Crypto in 2025: Mainstream Adoption and Market Growth (Part 1)

In 2025, the cryptocurrency market reached new levels of scale in both valuation and user adoption.

The industry moved into a new growth phase. Market capitalization reached record highs, user adoption increased materially, and real-world usage expanded beyond speculative trading into payments, transfers, and settlement activity.

This article focuses on mainstream adoption and market growth, which formed the foundation for the broader institutional, payments, and regulatory developments that followed in 2025.

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Mainstream Adoption and Market Growth in 2025

The crypto market reached new highs in 2025, both in value and in user adoption.

Total cryptocurrency market capitalization crossed $4 trillion during the year, reflecting broad market recovery and fresh capital inflows after the downturn of previous years.

User adoption also reached record levels. According to Mastercard estimates, around 28% of Americans owned crypto in 2025, while global ownership surpassed 700 million users. Tens of millions of people were actively transacting on-chain rather than simply holding assets.

Bitcoin, which still accounts for over half of crypto’s total market value, surged to a new all-time high above $126,000 in October. This more than doubled Bitcoin’s previous peak from 2021.

Major altcoins such as Ethereum and Solana rebounded strongly as well, recovering much of their post-2022 losses. Although volatility persisted – Bitcoin retraced from its peak later in the year – the overall market trajectory remained positive.

By late 2025, the industry was estimated to have 40–70 million active on-chain users and more than 700 million total crypto holders worldwide. While the milestone of one billion users had not yet been reached, these figures indicated that crypto had become a material part of the global financial ecosystem.

Growth in Everyday Crypto Usage

Multiple indicators pointed to increased crypto usage beyond speculative activity in 2025.

According to TRM’s report, retail-driven crypto transaction volumes grew more than 125% year over year, driven by real-world payments, transfers, and settlements.

The United States solidified its position as a leading crypto market. U.S. crypto activity was approximately 50% higher in early 2025 than in early 2024, reflecting stronger institutional participation, ETF inflows, and renewed retail interest.

At the same time, emerging markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America recorded rising adoption for practical use cases. Crypto was increasingly used for payments, remittances, and inflation hedging, particularly in regions with currency instability or limited access to traditional banking services.

By the end of 2025, crypto usage had become more global and diversified than in previous years. Developed economies led in investment and trading activity, while developing economies increasingly used crypto for everyday financial needs.

Together, these trends marked a shift in how crypto was used: it was no longer limited to speculative trading and long-term holding, but was being applied more broadly as a financial tool for payments, transfers, and cross-border transactions.

In Part 2, we examine how Wall Street, Big Tech, and major financial institutions expanded their crypto involvement and how institutional adoption accelerated during 2025.