2025 Crypto Market Mainline Review: Stablecoin Wars and the Rise of Prediction Markets

Last year at this time, I predicted the main direction of this cycle, and looking back now - I was right about half of it.

Stablecoins: The clearest narrative of this round

At that time, it was said Payfi, but now it seems that stablecoins is a more accurate expression. RWA can also fit into this line.

Several targets worth monitoring:

$CRCL - Betting that Circle can maintain its position among the top two stablecoins. The price of $135 seems expensive considering its market cap and profits, but thinking about the potential for stablecoins to expand 5-8 times over the next five years, combined with the significant drop from $300 to $108, it might be a decent entry point? I went all in at $115.

$PlasmaFDN - Since you can't buy equity in Tether, Plasma is your only choice. Of course, I will wait for the spot and mainnet, and I won't gamble on contracts. Plasma's financing scale, ecosystem construction, and social presence far exceed those of Stable's competitors. The mainnet launch TVL is conservatively estimated to start at 3-4B. The current pre-market/contract price of 6B is also ridiculously expensive, so I'll look for opportunities after the spot goes live.

In the coming years, the trillion-scale stablecoin market presents immense possibilities for stablecoin public chains. The question of which leading player will emerge is a major point of interest—over the past month, the TVL of the old leader Tron has dropped from a high of 83B to 77B, while in the new contenders circle (Plasma, Stable, Arc, Tempo, Codex, etc.), Plasma is currently far ahead.

$ENA - It can be considered a hedge against the first two configurations. Since stablecoins are the main narrative, shouldn't we bet on both centralized and decentralized options? The only worthwhile buy on the decentralized side should be Ethena. USDE has already surpassed 13.5B, and both DAT and the fee switch are ready, with the fundamentals as stable as a rock.

By the way, there is also a centralized USDTB that is about to break 2B, and there is also their own RWA public chain Converge… There are quite a few positive factors, but the price of the coin has been performing poorly lately. Is it the whales dumping?

$Ondo - My Crcl was exchanged for Ondo. It is currently the only company that offers 24/7 trading of US stocks without KYC thresholds (via 1inch) + backed by large institutions, making it relatively safe and reliable.

If you are optimistic about the trend of borderless US stocks on the blockchain, Ondo is one of the few buyable targets. Of course, the market cap is also a bit hard to handle - the high control and high FDV style is obvious. One can only say that good goods are not cheap.

AI Agent: From Skinning Memes to Real Applications

This cannot be considered correct. Last year's AI Agents like Goat and ai16z were popular for a while, but everyone realized that these were merely superficial memes, and they faded away.

This year, quite a few AI Agents that are genuinely usable and have potential PMF have emerged. On the Web2 side, there's Skywork, and on the Web3 side, there are also some good projects doing real work.

What I'm personally most concerned about is the Bittensor halving event in early next year. If a golden opportunity arises around that time, it might be worth considering an investment. A leader is still a leader—currently, the revenue from three or four subnets has gradually started to come in, and overall, it is still the Web3 AI project with the most potential to deliver results.

Meme: Your uncle is always your uncle.

This is indeed correct. Memes have been popular since last year, and this year there has even been a fierce competition among major Launchpads to capture the market from Pump.

However, your grandpa will always be your grandpa—Pump is still far ahead and has already started to venture into the live streaming space, taking the Web3 TikTok route.

The Meme track Alpha is changing every day, while Beta has only one, Pump.

Prediction Markets: A Potential New Mainline

In addition to the three main lines above, a potential new main line in this round is prediction markets.

Polymarket data has been steadily increasing, while Kalshi has been even more explosive—over the past month, its performance has surged ahead, leaving Polymarket far behind. The primary market has been crowded with dozens of new prediction market projects this year, and a leading exchange has also proposed a dedicated section for Event prediction markets.

Today I also saw an insurance industry expert publish an article, predicting that the market might disrupt the current insurance industry as it develops. After all, the insurance industry is based on probability and some financial packaging of mathematics—what if users could access and hedge these transparent probabilities and risk exposures themselves, instead of accepting the opaque odds from insurance companies?

However, there are no investable assets in this secondary market, and we can only wait for Polymarket to issue tokens. It is said to have a valuation of 3 billion, which is also very expensive…

Looking at the Main Line from a Different Angle

There is another perspective to view this round's main theme, or rather the only main theme — that is the projects that “truly have income, profits, and buy back tokens.”

From this perspective, only two tokens can be purchased: $Hype & $Pump.

One more thing: Among the projects I personally pay the most attention to in Payfi/stablecoins/RWA, besides the previously mentioned CRCL, Plasma, ENA, and Ondo, there is another project worth noting.

Last time I didn't write about it mainly because I thought it might not issue tokens. But after listening to the latest episode of the Bankless podcast, I feel that it will eventually issue them.

If being optimistic about Plasma means valuing Tether's investment, the founder's strong execution ability, and the resource relationships with major blue-chip DeFi projects and a leading exchange, then being optimistic about this project simply means being optimistic about Stripe, which is the strongest distribution channel for B2B services for millions of merchants, as well as Paradigm, the most technically hardcore and well-known VC in the industry directly getting involved to build (not invest, but build).

The stablecoin “ZhaoShang” from a leading exchange has already demonstrated to the market the importance of channels beyond issuance for stablecoins.

Will the future of stablecoin public chains be a dual-king model of Plasma To C + this project To B?