An investor from Shanghai invested less than 500,000 yuan in silver futures at the beginning of the year, and by the end of 2025, the account balance exceeded 3 million yuan. This is not just luck, but precisely stepping onto the ladder of wealth in front of the giant wheel of the times.
In 2025, amidst the unpredictable global financial market, two types of assets, with their astonishing performance, have written the myth of 'turning around' for brave investors.
One category is ancient precious metals: Gold has accumulated a rise of over 60% this year, repeatedly breaking historical highs, standing at over $4,400 per ounce; Silver, with an astonishing increase of over 100%, has become the biggest dark horse of the year.
Another category is the emerging king of digital assets—Bitcoin. Despite experiencing dramatic volatility, it successfully broke through the historical threshold of $126,000 in 2025, and its total market capitalization once pushed the entire crypto market beyond $4.2 trillion.
However, behind this epic asset carnival lies a deeper trend. As global central banks continue to buy gold and the undercurrents of de-dollarization surge, a completely new method of value storage and circulation that does not rely on the sovereign credit of any single country is quietly rising on the blockchain. This is the world of decentralized dollars. For example, decentralized stablecoins like USDD are committed to providing a stable and credible value anchor in the volatile crypto world through over-collateralization and on-chain transparency. Together with the value storage of gold and the value discovery function of Bitcoin, it forms a distinct 'decentralized value system.'
01 The Return of the King: A Crazy Year for Traditional 'Hardcore' Assets
In 2025, traditional safe-haven assets demonstrated unprecedented aggressiveness.
The 'century surge' of gold and silver: Gold prices exceeded 50 historical records in 2025, with an annual increase of about 65%. The drivers of its rise are not only traditional demand for safe-haven assets and inflation hedging but also a fundamental long-term change: amid the global wave of 'de-dollarization,' central banks in various countries have become the most steadfast buyers of gold to achieve reserve diversification. Silver's performance was even more dazzling, with an increase of around 120%, labeled as the biggest 'dark horse' of the year by the market. A silver futures investor in Shanghai saw his account grow from less than 500,000 yuan at the beginning of the year to over 3 million yuan by the end of the year.
The 'New Industrial Revolution' of Copper: The king of industrial metals, copper, also welcomed its 'golden age' in 2025. Copper prices once broke through $11,500 per ton, with an annual increase of over 30%. The driving force behind this is strong emerging demand: New energy vehicles (which use four times the amount of copper as fuel vehicles), photovoltaic power stations, and AI computing centers together form the 'demand iron triangle' for copper.
02 Differentiation and Evolution of the Digital World: Bitcoin's Dominance and Structural Maturity of the Industry
Unlike the broad rise of precious metals, the cryptocurrency market in 2025 showed significant differentiation.
Bitcoin: Consolidating the 'Digital Gold' Throne. Bitcoin's performance in 2025 can be described as a steady rise. Its price hit a historic high of over $126,000 in early October. More importantly, its status as a macro asset has been solidified like never before. The U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF achieved tremendous success in 2025, holding approximately 1.36 million BTC by the end of the year, accounting for nearly 7% of the circulating supply, with assets under management reaching $168 billion. This marks Bitcoin's formal inclusion in the asset allocation perspective of global mainstream institutions.
Ethereum and Altcoins: Structural Opportunities and Challenges coexist. In contrast, Ethereum's performance has been rated as 'relatively weak' by the market. Nevertheless, its core position as the blockchain infrastructure was further solidified in 2025. Traditional financial giants like JPMorgan issued the first $100 million tokenized money market fund on Ethereum, driving the total scale of the sector from $3 billion to $9 billion within a year. Additionally, assets like Solana and XRP have also had their spot ETFs approved and began trading, marking a significant enrichment of the supply side of crypto products.
One phenomenon that must be mentioned is the 'MicroStrategy Amplification Effect.' As the most well-known 'Bitcoin proxy stock' in the public market, MicroStrategy's stock price often significantly outperforms Bitcoin itself during the cycle, providing a leveraged participation avenue for investors willing to take on higher risk.
03 BlackRock's '2%' Proposal: Is it the End of Caution or the Beginning for Ordinary People?
In 2025, BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company, publicly suggested that investors could allocate 1-2% of their portfolios to Bitcoin. This move is of milestone significance, indicating that Bitcoin has shifted from being seen as a 'must-have' speculative asset to a selective asset for 'optimized' allocation in investment portfolios.
"Although BlackRock's report has turned Bitcoin from a must-have asset into an optimized asset, I still believe this is a great opportunity for ordinary people to turn the tide."
This viewpoint hits the core of the issue. BlackRock's advice is aimed at traditional institutions managing trillions of dollars, whose risk control frameworks determine the conservativeness of allocation ratios. But for the 'ordinary person,' this is precisely a signal: the top institutions have already validated the long-term value logic of the assets for you. BlackRock itself is also taking action, as one of its bond portfolios increased its holdings of its Bitcoin ETF by 25% in the first quarter of 2025. A small percentage allocation by institutions, multiplied by the vast amounts of funds they manage, will result in potential increments in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
#USDD sees stability and trust
04 The Gap Between Reality and Predictions: Why Did the Vast Majority of Institutions Guess Wrong?
Looking back to the beginning of 2025, various institutions were extremely optimistic in their price predictions for Bitcoin, forming a '200,000 dollar club,' with well-known institutions like Bernstein, Standard Chartered, and Bitwise giving year-end target prices of $200,000 to $250,000. However, the reality is that after reaching a high of $126,000, Bitcoin fell back, hovering around $88,000 by year-end.
This reveals a key feature of the 2025 market: structural progress far exceeds price performance. Institutions accurately predicted the friendliness of regulations, the launch of more crypto ETFs, and the accelerated entry of mainstream institutions (all of which have been realized), but severely underestimated the market's sensitivity to macro risks (such as interest rate policies, geopolitical issues) and the subsequent sharp corrections after high valuations and leverage accumulation. Price predictions fell flat, but most predictions regarding industry infrastructure and institutional development came true.
05 Looking Ahead to 2026: How Should We Position Ourselves at Historical Highs?
Standing at the end of 2025, when both gold and Bitcoin reached historic highs, the most pressing question for investors is: Has the feast ended?
For precious metals: Institutions remain positive. Investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley believe that supported by long-term factors such as central bank gold purchases, gold prices are expected to challenge new highs of $5,000 per ounce in 2026. Silver, due to its stronger industrial properties and elasticity in a monetary easing environment, may perform even more robustly than gold. The core strategy should be to 'stay in the game,' but replace speculative thinking with allocation thinking, treating it as a 'ballast' for family assets rather than a tool for short-term games.
For cryptocurrencies: The core logic for 2026 is 'mean reversion' and 'fundamentals realization.' K33 Research points out that the price performance of Bitcoin in 2025 diverged significantly from its unprecedentedly positive fundamentals (such as the establishment of the U.S. strategic Bitcoin reserves and mainstream banks opening crypto services), and such divergence often harbors huge opportunities. With further clarity in regulatory frameworks and potentially looser monetary policies from the Trump administration, scarce crypto assets are expected to welcome a strong recovery.
In such a high-volatility environment with abundant opportunities, investors not only need to choose potential assets but also need to manage the conversion and stability between assets effectively. This is where the strategic value of decentralized stablecoins becomes apparent. In pursuing the potential appreciation of Bitcoin, using transparent stablecoins like USDD as a fund transfer station and a volatility shelter is a more mature and robust strategy. It allows investors to maintain a 'stable deck' guarded by algorithms and over-collateralization amid turbulent waves.
The market in 2025 tells us with real gold and silver that the transfer of wealth occurs not only between industries but also in the speed of cognitive iteration. While ordinary people are still amazed by new highs in gold prices, smart money has already positioned itself for the next round of growth in digital gold; while the public is still questioning Bitcoin's volatility, top institutions have quietly completed their entry and accumulation.
The historic gains are both a reward and a test. They test our ability to remain calm amid frenzy, to see consensus amid differences, and to identify those truly powerful structural forces that reshape the future financial landscape beyond the noise of prices. Whether it is gold, Bitcoin, or the decentralized financial protocols built on them, they all answer an ancient yet fresh question: In a changing era, what is the most reliable home for wealth?
