The review emphasizes long-term value creation through infrastructure and real-world applications, aiming to catalyze broader crypto adoption toward a more open, fair, and transparent global financial system.

These shifts reflect how institutional participation is shaping market structure toward more mature and predictable patterns.

On-chain infrastructure expanded notably, with stablecoins reaching a market cap around $309 billion and annual on-chain transaction volume exceeding $46 trillion; RWA tokenization grew to nearly $18.74 billion in on-chain assets by mid-December 2025.

Stablecoins became a core part of the global financial fabric, with substantial market capitalization and high on-chain activity in 2025.

2025 is viewed as a transition from feasibility to scalability, with a plan for 2026 to continue building infrastructure that supports mainstream adoption in a compliant, transparent manner.

Institutions favored low-risk, medium-yield strategies such as arbitrage, market making, and delta-neutral hedging, acting as structure providers rather than primary price drivers.

HTX Ventures’ 2025 Annual Review frames crypto mainstreaming as driven by regulatory clarity, on-chain expansion, and institutional adoption, setting the stage for real-world use cases.

Common institutional approaches include arbitrage, market making, and delta-neutral hedging, with institutions contributing as structure providers rather than sole price setters.

Overall, institutions prioritize low-risk strategies and structured participation, focusing on stability while supporting market operations rather than chasing short-term moves.

HTX Ventures highlights three structural market effects of rising institutional participation: concentration toward major assets, stronger emphasis on compliance and data transparency, and pricing/yield curves that resemble traditional finance with term structures and funding costs.

The emergence of these market effects includes increased asset concentration, heightened compliance/data transparency, and more traditional finance-like yield curves in crypto markets.

RWA tokenization accelerated, counting prominent tokenizations like tokenized U.S. Treasuries and major products such as BlackRock’s BUIDL, signaling deeper integration with traditional asset management.