What We Lived Through in Crypto: 2025, Month by Month

Only 6 days left in 2025.

There's an old saying in crypto: one day feels like a year. If you've been deep in the market, that probably feels very real. The year had passed incredibly fast. Events from January already feel like ancient history.

So how did you actually do this year? Did you catch a few real opportunities, or did the market hand you a hard lesson? Is the token you went all-in on at the start of the year still in your wallet? The narrative that once felt undeniable, do you even remember which month it belonged to?

For most people, those answers are already blurred.

Crypto has a brutally short memory. What dominated timelines three months ago is barely mentioned today. Confident calls made back then are now quietly avoided.

That’s why we put this together.

What follows is a complete reconstruction of the 2025 crypto market, month by month. What happened, which tokens moved, and what everyone was talking about at the time.

No predictions. No judgments. Just a clear reminder of what we actually lived through this year.

January: Peak Euphoria, Sudden Reality Check

Keywords: AI agents, political meme tokens, optimism

January was all about AI agents, and TRUMP.

AI16Z hit an all-time high of $2.47 on January 2, pushing its market cap to $2.5 billion and becoming the first AI token on Solana to reach that level. At the time, AI narratives dominated the timeline. Tokens like AIXBT, ARC, ZEREBRO, and GRIFFAIN were discussed daily, often with near-unquestioned conviction.

Political meme tokens quickly stole the spotlight. On January 17, the official TRUMP token launched. Within 48 hours, it surged from under $1 to an all-time high of $75, briefly reaching a market cap above $14 billion. Many woke up stunned by the move, initially unsure whether the token was legitimate. Once confirmed, it marked a historic first: a sitting U.S. president issuing a token.

XRP also rallied sharply, gaining around 50% during the month after reports surfaced that Ripple executives had met with Trump’s team. Speculation grew that XRP could be among the first altcoins to receive ETF approval.

Macro sentiment added fuel. On January 23, Trump signed an executive order forming a digital asset working group, exploring a national crypto reserve, and explicitly banning a U.S. central bank digital currency.

For a brief moment, optimism peaked, but that didn't last long.

Around January 20, DeepSeek released a low-cost AI model that directly challenged the crypto AI agent narrative. Almost overnight, many AI agents began to look less like breakthrough products and more like experimental toys.

The reversal was swift. AI-themed tokens that had just rallied hard slid back toward their prior levels in the weeks that followed. January ended not with continuation, but with the first clear crack in the year’s strongest narrative.

February: The Month Trust Broke

Keywords: Bybit breach, LIBRA scam, liquidations

February was defined by collapse - of security, confidence, and narratives.

On February 21, Bybit suffered the largest theft in crypto history. The North Korean hacking group Lazarus Group drained roughly 400,000 ETH, worth about $1.5 billion, into addresses under its control. The scale of the loss eclipsed every prior exchange hack and even surpassed the damage caused by the FTX collapse. It was a psychological shock as much as a financial one.

At the same time, political meme tokens completely unraveled.

On February 14, Valentine’s Day, Argentine president Javier Milei promoted a token on social media. Within 40 minutes, it surged to $5 and briefly reached a $4.5 billion market cap. Hours later, it collapsed by 85%, leaving roughly 40,000 investors with combined losses exceeding $250 million. Milei later deleted the post and denied involvement. Confidence never recovered. TRUMP and MELANIA tokens continued sliding throughout the month.

Market stress spilled over quickly. Between February 24 and February 27, Bitcoin suffered its worst three-day stretch since the 2022 FTX collapse, dropping 12.6% and triggering nearly $3 billion in leveraged liquidations.

The damage was widespread. The meme token sector lost roughly half its total market capitalization. Solana’s total value locked fell 30%, hitting its lowest level since the previous November.

There was only one outlier.

On February 20, Pi Network officially launched its mainnet. The token surged to $2.98, reigniting debate around whether years of grassroots promotion could finally translate into real liquidity. In an otherwise brutal month, it stood alone as a reminder that not every long-running narrative dies quietly.

March: Policy Hope, Macro Fear

Keywords: Strategic Reserves, tariff-driven fear, meme sector collapse, Strategy

March marked the first visible impact of policy-level support for crypto.

Trump hosted the first-ever crypto summit at the White House, where he signed an executive order establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve. A few days earlier, he had posted on Truth Social that XRP, SOL, and ADA would also be included in the broader digital asset reserve. The reaction was immediate. ADA surged more than 70% in a single day and reclaimed the $1 level. For a brief moment, the market believed the regulatory stance had decisively shifted.

That optimism faded quickly.

Trump’s renewed tariff threats reignited fears of a global trade war, triggering broad sell-offs across risk assets. Crypto followed. The meme sector collapsed almost uniformly, with most tokens down 40–60% as speculative appetite evaporated.

Attention unexpectedly shifted to BSC. The Middle East-themed meme token Mubarak surged more than 100x after multiple public endorsements from Changpeng Zhao. Trading activity exploded, briefly pushing BSC ahead of Solana in volume.

March’s largest trust crisis unfolded on Hyperliquid. An attacker used the JELLYJELLY token to construct large short positions and manipulate prices, putting the HLP vault at risk of roughly $12 million in losses. Hyperliquid responded by organizing a vote to delist the token and force settlement. A decentralized exchange resolving a crisis through centralized intervention forced many to rethink what decentralization actually means in practice.

Off-chain, conviction at the top never wavered. Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, continued to increase exposure. On March 18, the company announced a $500 million preferred share issuance dedicated entirely to buying Bitcoin.

April: Policy Shift, Sentiment Recovery

Keywords: tariff pause, regulatory pivot, Solana ETF, market sentiment reversal

April marked a clear turn in market sentiment.

On April 9, Trump announced a 90-day pause on tariffs. The response was immediate. The S&P 500 jumped 9.5% in a single day, its largest one-day gain since 2008. That same day, the SEC approved options trading for ETH ETFs, significantly strengthening institutional tools for Ethereum exposure.

Regulatory tone also shifted. Paul Atkins officially took office as the new SEC chair. His pro-crypto stance reignited expectations for clearer and more constructive regulation.

The recovery showed up in prices. Total crypto market capitalization rose 10.8% over the month. Bitcoin rebounded from a $76,000 low and closed April above $90,000.

Altcoins followed. Canada launched the world’s first spot Solana ETFs, giving SOL a fresh institutional narrative. Sui rallied more than 50% after news of a Grayscale trust and a partnership with Mastercard.

Speculation returned at full force in memes. Fartcoin rebounded more than 100x from its lows and led the category’s recovery. RFC, often described as Elon Musk’s mouthpiece token, surged more than 1,000x.

After the brutal drawdowns of February and March, April was the first month where the market didn’t just stabilize, it felt alive again.

May: We're So Back!

Keywords: All-time high, easing China-US tensions, DAT narrative, ICP, Hyperliquid.

May delivered the strongest surge in market sentiment so far in 2025.

On May 2, China and the United States agreed to a 90-day tariff pause. With trade war fears temporarily sidelined, risk assets rebounded broadly and confidence returned quickly.

Crypto followed through. On May 7, Ethereum completed the Pectra upgrade, its largest hard fork since the Merge in 2022. While the upgrade itself didn’t spark an immediate breakout, ETH still climbed 44% over the month, reflecting a clear improvement in sentiment rather than pure hype.

At the same time, Bitcoin pushed above $110,000 to set a new all-time high. The move felt decisive. The rally was no longer narrow or fragile - strength spread across the market.

One of May’s most powerful narratives was the rise of corporate digital asset treasuries (DAT). Public companies like GameStop and SharpLink Gaming began accumulating BTC and ETH. What once looked like an extreme strategy unique to Strategy was now being actively replicated.

On-chain activity also accelerated through experimentation.

The Believe platform gained traction by allowing users to launch tokens simply by tagging @launchcoin and adding a token name on X. This sparked the so-called ICP narrative, short for Internet Capital Markets. The platform token LAUNCHCOIN surged sharply during the month.

Virtuals Protocol rolled out its Genesis Launch platform, reviving enthusiasm for AI token launches. VIRTUAL rose 60%. Meanwhile, Kaito pushed social on-chain engagement further with its Yap Points reward system. Its token surged 190%, and “yapping” became widely accepted as a legitimate airdrop strategy.

Momentum also returned to derivatives. Hyperliquid’s token HYPE climbed 75%, fueling debate around new DEX models and the idea of efficiency per employee, as Hyperliquid demonstrated outsized profitability with a remarkably small team.

May was generous to the market. For many participants, it wasn’t just a bounce anymore - it finally felt like everything was alive again.

June: Stablecoins Go Mainstream

Keywords: Circle listing, DAT expansion, tokenization of U.S. equities

June was the month the stablecoin narrative fully broke into the open.

On June 5, Circle rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CRCL. The IPO was priced at $31 and oversubscribed by 25 times. Momentum didn’t fade after listing. By June 23, CRCL surged to an all-time high of $298.99, nearly 9x its IPO price.

It was a defining moment. For the first time, a crypto-native stablecoin company achieved clear validation in U.S. public markets, signaling that stablecoins were no longer viewed as fringe infrastructure but as legitimate financial plumbing.

Just four days later, excitement escalated even further.

Plasma launched its public sale on Sonar, founded by Cobie, and raised $500 million in just five minutes. The cap was later raised to $1 billion and fully subscribed within 30 minutes. Early backers included Peter Thiel, Tether’s CEO, and Bybit. Demand for stablecoin infrastructure far exceeded expectations.

The DAT narrative continued to compound.

Strategy kept accumulating. Metaplanet purchased 1,088 BTC in a single month. DeFi Development Corp announced a $5 billion equity financing facility to expand its SOL holdings, positioning itself explicitly as a “Solana version of MicroStrategy.” SharpLink Gaming continued adding to its ETH position, bringing total holdings to 188,000 ETH.

On June 30, a quieter but potentially transformative narrative emerged: tokenized U.S. equities.

Kraken and Bybit simultaneously launched xStocks, allowing over 60 U.S. equities, including Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft, to trade as tokens on Solana.

Meanwhile, Hyperliquid further cemented its position as the leading on-chain derivatives platform, and Ethereum staking reached a new all-time high.

Even memes had their moment. BANANAS31 began a sharp rally, while USELESS surged more than 2,000%, driven almost entirely by the absurdity of its name.

By the end of June, it was clear that stablecoins weren’t just another narrative. They had become the center of gravity.

July: GENIUS Act Takes Effect as BTC and ETH Set New Highs

Keywords: GENIUS Act, BTC & ETH new ATH, tokenization expansion, stablecoin competition

On July 18, Trump signed the GENIUS Act, marking the first federal stablecoin regulatory framework in U.S. history. For the stablecoin sector, this was a structural shift, moving from regulatory ambiguity to formal recognition.

Starting July 10, Bitcoin began accelerating higher, reaching a new all-time high above $120,000 on July 14. Spot ETF inflows surged to a record $1.2 billion in a single day.

Ethereum followed with strength of its own, climbing to a 2025 high of $3,848 on July 21.

The tokenization narrative continued to expand rapidly. Robinhood launched trading for more than 200 tokenized U.S. equities on Arbitrum, including tokenized private equity exposure linked to OpenAI and SpaceX.

A symbolic moment followed when PENGU submitted an application for a PENGU ETF. If approved, it would become the world’s first ETF to include NFTs.

Stablecoin competition also entered a new phase. On July 1, Stable, backed by Tether and Bitfinex, released its roadmap and formally entered a three-way race with Tempo and Circle’s Arc. The fight to become the dominant stablecoin settlement layer had officially begun.

In the meme sector, SPX6900 rallied more than 100%, while long-running stablecoin-adjacent project ENA surged over 160%.

July closed with momentum intact. Regulation advanced, prices confirmed strength, and tokenization and stablecoins moved from narratives into execution.

August: OKB Surges as Bitcoin Sets Another High

Keywords: exchange token

August felt more okay than euphoric.

Bitcoin pushed to a new all-time high of $124,000 in mid-month before cooling off, closing August around $108,000. While BTC paused, altcoins stayed active, and exchange tokens clearly led the market.

On August 13, OKX announced a one-time burn of 65.25 million OKB, slashing total supply from 300 million to just 21 million. At the same time, OKX rolled out an upgrade to its X Layer blockchain. The reaction was immediate. OKB surged 170% in a single day, hitting $148, then continued climbing to $255. From the local bottom, the token was up nearly 400%.

Meanwhile, Mantle’s MNT was integrated into the Bybit exchange. Mantle positions itself as real-world asset infrastructure, and going forward, MNT will be used as a trading fee token on Bybit, effectively adopting a platform-token model.

On August 28, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced a partnership with Chainlink and Pyth to bring macroeconomic data such as GDP and PCE on-chain. The news lifted LINK roughly 61% over the month, while PYTH jumped more than 70% on the day of the announcement.

Hong Kong’s stablecoin regulatory framework officially went live in August. On August 1, the Stablecoin Ordinance came into effect, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority opened applications for stablecoin licenses. Several mainland Chinese firms, including JD.com, initially expressed strong interest, though some later withdrew for various reasons.

Celebrity token drama was unavoidable. On August 21, Ye launched the YZY token on Solana. Within one hour, the token surged 1,400% to $3, briefly pushing its fully diluted valuation to $3 billion. The move quickly reversed. YZY collapsed more than 80% and eventually went to zero.

Ye later claimed his Instagram account had been hacked and that the promoted token was fake. Regardless of the explanation, the outcome was familiar. This was just another celebrity token episode where fans paid the price.

SocialFi also had its moment. ZORA gained strong momentum, driven by its integration with Base App and the broader Creator Coins narrative. ZORA rose over 100% in August and briefly hit an all-time high of $0.15.

Meanwhile, Pump.fun staged a comeback, reclaiming most of the Solana launchpad market share. Its August revenue reached $46 million, confirming that speculative demand had not disappeared.

September: The Fed Cuts Rates, Aster Rises

Keywords: interest rate cuts, crypto IPOs, Aster, x402

On September 17, the FOMC announced a 25 basis point rate cut, marking the first interest rate reduction of 2025.

During the same month, Tether conducted a private fundraising round at a $500 billion valuation. The headline once again underscored Tether’s balance-sheet strength, though it remained largely irrelevant for most retail participants.

What did matter came from Tether’s co-founder. Reeve Collins launched a new venture built around the STBL protocol. On September 16, STBL debuted on Binance Alpha, surging 455% on day one and pushing its fully diluted valuation above $1 billion. Within a single month, the token posted a 44x gain, becoming one of September’s standout performers.

Crypto IPOs also made a brief comeback. On September 11, Figure listed on Nasdaq, positioning itself as the first publicly traded RWA-focused crypto company. Gemini followed with its own listing the next day. Wall Street’s stance toward crypto was visibly shifting.

Within crypto-native projects, on-chain derivatives exploded into a full-scale DEX war. Aster appeared almost overnight, with its token surging 2,800% in the first week. At its peak, Aster’s seven-day trading volume briefly surpassed that of Hyperliquid.

On the token side,

• PUMP rose 160% over the month, fueled by an aggressive buyback program with cumulative repurchases exceeding $95 million. The token set a new all-time high on September 14.

• AVNT sprinted through dual listings on Upbit and Binance within a single week, surging 660%.

• BNB gained 19.7% after Franklin Templeton expanded its Benji tokenization platform.

• MNT climbed 130% following deeper integration into the Bybit ecosystem.

Meanwhile, Coinbase announced the x402 protocol during the month. The release drew little immediate attention, but it quietly laid the foundation for the surge of interest in the 402 sector that would unfold over the following two months.

October: Crypto Crash

Keywords: Binance Life (币安人生) meme, liquidation cascade

It was supposed to be Uptober.

On October 4, the first Chinese-language meme token, Binance Life (币安人生), launched. Built around slogans like driving a Binance car, living in a Binance neighborhood, and enjoying a Binance life, the token struck a nerve across Chinese-speaking crypto communities. In just five days, its market cap exploded from zero to $500 million, a gain of over 3,000%.

For seven consecutive years, Bitcoin had closed October in the green. In 2025, that streak ended decisively.

The month began with strength. Bitcoin printed a new all-time high of $126,000 on October 3. But the reversal came fast. On October 11, the market experienced an unprecedented liquidation cascade: $19 billion in leveraged positions were forcibly closed within 24 hours, marking the largest single-day liquidation event in crypto history.

From that point forward, liquidity evaporated and sentiment collapsed. Risk appetite vanished almost overnight.

Zcash saw a short-lived rally after receiving public support from Naval Ravikant, but the bounce failed to generate a broader narrative.

By the end of the month, there were no stories left to carry the market. Institutions and retail investors alike took heavy, largely indiscriminate losses, as October closed not with continuation, but with capitulation.

November: Privacy Tokens Defy the Trend, Everything Else Breaks

Keywords: BTC $80K, DeFi collapse, privacy assets, x402

October’s liquidation cascade was widely viewed as a worst-case scenario. November proved that the downside wasn’t finished.

Bitcoin slid from around $110,000 to $80,000, hitting a seven-month low. Total crypto market capitalization contracted by nearly $1 trillion, falling from $4.2 trillion to $3.2 trillion. Risk-off sentiment spilled into traditional markets as well. IBIT, BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF, recorded $2.34 billion in net outflows for the month, its largest monthly outflow since launch.

Yet even in a deep drawdown, capital still found pockets of opportunity. The privacy sector sharply diverged from the broader market.

• Zcash surged from roughly $40 in September to over $600 in November, delivering gains of more than 1,200%.

• Dash followed, rallying from $20 to $136, a move of over 6x.

The AI payments narrative also enjoyed a brief moment in the spotlight. Coinbase’s x402 protocol enabled AI agents to autonomously pay for services, pushing the idea of machine-to-machine commerce closer to reality. The ecosystem token PING rose from zero to a $70 million market capitalization, while adjacent themes such as PayAI and SANTA attracted short-term speculative inflows. The momentum, however, proved fragile. By month-end, interest had already begun to fade.

At the same time, DAT companies were under mounting pressure.

Strategy fell 36% in November, prompting MSCI to begin evaluating whether the stock should be removed from its indices. Other firms holding ETH and SOL as core treasury assets continued to slide as well, reinforcing doubts around the DAT model in a sustained downturn.

In addition, authorities seized large amounts of Bitcoin tied to two major fraud cases involving Qian Zhimin and Chen Zhi. The nearly 190,000 BTC involved sparked renewed concerns over potential selling pressure, while once again amplifying the familiar narrative that crypto is closely associated with money laundering.

December: Boredom

There were no narratives left. Only emotions.

Some called it a silent bear market. Not violent. Not dramatic. Just slow and exhausting. A steady grind that wore down conviction day by day. Conversations shifted from positioning to gossip, from opportunity to frustration.

The only shared consensus was simple.

Wait.

Wait for liquidity. Wait for direction. Wait for something to change.

A new year is about to begin. We may not know where this road leads, but we are still on it.

May 2026 be kinder to us all.

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