After experiencing the "2025 Compliance Breakthrough Year", is a 10 trillion dollar crypto market no longer a fantasy?

Time always comes unexpectedly, and the K-line always fluctuates unexpectedly. This is the footnote of 2025. Today we stand at the tail end of time, looking back at the past and looking forward to the future.

The soon-to-pass 2025 has not seen any significant fluctuations in the crypto industry, but it has also endured a period of calm. From the frenzy sparked by Trump Coin at the beginning of the year, to the return of Ethereum in the summer, and finally to the bloodbath brought by 1011 in deep autumn, it outlines the ups and downs of the crypto market.

But putting aside the fluctuations on these K-lines, the cryptocurrency industry has finally迎來了它的另一個春天.

In January, the White House issued an executive order, completely abandoning the previous “restrictive regulatory” approach.

In March, Trump launched a Bitcoin reserve plan, incorporating 200,000 seized Bitcoins into the strategic reserve.

In April, the U.S. Department of Justice disbanded the special cryptocurrency enforcement team, releasing development space for compliant platforms.

In July, the US stablecoin bill (GENIUS) officially took effect.

In August, the Hong Kong “Stablecoin Regulation” was officially implemented.

These events are not isolated; instead, they form a clear logical chain centered around “compliance”: the U.S. legislation reconstructs the core concerns of institutional entry, while the implementation of regulations in Hong Kong opens up the compliance channel in Asia.

Looking back at the development history of cryptocurrency over the past decade, its relationship with regulation has always evolved in a state of contention. The compliance policies that will be intensively introduced globally in 2025 mark the industry's formal farewell to barbaric growth and the beginning of a new development period.

Therefore, if I had to summarize the development of the cryptocurrency industry in 2025 with one word, it should be - compliance.

Where will the industry go after compliance? Is the development dividend still there? This is what deserves our contemplation.

Ten Years of Regulatory Change: How Did We Transition from Prohibition to Regulation?

Over the past decade, global cryptocurrency regulation has roughly gone through three stages: “exclusion and prohibition, cautious exploration, and regulatory development,” with the shift in regulatory attitudes forming a striking correspondence with the expansion of the industry's scale.

In 2009, when Bitcoin was first created, its decentralized nature allowed it to exist outside of traditional financial regulatory systems, and most regions around the world remained silent about this emerging phenomenon, while a few regions regarded it as a “speculative tool” or a “vehicle for crime.”

Before 2015, the size of the cryptocurrency market was less than 10 billion dollars, and global regulation mainly focused on prohibition and warnings.

In 2013, the People's Bank of China issued a notice regarding the prevention of risks associated with Bitcoin, clarifying its non-monetary nature; in 2014, Russia classified cryptocurrency transactions as illegal; the U.S. SEC only regards it as an “investment tool that requires caution.”

At this time, the industry is completely in a regulatory vacuum, with transactions mostly completed through third-party platforms, and hacker attacks and fraud incidents occurring frequently.

From 2017 to 2022, with the rise of the Ethereum ecosystem and the explosion of the DeFi wave, the cryptocurrency market capitalization exceeded 2 trillion dollars, and regulation entered a cautious exploration period.

Japan became the first country to attempt to regulate cryptocurrency transactions, amending the Fund Settlement Act in 2017 to issue licenses to cryptocurrency exchanges; Switzerland, on the other hand, established an inclusive regulatory framework through its “Crypto Valley” strategy, allowing banks to conduct cryptocurrency custody services.

The SEC in the United States has begun to clarify its regulatory stance at this stage, defining some tokens as “securities” and cracking down on the chaos of ICOs, but there are still conflicts in regulatory standards at the federal and state levels.

During this period, although some regions in Asia have issued bans, a global regulatory consensus has begun to take shape. Completely prohibiting cannot curb technological innovation; establishing a fitting regulatory system is the key.

Since 2023, regulation has entered a normative period. After experiencing risk events such as the FTX collapse, the demand for compliance in the global crypto market has become unprecedentedly urgent.

The EU takes the lead, with the MiCA legislation fully effective by the end of 2024, becoming the world's first unified crypto regulatory framework; the US SEC adjusts its regulatory strategy, shifting from “broad securitization determination” to classified regulation; countries like Singapore and the UAE are establishing dedicated regulatory agencies to create compliance sandboxes.

This systematic regulation lays the foundation for the explosion of compliance trends in 2025.

Why is 2025 said to be the year of regulatory breakthroughs?

By the year 2025, global cryptocurrency compliance will have undergone a qualitative leap, with the Western markets represented by the United States and the European Union establishing clear legal frameworks. Hong Kong will leverage its stablecoin regulations as a breakthrough, accelerating the compliance process in Asia and forming a regulatory network covering major economies.

The United States completed the comprehensive restructuring of its cryptocurrency regulatory framework in 2025, becoming the core of global policy change.

On January 23, the Trump administration issued an executive order titled “Strengthening America's Leadership in Digital Financial Technology,” which rescinded the restrictive policies of the Biden era and established a regulatory tone of “promoting innovation.”

This executive order directly promoted the implementation of a series of subsequent bills: On July 18, the GENIUS Act came into effect after being signed by the President, establishing a regulatory framework for stablecoins, with the federal government responsible for overseeing systemically important stablecoin issuers with a market capitalization of over $10 billion, and requiring reserve assets to be 100% pegged to the US dollar.

At the same time, the House of Representatives passed the Digital Asset Market Clear Act, which clarified the classification standards for crypto assets: decentralized tokens such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are excluded from the category of securities, while differentiated regulation is implemented for centralized stablecoins and security tokens.

Additionally, the regulatory breakthroughs in the United States are also reflected in strategic-level innovations.

On March 6, Trump signed an executive order to establish a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve,” incorporating 200,000 Bitcoins seized by the Department of Justice into the national reserve and implementing a permanent ban on sales, thereby strengthening the scarcity of Bitcoin through institutional locking. This initiative paves the way for sovereign nations to allocate cryptocurrency assets.

The regulatory enforcement direction has also been adjusted simultaneously. In April, the Ministry of Justice disbanded the national cryptocurrency enforcement team, clearly stating that it would only crack down on serious illegal activities and would no longer initiate criminal prosecutions against compliant trading platforms, creating a more relaxed development environment for the industry.

The European Union has established the world's strictest compliance system through the deep implementation of the MiCA legislation. As of November 2025, 57 institutions have obtained MiCA licenses, achieving full-chain regulation from issuance to custody.

The key point of the bill is that as long as a cryptocurrency service provider license is obtained in one EU member state, it can operate in compliance across all 27 member states.

This classification regulatory model has shown results: Tether (USDT) was completely delisted from European exchanges for failing to meet audit standards, while the compliant stablecoin issued by Circle, thanks to its reserve disclosures, has captured a significant market share of stablecoins in the EU.

More groundbreaking is that in November, the decentralized lending protocol Aave passed the review of the Central Bank of Ireland, becoming the first DeFi project to obtain MiCA approval, marking the start of regulation covering the decentralized ecosystem.

Similarly, the compliance process in the Eastern market achieved a key breakthrough in 2025, with the enactment of the Hong Kong stablecoin regulations becoming an important milestone.

On August 1, the “Stablecoin Regulation” officially came into effect, clarifying that stablecoin issuers must obtain a license from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), and requiring that stablecoins pegged to fiat currencies be backed by low-risk reserve assets at a 1:1 ratio.

This regulation not only governs the issuance of stablecoins but also lays the foundation for Hong Kong to build an Asian crypto financial center. As of the end of September, 36 institutions have submitted license applications.

From a global perspective, the compliance trends of 2025 have formed two new characteristics:

First, the regulatory framework is moving from “fragmentation” to “unification,” with the federal legislation in the United States and the EU's MiCA establishing cross-regional standards.

Secondly, the regulatory scope extends from “centralized institutions” to “decentralized ecosystems”, with DeFi and NFTs beginning to be included in the regulations.

In the soon-to-end year of 2025, compliance is no longer the “tightening spell” of industry development, but rather a “pass” to attract trillion-level capital to enter the market, becoming the core trend driving the industry towards maturity.

Industry Self-Regulation: Institutions Promote Compliance Acceleration

Of course, the implementation of the regulatory framework also relies on the proactive practices of industry institutions; after all, regulation without cooperation is just a piece of waste paper.

In 2025, top platforms represented by Coinbase and OKX, along with investment institutions such as a16z and Fidelity, will become a bridge connecting regulation and the market through compliant layouts and policy promotion, accelerating the process of industry compliance.

Coinbase, as the earliest compliant institution in the United States, obtained one of the first Bitcoin trading licenses (BitLicense) issued by New York State as early as 2014, and subsequently acquired 46 state/territory money transmission licenses, allowing it to operate legally in all 50 states.

In 2025, Coinbase will relocate its headquarters to Luxembourg to comply with the MiCA legislation, achieving full coverage of the European market across 27 countries through the MiCA license.

This year, Coinbase also acquired Liquifi and Echo for hundreds of millions of dollars to lay out a compliance platform for asset issuance and public sales, in order to meet institutional clients' demands for compliant and efficient digital asset management tools for future token issuance.

Similarly, another established exchange, OKX, has built an industry benchmark with a “global license layout + technical compliance”. As one of the first exchanges to initiate regulatory transformation, it became the first trading platform in the world to obtain a full operating license from the UAE back in 2024, and also obtained a major payment institution license in Singapore in the same year.

After the MiCA regulation officially took effect in Europe, OKX became one of the first global exchanges to obtain a MiCA license and operate in Europe. At the same time, OKX strictly implements KYC/AML and offers a variety of compliant products to meet the regulatory requirements of different countries, establishing a global compliance operation system, with its global compliance team and risk control scale exceeding 600 people.

In addition, OKX has also increased its presence in the U.S. market this year, having currently obtained operational licenses in approximately 47 states and some regions, and significantly brought in senior personnel with U.S. regulatory and traditional financial backgrounds, such as former New York State Department of Financial Services Director Linda Lacewell serving as Chief Legal Officer, who reorganized OKX's legal and compliance department after taking office.

Binance, which had previously suffered from compliance issues, has repaired its compliance image through the completion of licensing. After experiencing previous regulatory controversies, Binance accelerated its licensing applications in 2025 and has now obtained compliant licenses in 30 countries worldwide.

Recently, Binance officially obtained a global license from Abu Dhabi ADGM/FSRA, becoming the first exchange to secure comprehensive authorization under this regulatory framework, accelerating its compliance layout.

As OKX founder and CEO Star said, “We see that more and more crypto companies are starting to learn how to develop healthily under the regulatory system,” Binance founder CZ also emphasized that the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency will be a slow process, and a clear regulatory framework is the primary prerequisite.

Additionally, some investment institutions promote the improvement of regulatory frameworks through policy lobbying and ecosystem building.

a16z invested tens of millions of dollars in 2025 to promote the compliance process of cryptocurrencies and participated in the revision discussions of the GENIUS Act and the “Digital Asset Market Clear Act,” advocating for the inclusion of a “protect innovation” clause to exempt certain compliance obligations from decentralized protocols.

Financial giants like Fidelity and BlackRock are aligning with compliance developments by issuing Bitcoin spot ETFs and managing cryptocurrency asset trusts, while participating in discussions with government and regulatory bodies (such as the SEC and CFTC) to promote clear and feasible regulatory frameworks.

It is precisely because of the efforts and cooperation of these institutional players in the industry that Bitcoin has evolved from the regulatory vacuum at its inception in 2009, to the global warning after the ICO chaos in 2017, and finally to the formation of a global collaborative compliance network by 2025, allowing the crypto industry to finally shed its “gray area” label.

Can compliance make 10 trillion no longer a fantasy?

Unregulated development has been the biggest bottleneck limiting the growth of the cryptocurrency industry - the FTX collapse caused a 70% market shrinkage in 2022, and regulatory ambiguity has deterred traditional institutions.

The improvement of the regulatory framework in 2025 is opening up new growth opportunities for the market.

Compliance has triggered the demand for enterprise-level asset allocation. In the past, due to regulatory uncertainty, most companies took a wait-and-see attitude towards crypto assets. The clarity of the global compliance framework in 2025 will accelerate the entry of corporate funds.

According to statistics from CoinGecko, in the first three quarters of 2025, the global enterprise-level cryptocurrency asset allocation scale surpassed $120 billion, an increase of 450% compared to the entire year of 2024. The entry of enterprises not only brings in incremental funds but also enhances the liquidity and stability of cryptocurrency assets.

The explosive growth of cryptocurrency ETFs has become an important channel for capital entry. After the enactment of the GENIUS Act, the SEC relaxed the approval standards for cryptocurrency ETFs, with dozens of cryptocurrency ETFs approved for listing in 2025.

As of November, the total management scale of U.S. crypto ETFs has surpassed $140 billion, with the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF reaching $70 billion, becoming the most popular and fastest-growing product.

At the same time, the popularity of ETFs allows ordinary investors to participate in the crypto market through traditional brokers without having to directly access cryptocurrency trading platforms, significantly lowering the participation threshold.

Compliance brings not only capital growth but also the reconstruction of ecological value. Under the compliance framework, the application scenarios of cryptocurrency extend from speculative trading to the real economy, as Walmart and Amazon are exploring the use of stablecoins for cross-border supply chain settlements, with expected settlement cost reductions of 60%.

The implementation of these scenarios allows crypto assets to truly integrate into traditional finance and the real economy, providing solid support for the 10 trillion dollar market target.

From the unregulated wild growth to the comprehensive implementation of a compliance framework by 2025, the crypto industry has completed its leap to mainstream finance in just over a decade.

However, the improvement of regulation is not the end of industrial development, but a new starting point for the “golden decade.”

With the formation of a global compliance network and the accelerated integration of traditional capital with the real economy, the cryptocurrency market is moving from the periphery to the center. Compliance will continue to serve as a core driving force, propelling the industry to achieve a scale breakthrough from 3 trillion to 10 trillion, and reconstructing the global financial value system.

Despite the current cryptocurrency market still being under the panic of 1011, as we stand at the beginning of 2026, those of us who are still building in the industry can only hold onto hope and do our best in every task at hand.

Because “life is always, and is merely, this moment we are experiencing right now,” just like 17 years ago when Satoshi Nakamoto merely wrote a white paper, yet a whole new industry was born.

(The above content is excerpted and reproduced with authorization from our partner PANews, original link | Source: Blockchain Knight __)

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Disclaimer: This article is for providing market information only. All content and opinions are for reference only and do not constitute investment advice, nor do they represent the views and positions of the blockchain. Investors should make their own decisions and trades, and the author and the blockchain will not bear any responsibility for any direct or indirect losses incurred by investors' trades. _

Tags: GENIUS Act, MICASEC, Reserve Cryptocurrency, Compliance, Trump, Japan, European Union, Bitcoin, Legislation, Regulation, Ban, Stablecoin, Legislation, US Securities, Hong Kong