of the AI hype elsewhere.

It's a similar theme across the board. The top 20 categories accounted for 78% of user attention

in 2024, but made up just 67% in 2025. The report notes that this was due to interest

spreading more broadly, which was probably because everyone was trying to figure out which narrative

might trigger the altcoin season that this never came. The report then covers major hacks from

the year. Standouts include buy-bit, which suffered the largest ever crypto hacked in February,

losing 1.5 billion to North Korean hackers in the form of the Lazarus group.

See this, a sui-based Dex had its liquidity drained in May. Lazarus struck again in November

against South Korean exchange, up it, before DeFi protocol year-in-finance lost $9 million in

December. Altogether, $2.38 billion was stolen in 2025, with most being stolen from buy-bit alone.

Next, the report looks at digital asset treasury companies, or DATS, would spend nearly $50 billion

acquiring crypto in 2025. Roughly half of that came in Q3 alone, before the October crash dragged

the DATS share prices down and slammed the brakes on their buying. Even so, DATS ended the year

with $134 billion in crypto, up 137% from $56 billion back in 2024. By year end, they held over 1

million BTC and 6 million ETH, over 5% of both supplies. Next up are prediction markets,

which became a hot niche after the 2024 presidential elections. No snow volume jumped over 300% in 2025,

reaching 63.5 billion. Polymarkets started the year with 85% market share. What's surprising

though is that Polymarket was overtaken by Kalshi in Q4. By year end, Kalshi held a 39% share

of the market, while Polymarket had 32%. What's even more surprising is that prediction markets

have largely shifted from politics to sports, with sports related trades making up 90% of Kalshi's

national volume. The report notes that, quote, competition is just heating up within this

nascent sector, suggesting that it could be an important niche to watch in 2026. Next,

the report examines protocol revenue, excluding blockchains, which wild is that tether alone

generated nearly 42% of all protocol revenue in 2025, and over 5 billion. In fact, 4 of the top 10

protocols were related to stable coins. The remaining 6 were trading protocols, though their revenue

was heavily dependent on market conditions. Next, the report covers privacy coins,

which dominated the narrative in Q4. Zcash led the pack, with ZEC surging over 800%. However,

interest in privacy didn't always translate to games for privacy related cryptos. For instance,

the report highlights tasos and startnet, which fell 61% and 83% respectively. After that,

the report looks at Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. BTC hit an all-time high of 124K in early

October, before dropping 23% after the October 10th liquidations, including a 10% drop in one day,

which is not given that Bitcoin's market cap is in the trillions of dollars. BTC fell below 100K

on November 13th and hasn't recovered at the time of shooting, ending 2025 down by 6%. This

had a knock-on effect for Bitcoin miners, squeezing their profitability. In Q3, before the crash,

Bitcoin's hash rate, which is the level of compute powering the network, grew by 35%,

but Q4 had dropped 14%. That said, the hash rate hit an all-time high on October 24th,

reaching 1.3 zeta hashes, meaning miners were performing 1.3 sextillion calculations per second

to secure the network. And yes, that is a real number. The report then zooms in on the US

spot Bitcoin ETFs, which saw their first ever quarter of net outflows in Q4, at just over 1 billion

dollars. Still, they ended 2025 with 120 billion at assets under management, or AUM, which was

up 13% from 2024. Just goes to show you how massive BlackRock, grayscale, fidelity, and others

really are. Speaking of which, the report points out that not all Bitcoin ETFs saw outflows

in Q4. Some even had net inflows. Overall, BlackRock's Ibit remained at the top ETF by a wide margin,

with 57% market share. Trailing behind were Fidelity's FBTC at 14% and Grayscale's GBTC at 12%.

Next up, though, is Ethereum, which peaked just below 5K in Q3, barely above its November 2021

all-time high. ETH then fell 28% in Q4, ending the year down 11% overall. This is believed to be

due to Ethereum ETFs flipping from net inflows in Q3 to net outflows in Q4, and slower accumulation

by Ethereum Dats. Notably, ETH bounced in early December after the Fusaka upgrade was successfully

deployed, but the rally was short-lived due to the overwhelmingly bearish marking additions.

Still, the upcoming Glamster Dam and Higota upgrades this year could spark potential pumps.

From our perspective, Ethereum still has some upside potential in 2026. In fact,

the report highlights that transaction counts in Ethereum's EVM ecosystem surged 90% in 2025.

This includes EVM compatible chains like BNB Smart Chain, Base, and Trot,

the three of which dominated the EVM ecosystem. Ethereum itself ranked 9th, which the report says

quote, highlights Ethereum's role as a settlement layer, while their twos handled the bulk of common

transactions. Next, the report zooms in on the Ethereum ETFs, which saw their strongest quarter

ever in Q3, with over $9 billion in net inflows, followed by 1.5 billion in outflows in Q4,

which incidentally marked the largest quarter of net outflows. You win some, you lose some.

BlackRock had the largest outflows, while Grayscale's Ethereum ETF was the only one to avoid net

outflows in Q4. But despite the year-end struggles with ETF outflows and ETH's price, 2025 as a whole

was a very positive year. Overall, Ethereum ETFs grew by 48%, ending the year with nearly

$18 billion in AUM. Next up is Solana, which had an even worse Q4.

Sol fell 50% from $247 in Q3 to $124 in Q4, ending the year down 34%.

The report notes that the highly anticipated spot Solana ETFs were approved in mid-October,

but didn't begin trading until November due to delays from the US government shutdown.

And by then, the market damage was already done. Fortunately, the Solana ETFs did see consistent

inflows, but unfortunately, this wasn't enough to reverse Sol's bear's trend, which was made

worse by the apparent end of mean coin mania. Where are all of the degenerates when you need them?

The report then points to prop AMMs, or proprietary automated market makers, as the backbone of Solana's

liquidity. Unlike traditional AMMs, like Uniswap or Radium, these use professional market

makers own capital instead of crowdsource liquidity. In any case, prop AMMs accounted for 44%

of Solana's on-chain volume, with $543 billion in trading versus $671 billion on regular DEXs.

Notably, the report points out that this trend is unique to Solana, at least for now.

The report then zooms in on the spot Solana ETFs. Despite broader negativity,

they had a strong start to U4, with $866 million in net inflows,

finishing the year with nearly $950 million in AUM. Bitwise's B-Soul led the market with $640 million,

giving them an impressive market share of 67.5%. These ETFs are still much smaller than their

Bitcoin and Ethereum counterparts, but hey, they're basically brand new, and still have plenty

of room to grow. We reckon the Solana ETFs could become a major support for Sol's price long term,

especially as staking mechanisms are added. So, watch the space. Okay, so the next part of

this report looks at DeFi, which, like the rest of the crypto market, took a beating in Q4.

DeFi's market cap was $160 billion in early October, but it ended up shedding 37%

ending 2025 barely above $100 billion. Liquid staking tokens took the biggest hit, losing almost

30% of their market cap due to ETH's price, tanking by 28% in Q4. Overall though,

DeFi saw its market share fall from 4% of crypto's overall market cap of Q3 to just 3% in Q4.

Then, the report looks at DeFi TVL across different categories. As you'd expect,

most categories saw sharp drops in Q4. Lending protocols saw their TVL fall by 26%, while DeXes

dropped by 29%. The report says this was largely due to ETH's price decline, which makes sense,

given that Ethereum hosts the lion's share of the DeFi ecosystem. However, some sectors,

namely tokenized real-world assets, or RWA's, thrived under the pressure. That's because

gold and other precious metals were top-performing assets in 2025, and their tokenized counterparts

captured those gains. Hype around tokenized collectibles also pushed the sector higher.

With RWA's growing nearly 7% to $17 billion by the end of Q4, notably the only other DeFi

category to post gains was labeled others. But it's not clear what this actually includes.

Anyway, the next part of the report turns to NFTs. It notes that quote,

NFT winter has set in once more across most chains. But tokenized collectibles continued

a fuel trading activity on Solana and Polygon. Sticking with the overall trend in this report,

the report notes that NFT trading volumes grew significantly in Q3, but plummeted 46% in Q4.

From 194 million to 111 million. Notably, it points out that the spike in Ethereum NFT trading

was largely driven by holders rushing to offload NFTs from major collectibles, like crypto punks

and Pudgy penguins, even at a loss. Meanwhile, NFT volumes on Polygon and Solana

fell far less, down 30% on Polygon, and just 1.6% on Solana. Which is pretty impressive,

you know, all things considered. This was largely thanks to the excitement around tokenized collectibles,

which suggests that this could be something to keep an eye out in 2026.

Alright, the next part of the report looks at exchanges.

Noting that spot trading volumes on the top 10 sexes fell from 5.1 trillion in Q3

to 4.4 trillion in Q4. December was the worst month for sexes, with less than a billion dollars

in trading volume, a level last seen in September of 2024. However, annual trading volumes

actually grew from 17.4 trillion in 2024 to 18.7 trillion in 2025. Binance remained the dominant

exchange, accounting for 40% of overall trading volume in Q4. Bibits reentry into the top 3 is

also cited, which is a major achievement following the largest hack on record that I mentioned

earlier. Meanwhile, the top 10 dexes doubled their annual trading volumes, from 1.8 trillion in 2024

to 3.6 trillion in 2025. That said, Q4 trading volumes dropped to 893 billion,

13% down from over 1 trillion in Q3. Pancake swap retained the top spot of all dexes,

narrowly beating uniswap. Next, the report examines the top 10 purple sexes,

where trading volumes fell 12% from 24 trillion in Q3 to 21 trillion in Q4.

October 2025 was notably the second highest month ever for perp dex growth,

after August of 2025. The top 10 perp sexes market share remained mostly stable in 2025,

except for Maxi, which surged past OKX, Bibit, and Bitget to claim second place. Well played.

And finally, the report zooms in on open interest for the top 10 perp dexes,

highlighting the October liquidation event. The October 10 crash wiped out

53.8 billion in open interest, sending the total crypto market cap down 389 billion in a single day,

a massive 9% drop, with more than 19 billion in liquidations.

Finance and Bibit saw the largest losses in open interest that day,

$13 billion each. Interestingly, perp dexes saw an 80% gain in Q4 trading volumes.

Although this was largely jiffened by air drop farming on platforms like LiDAR and EdgeX.

Hyperliquid was the most active perp dex for most of 2025,

until LiDAR took the lead in Q4. Combined, the top 10 perp dexes saw 6.7 trillion in trading volumes

in 2025, a massive 346% jump from 1.5 trillion in 2024. And with that, we've reached the end of

this report. And remember, you could find the full thing in the description below.

But with 2025 now in the rearview mirror, the big question now is, what can we expect to see

in 2026? Well, let's start with the elephant in the room, Q4 of 2025.

The October 10 liquidation event completely flipped the market sentiment from bullish to bearish,

sending charts that were heading up into the right into full-on nose dives. You can't help but

wonder where we'd be if that liquidation event never happened. But then, maybe it's best not to

even think about it. Still though, there is some good news. Sentiment is turning surprisingly

positive, with the fear and greed index moving out of extreme fear. The total crypto market cap

is showing signs of recovery. And with Bitcoin dominance starting to slip, suggesting any upcoming

speculation could spill into altcoins. Some of the key narratives that could outperform include

the ones highlighted in this report. Tokenized RWA's are expected to keep growing,

as institutions rush to put basically everything on chain. Tokenized collectibles could become

the cycles NFT boom, potentially reigniting interest in NFTs themselves. Another sector that

could keep growing is prediction markets. As recovered in our summary of Coinbase's recent report,

the space is becoming increasingly overcrowded. One possible solution is a prediction market

aggregator that acts as the de facto interface for the entire sector. And you can learn more about

Coinbase's predictions in the video right over here. And another sector to watch in 2026 is privacy.

As governments ramp up KYC and transaction surveillance, demand for privacy-focused solutions

is likely to grow. This is why privacy coins outperformed in 2025 and could continue to do so.

That said, any rallies are unlikely to be sustained due to current market conditions.

But here's the thing, that might actually not be a bad thing. Well, bear markets are far less

noisy. And that presents a lot of opportunity. For investors, bear markets could give us the

chance to do plenty of research to find out our next favorite crypto projects. And then buy in

at a discount. Come to think of it, this could also be when dads build their treasuries ahead of

the next bull market. For projects, developers are given the time that they need to develop

more promising tech that could completely change the space. For example, as AI becomes more advanced,

developers can use this tech to create AI agents that can do things that we can only dream about today.

More importantly, bear markets are healthy for crypto's longevity. They flush out the weak

projects and they make room for serious contenders. And they give existing projects time to focus

on solving major problems like quantum resistance, for example. The point is, 2026 will likely be a mixed

back. But there's plenty to be excited about. The key is to remain calm and stay informed.

And, rest assured, if you're subscribed to this channel, well, you'll have all the information

that you need. For example, we talked about how regulations could shape 2026 in a video that you

could check out right over here. And if you're wondering where all of the retail investors have

actually gone, well, you could find out that in this video right over here. Thank you so much

for watching and I'll see you again very soon. This Lewis signing off.

Hello, Guy again. Before you go, if you have a moment, please do rate and review us.

It really helps the podcast grow and find new listeners.

Okay, that's all for this episode. Thank you for listening and see you again soon.