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 year 2025, which is about to pass, has not seen dramatic fluctuations in the crypto industry, but it can be considered as having endured calmness. 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 the autumn, it outlines the ups and downs of the crypto market.

But setting aside the fluctuations on these K lines, the cryptocurrency industry has finally迎來了 it another spring.

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

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

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

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

In August, Hong Kong's “Stablecoin Regulation” officially came into effect.

These events are not isolated; instead, they form a clear logical chain around “compliance”: the reconstruction of US legislation addresses the core concerns for institutional entry, while the effectiveness of Hong Kong's regulations opens up the compliance channel in Asia.

Looking back at the development history of cryptocurrencies over the past decade, the relationship between it and regulation has continually evolved through a game of chess. The intensive rollout of compliance policies worldwide in 2025 marks the industry's official farewell to barbaric growth and the transition into a new development phase.

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? Are the development dividends still there? This is what we should think about.

Ten Years of Regulatory Changes: How to Transition from Prohibition to Regulation?

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

When Bitcoin was born in 2009, its decentralized nature allowed it to exist outside of traditional financial regulatory systems. Most regions around the world remained silent about this emerging phenomenon, while a few areas regarded it as a “speculative tool” or “vehicle for crime.”

Before 2015, 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 on preventing risks related to Bitcoin, clearly stating its non-monetary nature; in 2014, Russia classified cryptocurrency transactions as illegal; the U.S. SEC only regards it as an “investment tool to be cautious about.”

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 crypto market capitalization surpassed 2 trillion dollars, and regulation entered a cautious exploration phase.

Japan became the first country to attempt to regulate cryptocurrency trading by amending the “Funds Settlement Act” in 2017 to issue licenses for cryptocurrency exchanges; Switzerland, on the other hand, constructed an inclusive regulatory framework through its “Crypto Valley” strategy, allowing banks to engage in 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 launching a crackdown on the chaos surrounding ICOs, but there are still conflicts between federal and state regulatory standards.

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 an appropriate regulatory system is the key.

Since 2023, regulation has entered a standardization phase. After experiencing risk events such as the FTX collapse, the global cryptocurrency market has an unprecedented urgent demand for compliance.

The EU takes the lead, with the MiCA regulation fully coming into effect by the end of 2024, becoming the world's first unified cryptocurrency regulatory framework; the US SEC adjusts its regulatory strategy, shifting from “broad securitization identification” to classified regulation; countries such as Singapore and the UAE are establishing dedicated regulatory bodies 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?

In 2025, the global cryptocurrency compliance will achieve a qualitative leap, with a clear legal framework established in Western markets represented by the United States and the European Union. Hong Kong will use the stablecoin regulations as a breakthrough to accelerate the compliance process in Asia, forming a regulatory network that covers major economies.

The United States completed a comprehensive restructuring of its cryptocurrency regulatory system 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,” rescinding the restrictive policies of the Biden era and establishing 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 was signed into law by the President, establishing a regulatory framework for stablecoins. The federal government is responsible for overseeing systemically important stablecoin issuers with a market value of over $10 billion and requires that reserve assets be 100% pegged to the US dollar.

At the same time, the House of Representatives passed the “Digital Asset Market Clarity Act,” clarifying the classification standards for crypto assets: excluding decentralized tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum from the securities category, and implementing differentiated regulation 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 Justice Department into the national reserve and implementing a permanent ban on sales. This move strengthens the scarcity of Bitcoin through institutional lock-up, pioneering the allocation of crypto assets by sovereign nations.

The regulatory enforcement direction has also been adjusted accordingly. In April, the Ministry of Justice disbanded the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Task Force, clearly stating that it will only crack down on serious illegal activities and will no longer initiate criminal prosecutions against compliant trading platforms, thereby creating a more favorable development environment for the industry.

The EU 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 license for cryptocurrency service providers 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 EU exchanges for failing to meet audit standards, while the compliant stablecoin issued by Circle, thanks to its reserve disclosures, has captured a larger 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 beginning 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 stablecoins pegged to fiat currencies to 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 cryptocurrency financial center. As of the end of September, 36 institutions have submitted license applications.

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

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

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

In the approaching conclusion of 2025, compliance is no longer the “tightening spell” of industry development, but rather a “pass” to attract trillion-level capital into the market, becoming the core trend driving the industry's maturity.

Industry Self-Regulation: Institutions Promote Compliance Acceleration Implementation

Of course, the implementation of the regulatory framework also relies on the proactive practices of industry organizations, as uncooperative regulation is just a piece of waste paper.

In 2025, top platforms represented by Coinbase and OKX, as well as investment institutions like a16z and Fidelity, will become a bridge connecting regulation and the market through compliance layout and policy promotion, accelerating the industry's compliance process.

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

In 2025, Coinbase will move its new headquarters to Luxembourg to adapt to the MiCA legislation, achieving full coverage of the European market of 27 countries through the MiCA license.

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

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

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

In addition, OKX has also increased its layout in the U.S. market this year, having obtained operating licenses in approximately 47 states and some regions. They have significantly brought in senior professionals with backgrounds in U.S. regulation and traditional finance, such as former New York State Department of Financial Services head Linda Lacewell, who was appointed as Chief Legal Officer and reorganized OKX's legal and compliance department after taking office.

In contrast, Binance, which had previously been troubled by regulatory compliance issues, has repaired its compliance image through the completion of licensing. After experiencing prior regulatory controversies, Binance accelerated its license applications in 2025 and has now obtained compliance licenses in 30 countries worldwide.

Recently, Binance officially obtained the global license from Abu Dhabi ADGM/FSRA, becoming the first exchange to secure comprehensive approval 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 a regulatory system.” Binance founder CZ also emphasized that the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies will be a slow process, and a clear regulatory framework is the primary prerequisite.

In addition, some investment institutions promote improvements in compliance frameworks through policy lobbying and ecosystem building.

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

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

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

Is compliance making 10 trillion no longer a fantasy?

Disordered development has been the biggest bottleneck limiting the growth of the cryptocurrency industry – the collapse of FTX led to a 70% shrinkage of the market 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 initiated the demand for enterprise-level asset allocation. In the past, due to regulatory uncertainty, most enterprises adopted 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 CoinGecko statistics, in the first three quarters of 2025, the global enterprise-level cryptocurrency asset allocation scale exceeded 120 billion USD, an increase of 450% compared to the entire year of 2024. The entry of enterprises not only brings 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 GENIUS Act came into effect, the SEC relaxed the approval standards for cryptocurrency ETFs, and dozens of cryptocurrency ETFs were approved for listing in 2025.

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

At the same time, the popularity of ETFs allows ordinary investors to participate in the cryptocurrency market through traditional brokers without having to directly engage with 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 crypto assets 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 costs to be reduced by 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 market target.

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

However, the improvement of regulations is not the endpoint 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 and the real economy, the crypto market is moving from the margins to the center. Compliance will continue to serve as a core driving force, propelling the industry to achieve a breakthrough from 3 trillion to 10 trillion in scale, and reconstructing the global financial value system.

Despite the current panic in the crypto market at 1011, as we stand at the beginning of 2026, we in the industry, while holding onto hope, must also focus on doing every task at hand well.

Because “life is always, and only is, this moment we are experiencing now,” just like 17 years ago when Satoshi Nakamoto simply wrote a white paper, yet gave birth to an entirely new industry.

(The above content is excerpted and reprinted with the authorization of partner PANews, original link | Source: Blockchain Knight __)

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Disclaimer: This article is intended to provide market information. 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.
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Tags: GENIUS Act, MICASEC, Reserve Cryptocurrency, Compliance, Trump, Japan, European Union, Bitcoin, Legislation, Regulation, Ban, Stablecoin, Legislation, US Securities, Hong Kong