Andreessen Horowitz’s venture arm, a16z Crypto, has released its annual State of Crypto report. These annual reports are not just data dumps, but they are manifestos. The 2025 report titled “The Year Crypto Went Mainstream” comes at a time when the world of blockchain is looking to throw off its speculative skin and show its capacity for building real global infrastructure.
The report describes a rapidly maturing sector: billions in institutional capital, regulatory clarity in the U.S, a burgeoning stablecoin economy, and the convergence of crypto with AI. But underlying the optimism are the more difficult questions about whether mainstream acceptance is happening for real, or if it’s just a new hype cycle with better branding.
Crypto Has Momentum
The first point the report makes clear is that the footprint of crypto has never been bigger. The total market capitalization has exceeded $4 trillion, nearly double the number from a year before. On-chain activity is also experiencing rapid growth. a16z estimates that the number of people actively using mobile crypto wallets is now somewhere between 40-70 million – up by almost 10 million from last year.
That’s a big jump, but the firm emphasizes a significant difference. Owning crypto and using crypto are not the same thing. Although it’s estimated that over 700 million users worldwide own some kind of digital asset, only a sliver of that number are regular on-chain users who use dApps, DeFi or gaming ecosystems.
Interestingly, it is also where the growth is occurring that has changed. Emerging markets like Argentina, India, Colombia or Nigeria are seeing use cases move the needle. However, it’s not for speculative reasons, rather pragmatic ones such as inflation hedging, remittances and access to dollar-denominated stablecoins. Compare this to developed markets like South Korea or Australia, which still seem to contemplate more speculative behaviours, focused on trading and investing versus utility.
The signal is that crypto is transitioning from an investment denomination to a financial survival tool in most of the developing world- arguably, its most meaningful use case.
Wall Street Enters the Mainstream
The most remarkable narrative to emerge from the report is the institutional embrace of crypto. According to a16z, 2025 signifies a turning point. Major financial institutions like Visa, JPMorgan, BlackRock, Fidelity, PayPal, and Stripe are not just dabbling in crypto anymore; they are launching or embedding crypto products into their current business models.
Exchange-traded products (ETPs), through regulated products, allow investors to buy exposure to crypto. Assets related to ETPs are now at a figure of about $175 billion, an increase of 169% from a year ago. Together with corporate treasuries and financial institutions on chain holdings, these products now account for nearly 10% of the total Bitcoin and Ethereum supply.
To put it simply, Wall Street is no longer dipping its toe in the water. It has gone all in, swimming. For an industry that has long prided itself on having an anti-establishment base, this is both validation and metamorphosis. The decentralized dream is now alongside traditional finance.
Stablecoins Command Attention
If there is one statistic that encapsulates crypto’s mainstream moment, it is stablecoins. These blockchain-based digital dollars- typically pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar- have indisputably become the most-consumed product in crypto.
The report states that stablecoin transactions processed a remarkable $46 trillion (with an “adjusted” estimate of about $9 trillion, once removed for double-counting) in gross volume last year alone. Last month, stablecoin transaction volume peaked at roughly $1.25 trillion.
Total supply of stablecoins is now above $300 billion, with two institutions- Tether (USDT) and Circle’s USDC, having something close to 90% dominance in the market.
a16z states a provocative data point: more than 1% of all U.S. dollars in existence are now tokenized on public blockchains. This means the stablecoin economy is one of the top 20 holders of U.S. Treasuries globally, quite a notable feat for a technology that was invented only 15 years ago.
The report concludes that stablecoins have transitioned from niche crypto instruments to core financial plumbing, moving billions of dollars every day across borders, between banks, and in-between on-chain systems.
America’s New Age of Regulation
For ages, crypto entrepreneurs have complained about the United States- home of Silicon Valley- being among the most unfriendly regulatory environments for blockchain innovation.
From this perspective, a16z in the report states that 2025 was a watershed moment. The report points to three important policy milestones.
The GENIUS Act established important milestones toward clarity by creating clearer definitions for digital commodities and digital securities.
The CLARITY Act established disclosures and consumer-protection frameworks that token issuers would follow.
Executive Order 14178 unified a cross-agency strategy for digital assets in Washington.
Collectively, these moves have changed the United States from being a global scofflaw on crypto to a global crypto policy leader.
The a16z report claims that prioritizing meaningful regulation does not damage innovation- it strengthens it. When all these paths to compliance were clearly defined, tokens can become “a new digital primitive,” similar to the website that helped to unlock e-commerce in the 1990s.
This is a bold statement: Tokens are the new webpages- modular, composable digital economic value containers in the new digital world.
On Chain Everything
The report outlines a broader shift called ‘onchainisation,’ which is about more than just trading and payments.
Now, around 20% of global spot trading volume is on decentralized exchanges (DEXs), which function totally without intermediaries and run solely on code.
Meanwhile, “real-world assets” (RWAs), such as bonds, real estate, or credit products, are also being tokenised at a growing pace. That market has swelled to nearly $30 billion and has increased four times in the past two years.
And then there’s DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks), where people supply computing power, bandwidth, or energy in exchange for tokens. The World Economic Forum estimates that these networks could be a $3.5 trillion industry by 2028.
If this all sounds a bit futuristic, don’t forget that Airbnb and Uber had similar decentralized contribution beginnings. But now, ownership and value flow directly to the user through blockchain incentives.
Infrastructure Catches Up
The initial days of crypto featured unmanageable speed, fees and user friction. The 2025 report believes those days are fading away.
Blockchain throughput has improved 100x over five years- from a few clips under 25 transactions per second to a significant performance increase of more than 3,400. Layer-2 scaling networks (such as Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism) and Solana’s speed and architecture make crypto apps as fast and cheap as their mainstream fintech counterparts.
a16z pointed out the quieter revolution of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), or cryptographic tools that allow for privacy and scalability while not sacrificing transparency. It calls ZKPs “the bridge between trust and usability.”
The Crypto-AI Convergence
The most futuristic section speculates about the intersection of crypto and artificial intelligence.
As AI agents increasingly make autonomous decisions and utilize digital assets, that is where blockchain becomes somewhat requisite. It addresses mainly three things:
- Payments and micropayments- allowing AI entities to pay for computation, data, or services autonomously
- Identity and authenticity- proving if content or actions stem from real humans or synthetic agents (proof of human)
- Decentralized computation and data markets- reducing reliance on a few AI infrastructure giants.
The report imagines a near future in which crypto networks serve as the financial layer for the AI economy- a network of machine-to-machine transactions and digital accountability.
It’s a tantalising vision: the internet of value meeting the internet of intelligence.
a16z’s Core Message
At its heart, the State of Crypto 2025 is a thesis of optimism. The authors argue, after 15 years of volatility and scepticism, that the stars have finally aligned:
- Infrastructure is ready.
- Institutions are on board.
- Regulators are getting clear.
- Developers are building.
The conclusion is audacious: “Crypto is leaving adolescence and now is entering adulthood.”
For a sector that has seen more than its share of “booms and busts,” the statement feels both earned and aspirational.
Review: Reading Between the Lines
The a16z report is, as always, beautifully designed, data-driven, visually slick and utterly bullish. It strikes the balance of being an investor memo while also being a love letter to decentralization. But while great, there are also a few limitations.
The Good
- It portrays the journey of crypto’s evolution from a fringe experiment to an infrastructure layer, which is remarkable in itself.
- It grounds its optimism in the hard numbers, rather than just hype.
- It sees regulation as a stepping-stone for legitimacy rather than an obstacle.
The Caveats
- It has a whiff of techno-utopia. It only offers a minimal acknowledgment of risks such as regulatory backlash, cybersecurity threats, and speculative excess.
- While it’s a long jump from “potential” to “inevitability,” with stablecoins and RWAs emerging quickly, there has not yet been sufficient testing through a complete global credit cycle to establish sustainability.
- While the global picture is, few countries are emerging rapidly (the US) while a number of them remain cautious or fragmented (India, EU).
- User growth continues to lag asset growth; it is one thing to own crypto, and another to live the crypto economy.
Crypto’s Coming-of-Age Moment
By reading the report this year, you begin to sense that crypto has achieved what could be called its “internet moment.” Much like the web in 2001- messy, alluring, and just about to cross over into its ubiquity – blockchain technology is clearly not a side-show any longer.
Stablecoins are silently reshaping the way we conduct global payments. DeFi has matured, and the technology has improved enough to keep up with the requirements of applications that people want in their daily lives. And regulation, at least in the U.S., is becoming more pragmatic.
The challenge is not scaling technology; it is scaling trust and usability. The crypto ecosystem still needs to appeal to the billions of the Global North and Global South who do not value blockchains; they simply care about ease of use, security and value.
If 2025 is the year crypto comes mainstream in numbers, 2026 will test whether it comes mainstream in purpose. The hype around crypto may fade, similar to the early internet, but the architecture becomes the infrastructure. If the builders are correct, and the institutions stick around, the next 10 years could finally deliver what the last 10 years promised, and it really will be a truly open, programmable, global financial system.
