Binance Research

Binance Research is pleased to release our full-year report for 2025!

Dive into the most significant developments in the past year and check out what we are excited about for 2026.

Read the full report here.
Key Takeaways:
2025 was a year of milestone achievements alongside differing market performance for crypto. Total market capitalization surpassed US$4T for the first time and Bitcoin (BTC) reached a new all-time high (ATH), reflecting continued institutional adoption, regulatory progress – particularly around stablecoins – and the expansion of regulated investment products. At the same time, heightened macroeconomic uncertainty driven by monetary policy, trade tensions, and geopolitical risks dominated market behavior, leading to sharp price swings and repeated risk-off episodes. This drove a wide intra-year trading range of roughly 76%, with total market value swinging between ~US$2.4T and ~US$4.2T. Despite structural progress in market access and infrastructure, crypto markets ended the year down ~7.9%, underscoring that price formation in 2025 was increasingly shaped by macro conditions and traditional financial cycles rather than crypto-native adoption alone.
From a macro viewpoint, the year was defined by "data fog" and volatility, as markets navigated a new U.S. administration, the "Liberation Day" tariff shock, and a government shutdown that obscured economic signals. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) speculation and the OBBBA fiscal bill drove BTC to new highs in early H2, the market ended 2025 with crypto decoupling from rebounding traditional assets due to regulatory delays. However, the outlook for 2026 signals a definitive "risk reboot" driven by a "policy triumvirate": synchronized global monetary easing, substantial fiscal stimulus via cash/tax refunds, and a wave of deregulation. This shift promises to replace retail-driven speculation with institutional flows, positioning crypto for a liquidity-fueled expansion supported by the potential for a U.S. Strategic BTC Reserve.Bitcoin showed a clear divergence between structural market-level strength and base layer economic activity. BTC reached new ATHs during the year but ended modestly lower, underperforming gold and most major equity indices, while maintaining a market capitalization near ~US$1.8T and sustaining ~58–60% market dominance. Capital concentration into BTC intensified despite softer price performance: U.S. spot ETFs accumulated over US$21B in net inflows, and corporate holdings surpassed 1.1M BTC, equivalent to ~5.5% of total supply. Network security continued to strengthen, with hash rate exceeding 1 ZH/s and mining difficulty rising ~36% year-on-year (YoY), signaling sustained miner investment. In contrast, base layer activity softened: active addresses declined ~16% YoY, transaction counts remained below prior cycle peaks, and speculative token activity appeared only in short, non-persistent bursts. The combined signal is that Bitcoin’s liquidity, price formation, and demand increasingly flowed through off-chain financial channels and holding behaviour, while the base layer played a secondary role, reinforcing Bitcoin’s position as a macro-financial asset rather than a transaction-led network.Across Layer 1s (L1s), the year showed that activity alone was not a reliable indicator of economic relevance, with many networks failing to convert usage into fees, value capture, or sustained token performance. Separately, the L1 landscape continued to consolidate around a small number of leading networks. Ethereum remained dominant by developer activity, Decentralized Finance (DeFi) liquidity, and aggregate value, but its base layer execution footprint and rollup-driven fee compression weighed on ETH relative performance versus BTC. In contrast, Solana sustained high transaction volumes and daily active users, materially expanded stablecoin supply, generated meaningful protocol revenue even after speculative activity normalized, and secured U.S. spot ETF approval, reinforcing institutional accessibility. BNB Chain capitalized on prevailing market narratives and its strong retail transaction base to drive high on-chain spot and derivatives activity, large stablecoin settlement flows, and real-world asset (RWA) deployments, with BNB emerging as the best-performing major crypto asset. A key signal from 2025 is that L1 differentiation increasingly hinged on the ability to monetize recurring flows – trading, payments, or institutional settlement – rather than simply maximizing raw transaction counts.Ethereum’s Layer 2 (L2) ecosystem accounted for over 90% of Ethereum-related transaction execution in 2025, supported by protocol upgrades that expanded blob capacity and lowered data availability (DA) costs. As execution migrated off-chain, the key focus was whether this scale could translate into sustained usage, fee generation, and economic alignment with the base layer. Under this lens, outcomes diverged sharply: activity, liquidity, and fee generation concentrated among a small number of optimistic rollups, notably Base and Arbitrum, as well as select app-specific chains with clear use cases and strong UX, while many others experienced sharp declines in usage once incentives faded. Zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups continued to make progress on prover efficiency and decentralization milestones but remained an order of magnitude behind optimistic rollups in total value locked (TVL) and fee generation. Fragmentation across more than 100 rollups, diminishing incentive effectiveness, and uneven sequencer decentralization remain among the binding constraints.In 2025, DeFi took one more step in transitioning to "structural institutionalization," focusing on capital efficiency and compliance. TVL stabilized at US$124.4B, with capital composition shifting significantly toward stablecoins and yield-bearing assets rather than inflationary tokens. A historic milestone occurred as RWA TVL (US$17B) surpassed DEXs, driven by the adoption of tokenized treasuries and equities. Simultaneously, the U.S. GENIUS Act provided regulatory clarity for stablecoins, propelling their market cap over US$307B and establishing them as essential global settlement infrastructure. Functionally, DeFi matured into a cash-flow powerhouse. Protocol revenue surged to US$16.2B, comparable to major TradFi institutions, turning governance tokens into productive "blue chip" assets. On-chain execution also gained dominance, with DEX-to-CEX spot trading ratios peaking at nearly 20%.2025 marked the breakthrough year when stablecoins went mainstream. Total market capitalization surged nearly 50% to over US$305B, fueled by landmark regulatory clarity from the GENIUS Act and institutional entry. Daily transaction volumes soared 26% to an average US$3.54T – dwarfing Visa's US$1.34T and proving stablecoins' superiority for fast, borderless payments. The momentum came from a wave of new heavyweights: six new stablecoins (BUIDL, PYUSD, RLUSD, USD1, USDf, and USDtB) each crossed the US$1B market cap threshold, bringing fresh competition and real-world utility. Together, these developments set the stage for sustained stablecoin expansion across payments, savings, and fintech use cases.Consumer crypto entered a defining era: blockchain infrastructure reached maturity, and the focus shifted decisively toward real-world applications and seamless execution. Leading this transition were neobanks and fintech platforms–both Web2 giants and Web3 natives–that are quickly evolving into full-fledged, bank-like services built on blockchain rails. While enthusiasm for crypto gaming and social apps cooled during the year, deeper integration of blockchain into global payments and fintech laid critical groundwork for a new wave of truly native networks to emerge in these sectors, designed from the ground up around transparency and verifiability. As the industry pivots from infrastructure-building to application-driven growth, its core mission is evolving: moving beyond decentralization for its own sake toward the deliberate design of trustworthy, verifiable systems that inspire confidence in both consumers and institutions alike.Frontier Tech in 2025 focused on the convergence of AI agents, on-chain payments, and decentralized coordination of real-world infrastructure. The most tangible advance was agentic payments becoming usable at internet scale via an HTTP-native settlement standard (reviving the 402 “Payment Required” path), enabling pay-per-call monetization for APIs, data, and automated workflows; by year-end, this rail had processed 100M+ payments, surpassed ~US$30M in cumulative volume, sustained >1M daily transactions, and saw agents drive over 90% of flows. In parallel, decentralized physical AI (DePAI) gained traction as an extension of DePIN toward coordinating autonomous machines, though progress in 2025 was constrained less by token design and more by data quality, sim-to-real gaps, capital intensity, and safety and regulatory requirements. By comparison, DeFAI and DeSci remained exploratory, with limited evidence of durable economic output relative to agent-native payments and early machine-economy use cases.Institutional adoption was defined by crypto being embedded into core financial workflows rather than accessed purely through price exposure. Banks moved closer to mainstream crypto-backed lending, signaling greater acceptance of BTC (and selectively ETH) as finance-grade collateral within custody and compliance frameworks, while regulated crypto ETFs expanded in breadth and structure, reinforcing ETFs as the preferred institutional access route. Tokenized money market funds emerged as a credible RWA tokenization use case, gaining traction as on-chain cash equivalents due to faster settlement, collateral mobility, and auditability. At the same time, corporate digital asset treasuries (DATs) scaled sharply in footprint, but 2025 highlighted growing sustainability pressure as leveraged treasury vehicles underperformed simpler, yield-bearing ETF alternatives – underscoring a shift toward infrastructure- and yield-driven adoption over pure asset accumulation.Global crypto regulation matured along divergent yet complementary paths: the U.S. advanced innovation through the GENIUS Act (July), establishing the first federal stablecoin framework; Europe implemented MiCA with rigorous licensing; Hong Kong solidified its hub status via the Stablecoin Ordinance and supportive tax incentives; Singapore reinforced high standards with stricter compliance and licensing rules (June). Internationally, commitments to the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) accelerated, setting the stage for standardized tax transparency and cross-border information exchange.Moving into 2026, several key themes are particularly exciting to us, and we anticipate significant progress in these areas throughout the year. These themes span various narratives and sectors, such as those related to the macro environment and Bitcoin, institutional adoption, policy and regulation, stablecoins, tokenization, decentralized trading, prediction markets and more.

Markets are pricing in faster rate cuts for 2026 alongside a growing US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve narrative.

With six stablecoins crossing the $1B mark, the ecosystem is expanding despite the recent dip. Could January mark the turning point for crypto?

Find out more ⬇️
https://www.binance.com/en/research/analysis/monthly-market-insights-2026-01

Happy Monday! Start your week with Binance Bytes, a snapshot of the latest market developments.
Highlights 🧵:
1/ Scheduled for January 14, 2026, the Fermi upgrade reduces BNB Chain's block time from 750ms to 450ms via BEP-619 and other proposals, potentially tripling throughput to enhance DeFi and time-sensitive applications. The upgrade further entrenches the chain as an EVM-compatible, high-throughput alternative to Solana.
2/ The Lighter Perp DEX airdropped 250 million LIT tokens (25% of supply, valued at ~US$650M at launch) to early users based on their points earned, with no vesting. 50% of total supply is allocated to team and investors, with the remaining 25% reserved for future incentives and growth initiatives. Post-airdrop, LIT price dropped ~30% and ~20% of protocol TVL exited quickly, illustrating ongoing challenges in retaining mercenary capital in competitive markets.
3/ Walmart's OnePay app now allows users to hold, trade, and convert Bitcoin (and Ethereum) to cash for checkout payments through partner Zerohash, potentially exposing 150 million weekly shoppers to crypto. This pragmatic hybrid model targets underbanked consumers and normalizes digital assets in retail.

Happy Monday! Start your week with Binance Bytes, a snapshot of the latest market developments.
Highlights 🧵:
1/ Russia to officially recognize cryptocurrency as a currency asset and open market access to all investors. Under the proposed regulatory framework by the central bank, ordinary citizens are permitted to trade cryptocurrencies on regulated platforms with limits for non-qualified investors. This move supports wider use of Russian-issued digital financial assets and bolster crypto services offered by existing financial firms. Notably, Sberbank has piloted a loan secured by cryptocurrency collateral, marking a significant milestone in the country’s adoption of digital assets.
2/ U.S. House lawmakers introduce a draft on digital asset taxation for stablecoins and staking, aiming to eliminate compliance burdens on small daily transactions. The proposed bill seeks to exempt transactions under US$200 involving regulated, U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins from capital gains taxes. Only stablecoins issued by permitted issuers under the GENIUS Act, maintaining a price within 1% of US$1.00 for 95% of trading days in the past year, qualify, excluding brokers and dealers. Additionally, taxpayers may defer taxation on mining and staking rewards for up to five years, after which they would be taxed as ordinary income at fair market value.
3/ Hong Kong proposes to open up crypto markets to insurers under stringent capital requirements. The Hong Kong Insurance Authority (HKIA) is proposing new regulations that would permit the city’s 158 authorized insurers to invest in digital assets. While this marks a cautious institutional embrace of crypto, the regulator maintains a conservative risk framework. Under the proposal, insurers must hold a one-to-one reserve for every dollar invested in crypto which serves as a protective buffer against the well-known volatility of digital assets.

Happy Friday! Binance Bytes is an initiative by the Research team to provide a quick round-up of the week.
Highlights 🧵:

1/ SharpLink Gaming announced a US$425M private equity deal to launch an Ethereum treasury and appointed Ethereum’s co-founder Joseph Lubin as board chairman. The deal involves Ethereum infrastructure firm Consensys along with several other venture capital firms. Following the announcement, Sharplink’s shares surged by 400%.
2/ Federal court blocks Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs imposed on ‘Liberation Day’. The Court of International Trade ruled that the emergency law invoked by the White House did not grant the president unilateral authority to impose tariffs on nearly every country. The Trump administration filed an appeal shortly after the ruling.
3/ U.S. Vice President JD Vance delivered his keynote speech at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, underscoring the importance of U.S. leadership in the cryptocurrency industry. His speech highlights Bitcoin’s growing institutional legitimacy and its strategic, macroeconomic, and geopolitical significance amid a global race among sovereign powers to secure the asset.

Global bond market volatility is back at multi-year highs.

As the world’s largest asset pool, its moves have far-reaching implications for risk assets like crypto.

Our latest report explores how bond market stress impacts crypto markets.
Key Takeaways:

Since April 2025, global financial markets have experienced significant volatility. Traditional safe-haven assets, such as U.S. Treasuries have declined, while gold and Bitcoin have shown relative resilience. As Bitcoin and crypto markets mature into a recognised asset class, their correlation with traditional financial markets has strengthened. Hence, a thorough understanding of how stress in the bond market transmits to the crypto market becomes important. 
This report examines the correlation patterns and evolution between these two markets, identifies and analyses potential transmission mechanisms, assesses current market conditions, and projects possible future market trajectories and impacts through scenario analysis. 
The core findings are:
The bond market affects the crypto market through multiple channels: including risk appetite, liquidity, opportunity cost, and macroeconomic linkages. Although the crypto market, particularly Bitcoin, may exhibit unique characteristics under specific stress conditions, its overall performance is increasingly influenced by the broader macroeconomic environment, especially interest rates and liquidity conditions.Historical Correlations Show Dynamic Patterns: Bitcoin's correlation with 10-year yields fluctuates (positive in 2021-2022, negative in 2022-2023). Historically, Bitcoin tended to perform better after extreme drops in Treasury yields compared to extreme spikes. Widening yield curve spreads (e.g., 10Y-2Y) historically correlated positively with Bitcoin, while widening credit spreads (HY OAS) showed a stable negative correlation.Bitcoin's Potential Crisis Resilience: While typically correlated with risk assets during systemic stress (e.g., March 2020), Bitcoin showed signs of resilience during traditional banking system crisis (e.g., March 2023).Complex Drivers of 2025 Turmoil: Current bond volatility is driven by tariff uncertainty (pushing the U.S. Trade Policy Uncertainty Index to record highs), sticky inflation (U.S. Core PCE rebounding YoY), government debt issuance (US$31T projected for 2025), and potential liquidity drains from TGA replenishment amid low Fed ON RRP balances.Future Scenarios Hinge on Macro Resolution: Crypto's path may partly depend on bond market stabilization and macro outcomes. Persistent uncertainty suggests range-bound trading, while a "soft landing" could fuel a rally. A severe crisis scenario could trigger deep sell-offs and crypto market deleveraging.
Read the full report here.

Explore the cutting-edge world of #DeFAI

From frameworks to agent protocols, AI agents to emerging marketplaces, our latest report dives into the future of autonomous finance.
Key Takeaways:
DeFAI (Decentralized Financial AI) is emerging as a foundational evolution in decentralized finance, embedding intelligence, autonomy, and real-time optimization into DeFi protocols, governance mechanisms, and trading strategies.The ecosystem is crystallizing into four distinct architectural layers, each playing a unique role in the lifecycle and scalability of autonomous agents:Frameworks (e.g., ARC, ElizaOS): Provide the core logic and development environment, defining agent behavior, modularity, and autonomy.Agent Protocols (e.g., Modius, Wayfinder): Function as deployment engines, allowing users to configure and launch DeFi agents at scale through low-code or no-code interfaces.AI Agents (e.g., AIXBT, Griffain): Represent the operational frontier — live, autonomous agents executing financial strategies, optimizing liquidity, and participating in on-chain governance.Agent Marketplaces (e.g., Auto.fun, Virtuals): Serve as distribution platforms where agents can be discovered, customized, rented, and monetized as tradable digital primitives.Critical open questions remain around ownership, transparency, and governance — particularly as the commoditization and cross-chain propagation of autonomous systems continues to accelerate.
The future of DeFi is no longer exclusively human-coordinated. It is becoming autonomous, modular, and intelligently decentralized — contingent on the implementation of robust safeguards, open standards, and transparent accountability frameworks.
Read here: https://www.binance.com/en/research/analysis/defai-unstacked-the-future-of-on-chain-finance

Happy Friday! Binance Bytes is an initiative by the Research team to provide a quick round-up of the week.
Highlights 🧵:
1/ The Arizona State Legislature has passed a groundbreaking bill to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve, pending approval from Governor Hobbs. While, several other states have proposed similar legislation this year, none have advanced as far. It remains uncertain whether Governor Hobbs will approve the bill; a veto would conclude the matter for the year.
2/ Sam Altman’s crypto project Worldcoin, a biometric identity verification system, has launched in six U.S. cities. This expansion occurs amid scrutiny from several countries, including Spain and Portugal, which have suspended operations due to concerns about biometric data collection and security.
3/ Morgan Stanley plans to offer crypto trading through E*trade by 2026, enhancing digital asset access for its wealthiest clients, who already engage with crypto ETFs and futures. This initiative aligns with U.S. banks’ preparation for lighter digital asset regulation under the Trump administration. The project is still in its early stages, with the bank exploring partnerships with crypto-native firms to develop the necessary infrastructure.
Check out our latest publication🔎:
Pectra and Fusaka Upgrades: What does it mean for Ethereum?

Happy Friday! Binance Bytes is an initiative by the Research team to provide a quick round-up of the week.
Highlights 🧵:
1/ Jack Mallers teams up with Tether, SoftBank, and Cantor Fitzgerald to launch Twenty One, valued at US$3.6B, with plans to continue acquiring and holding BTC exclusively. Twenty One Capital, developed through a reverse merger with Cantor Equity Partners—a special acquisition company that raised US$100M in 2023—aims to mirror the strategy adopted by Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy and has begun operations holding 42,000 BTC.
2/ PayPal launches a loyalty program with a 3.7% yield on stablecoin balances. This move incentivizes customers to earn yield on their stablecoin holdings, which will be paid in PayPal’s USD stablecoin (PYUSD) starting this summer. With added benefits to holding PYUSD, customers are more likely to transact in and retain balances of the stablecoin, further solidifying PayPal’s stronghold in payments.
3/ Circle announces the Circle Payments Network (CPN) to transform global money movement. CPN marks the next chapter in Circle’s roadmap—from being a stablecoin issuer to powering a globally connected payments network. It aims to alleviate the inefficiencies of the fragmented cross-border payments system, offering financial institutions a modern way to move money globally with speed, transparency, and programmability.
Check out our latest publication🔎:
Pectra and Fusaka Upgrades: What does it mean for Ethereum?

The Pectra and Fusaka upgrades are expected on the Ethereum mainnet on 7 May and late 2025 respectively.

We break down the upgrades and posit what it means for Ethereum in the long term in our latest report.
Key Takeaways:
Ethereum's dominance is under threat. Solana and BNB Smart Chain are closing the gap in terms of DEX volumes and fees generated. Contributing factors include slow and expensive transactions, fragmented developer mindshare and liquidity, and reduced value accrual to the L1 due to the rise of L2s.Pectra and Fusaka upgrades aimed at scaling L2s. The upcoming Pectra and Fusaka upgrades are scheduled to go live on mainnet in May 2025 and late 2025 respectively. Notably, no code changes are aimed at strengthening ETH as “ultrasound money”, nor improving Ethereum as a more censorship-resistant blockchain. Pectra will center around staking, blobs and account abstraction improvements.Staking: EIP-7251 will raise maximum effective balance for staking from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH to address increasing network strain from a large validator size of over 1 million todayBlobs: EIP-7691 will increase target and maximum blob capacity from 3 to 6 and 6 to 9 respectively to enable more data to be posted to the L1 while retaining low costsAccount Abstraction: EIP-7702 will transform Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) into a smart contract wallet that can benefit from features such as bundled transactions, gas sponsorship, social recovery etc.Fusaka will center around scaling Ethereum as a data availability layer and potentially upgrading the Ethereum Virtual Machine.Road to Full Danksharding: PeerDAS, to be introduced in EIP-7594, will be a stepping stone towards full data availability samplingUpgrading the EVM: the Ethereum Object Format will result in a more structured approach to contract creation while reducing runtime overheads,  which should improve developer experience and user safetyCommitment to L2 scaling is a double-edged sword. There are concerns regarding Ethereum’s competitiveness as a data availability layer in this vision, and the sustainability of value accrual to Ethereum the asset.Competition is strong on the data availability front. Ethereum with full danksharding remains behind the likes of Celestia, EigenDA and NearDA in terms of raw data throughput and cost efficiency. However, Ethereum remains the most secure blockchain which might be the key consideration for data availability.Path to sustained ETH value accrual remains a topic of active exploration. Suggestions such as repricing the blob market might push L2s to cheaper alternatives, while expecting L2s to support ETH with some percentage of fees is too subjective. Based roll ups support value accrual the most, but is not a priority on the roadmap at the moment.
Read here: https://www.binance.com/en/research/analysis/pectra-and-fusaka-upgrades-what-does-it-mean-for-ethereum

Happy Friday! Binance Bytes is an initiative by the Research team to provide a quick round-up of the week.
Highlights 🧵:
1/ VanEck proposes Bitcoin-linked Treasury bonds to offset US$14T in U.S. debt. VanEck’s Matthew Sigel has introduced the concept of “BitBonds,” a hybrid debt instrument combining U.S. Treasuries with Bitcoin exposure as a novel strategy to address upcoming refinancing needs. Under the proposal, new bonds would include 10% BTC exposure, capturing all upside until the yield-to-maturity reaches 4.5%. This innovative asset class creates a new mechanism for incorporating digital assets into government debt structures to tackle fiscal challenges.
2/ Michael Saylor’s Strategy buys US$285M in Bitcoin amid market uncertainty, boosting its total holdings to over US$35.9B. This continued accumulation reflects sustained confidence in Bitcoin, even as global trade tensions and macro headwinds weigh on appetite for risk assets.
3/ Raydium rolls out Pump.fun competitor ‘LaunchLab’ to let creators easily spin up new tokens This marks a new phase of competition between the two Solana-based products, which were previously strong partners. LaunchLab enables users to launch tokens with direct integration into Raydium’s liquidity pools, while also allowing third-party platforms to set transaction fees.
Check out our latest publication 🔎:
Pectra and Fusaka Upgrades: What does it mean for Ethereum?

Happy Friday! Binance Bytes is an initiative by the Research team to provide a quick round-up of the week.
Highlights 🧵:
1/ VanEck confirms Russia and China are settling energy transactions using BTC and other digital assets, signaling a move away from U.S. dollar dominance in global trade. VanEck’s Matthew Sigel sees this as early evidence of BTC evolving into a functional trade tool, particularly for those seeking alternatives to the U.S. dollar. With Trump’s tariff policies intensifying global trade divide, more countries are reportedly exploring similar crypto-based strategies.
2/ Donald Trump has signed a resolution repealing an IRS rule that would have required DeFi platforms to report crypto transaction data to the tax agency starting in 2027. Critics warned the rule would have burdened DeFi protocols and stifled innovation, while supporters viewed it as a safeguard against tax evasion. This marks the first time a U.S. president has signed a standalone piece of crypto-focused legislation. Industry leaders and advocacy groups welcomed the move, calling it a key step in preserving space for U.S. crypto innovation.
3/ Ripple’s US$1.25B acquisition of Hidden Road, a prime broker serving 300+ institutional clients with US$3T in annual clearing across FX and digital assets, marks a major step toward institutional adoption of the XRP Ledger, with plans to move some of Hidden Road’s daily clearing volume onto XRPL. This could significantly boost tokenization on XRPL, which currently holds only US$50M in real-world assets. As tokenized RWAs gain momentum globally, Ripple’s move positions it to capture a share of a projected multi-trillion-dollar market.
Check out our latest publication 🔎:
- Tariff Escalation and Crypto Markets: Impact Analysis

Tariffs are shaking markets, fueling uncertainty and risk-off sentiment. But can Bitcoin move past near-term stress and reassert its status as a macro outlier?

We explore recent macro drivers and how crypto fits into a protectionist world.

Read the full report here.
Key Takeaways
The year 2025 has seen a dramatic resurgence of U.S.-led trade protectionism. Since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, the United States has ignited fear of a global trade war by levying sweeping new tariffs — both country-specific and sector-specific. Over the past week alone, a fresh round of “reciprocal” tariffs was unveiled, with other nations announcing countermeasures in response.In this report, we examine how these tariffs – the most aggressive since the 1930s – are reverberating through the macroeconomy and crypto markets. We provide data-driven analysis on tariff levels, macroeconomic trends (inflation, growth, interest rates, Fed outlook), and the resulting impact on crypto asset performance, volatility, and correlations. Finally, we discuss key areas to watch and the outlook for crypto in a stagflationary, protectionist environment.

Time to look at April's market insights!

Discover the current market landscape and key insights on:

🔸BTC Long-Term Holder Trends

🔸DEX and Wallet Market Share

🔸Memecoins
…and more.
Read the full report here.
Highlights:
In March 2025, the crypto market declined by 4.4%, amid volatility following President Trump’s Executive Order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, and ongoing uncertainty around Federal Reserve rate policy. Renewed tariff tensions — opposed by Canada and Mexico — also contributed to a US$1B crypto liquidation in cryptocurrency derivative markets on March 4. Meanwhile, regulatory progress — with the GENIUS Act advancing and the OCC approving bank-held crypto — signaled growing mainstream adoption.The supply of Bitcoin (BTC) held by long-term holders is on the rise, coinciding with significant adoption marked by the establishment of a U.S. strategic Bitcoin reserve and increased institutional purchases. Bitcoin's on-chain ecosystem has also progressed, with Bitcoin DeFi (BTCFi) experiencing a 2,767% surge in total value locked (TVL) over the past year. These developments, along with potential interest rate cuts, may reinforce positive sentiment for Bitcoin in the medium and long term.Strong competition has upended the status quo in the decentralized exchange (DEX) landscape. Uniswap, traditionally the leading DEX, has seen its market share decline significantly, from 45% last year to 29% as of March 2025. Competitors like PancakeSwap and Raydium have been gaining ground, benefiting from robust ecosystem growth and strategic initiatives.March brought major shifts in the wallet landscape, with Binance Wallet’s market share surpassing 50% following OKX’s temporary suspension of its DEX aggregator services. While this incident seems to have prompted a wave of user migration, Binance Wallet's upward trajectory was supported by ecosystem activity on BNB Chain and the rollout of new features and incentives.Pump.fun, the launchpad synonymous with the "memecoin supercycle" on Solana, has seen a significant decline in weekly usage metrics since the launch of $TRUMP, with total volume, token creation, and active wallets dropping by 69.9%, 51.8% and 45.1%, respectively from their peaks in January 2025.

Happy Friday! Binance Bytes is an initiative by the Research team to provide a quick round-up of the week.

Highlights 🧵:
1/ Itaú Unibanco, Latin America's largest bank, is exploring the launch of a stablecoin pegged to the Brazilian Real, pending regulatory clarity from the Central Bank. This move aligns with a broader trend of banks developing in-house stablecoins, driven by increasingly favorable regulatory environments — particularly in the U.S., according to the bank’s Head of Digital Assets.
2/ Block CEO Jack Dorsey confirmed the company is working to enable Bitcoin payments on its Square terminals and Bitkey wallet, stressing that Bitcoin must be usable for everyday transactions to stay relevant. He rejected criticism from Manna Wallet’s founder — who called the process “a simple flip of a switch” — by noting the technical complexity involved.
3/ Mastercard is developing a blockchain-powered Multi-Token Network to bridge traditional finance and digital assets, targeting seamless transactions similar to Venmo or Zelle. The company has partnered with major banks like JPMorgan and Standard Chartered, introduced over 100 crypto-focused card programs, and filed more than 250 blockchain-related patents.
Check out our latest publications from this week 🔎: Navigating Crypto: Industry Map

In our latest report, we provide an overview of the crypto industry by highlighting projects across multiple sectors.
We spotlight themes such as Stablecoins, AI, Real-World Assets, DeSci, and others in this report.
Read the full report here.
Highlights:
The Industry Map provides an overview of the crypto ecosystem. In this report, we break down different verticals into subcategories, and lay out a few projects in each of them.In this iteration of the Industry Map, we covered eight verticals - Infrastructure; DeFi; NFTs; Gaming; Stablecoins; Real-World Assets; AI; DeSci.Infrastructure: We looked at projects in the areas of Scalability and Fairness; Data Usability and Tooling; Security and Privacy; Cloud Networks; Connectivity.DeFi: We looked at projects in the areas of Issuance; Liquidity; Trading; Risk Management.NFTs: We looked at projects in the areas of Marketplace; Financialization; Services.Gaming: We looked at projects in the areas of Games; Game Development; Player Experience; Analytics.Stablecoins: We looked at projects in the areas of Stablecoin Infrastructure; Types of Stablecoins; Applications.Real-World Assets: We looked at projects in the areas of RWA Rails; Physical Tokenization; Digital Tokenization.AI: We looked at projects in the areas of Decentralized AI; Backend Infrastructure; Agentic AI; Decentralized AI Applications.DeSci: We looked at projects in the areas of Infrastructure; Research; Data Services; Memes.
Read the full report here.

Happy Friday! Binance Bytes is an initiative by the Research team to provide a quick round-up of the week.

Highlights 🧵:
1/ Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, has partnered with Circle Internet Financial to explore integrating USDC stablecoin and USYC, a tokenized money market fund, into traditional financial markets. The collaboration will assess potential applications across ICE’s derivatives exchanges, clearinghouses, and market data services, reflecting a growing institutional interest in blockchain-based financial instruments.
2/ World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, has launched a stablecoin named USD1 on BNB Chain and Ethereum with a total supply exceeding $3.5M. The launch comes as the U.S. Senate considers the GENIUS Act, a bill focused on stablecoin regulation, which could reach Trump’s desk by June.
3/ BNB Chain has introduced a US$100M liquidity program to encourage the listing of its native projects on major centralized exchanges, offering incentives primarily in BNB tokens. The program, running for an initial three-month trial, requires projects to have at least a US$5M market cap and US$1M in daily trading volume, with top rewards of US$500K in liquidity for listings on major platforms like Binance and Coinbase.

Airdrops have taken-off as a means of token distribution🚀—but are they hitting the mark?
Our latest report uncovers the hiccups in recent airdrop mechanics and offers some ideas for a smoother, fairer future.
Read the full report here.
Highlights:
Airdrops have grown to become one of the most widely used means of token distribution. As is however, they are certainly not without certain issues. For airdrops to remain a viable industry practice, there is a need to continue to improve upon the process by learning from past mistakes and refining past successes.We categorize the types of airdrops into (1) Retroactive Airdrops and (2) Engagement Airdrops:Retroactive Airdrops allocate token distributions without prior notification to users, based on their historical actions and activities. Their main intent is to retroactively reward users.Engagement Airdrops notify the public of actions that can be taken to qualify for an upcoming token distribution. Their main intent is to bring new users and activity to their products.Projects must consider which type of airdrop best serves them, often depending on their stage of product and community development. Principles like transparency, community communication and involvement, and equitability are relevant to both types of airdrop, but might be applied in different manners. As long as airdrops prove to be a productive activity for both projects and users, the industry should find itself incentivized to continue to invest into technologies that improve upon the airdrop process, such as on-chain monitoring and proof-of-humanity tools. As such tools become more widely used and available, unwanted airdrop farming activity should trend to zero.Tokens are a brand new form of asset, and airdrops are an even newer form of asset distribution. While we can expect inefficiencies in the process as the market collectively determines ideal practices and allocations, we encourage users and project teams alike to remain acutely vigilant in their dealings with airdrops. The actions we take today will shape the future means of token distribution.
Read the full report here.

Happy Friday! Binance Bytes is an initiative by the Research team to provide a quick round-up of the week.

Highlights 🧵:
1/ The Federal Reserve held its benchmark interest rate steady at 4.25%-4.5%, citing uncertainty about the economy and inflation. While the Fed downgraded growth forecasts and raised inflation expectations, it still anticipates a half percentage point of rate cuts this year. Chairman Jerome Powell emphasized the uncertainty caused by President Trump's policies, particularly tariffs, which are contributing to transitory inflationary pressures.
2/ The Swiss National Bank has reaffirmed its stance against holding Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies in its foreign exchange reserves, citing concerns over volatility, instability, and regulatory challenges. Despite this, Switzerland remains a hub for blockchain innovation, with developments such as the approval of a blockchain-based trading system by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority.
3/ Pakistan is preparing to legalize cryptocurrency trading with a new regulatory framework to attract investment and provide clarity on digital asset activities. The country aims to become a Web3 hub, leveraging its young, tech-inclined workforce, with 15 to 20 million crypto users. Pakistan is also exploring the integration of crypto and AI into government operations, inspired by global trends like Donald Trump's national crypto strategy.
Check out our latest publication from this week 🔎: Where Are Our Airdrops Going?