Author: Alex O'Donnell, CoinTelegraph; Compiler: Tao Zhu, Golden Finance

Many industry executives pointed out that with the rise of Bitcoin staking, real world asset (RWA) tokenization and agency Artificial intelligence catalyzes applications and decentralized finance (DeFi) will reach a turning point in 2025.

In 2024, Bitcoin prices topped $100,000 for the first time as investors poured more than $100 billion into spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

“Bitcoin’s all-time highs will spark new institutional and regulatory interest in cryptocurrencies and reinvigorate the entire cryptocurrency industry in 2025,” CEO of Layer 1 Network Agoric Systems Dean Tribble points out.

In December, the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols reached $130 billion, approaching the ecosystem’s all-time high of around $175 billion in 2021, according to DefiLlama. Industry executives expect this upward trend to continue next year.

“DeFi infrastructure and blue-chip protocols like Aave, Maple, Maker and others will have been operating at scale for more than four years by 2025,” noted Jacob Phillips, co-founder and head of strategy at Bitcoin staking protocol Lombard.

“These platforms will become reliable places for institutions and new users to use Bitcoin,” Phillips said.

Source: DefiLlama

Bitcoin’s Emerging Layer 2 (L2) Expands the Network and The DeFi protocol ecosystem is creating unprecedented opportunities for investors to earn from Bitcoin.

“Bitcoin DeFi currently accounts for 0.1% of its total asset value. This is a 300x opportunity to develop DeFi on Bitcoin,” Alexei Zamyatin, co-founder and CEO of Build on Bitcoin, noted, And added:

“We have spoken with dozens of large Bitcoin DeFi users and funds who are keen to earn income on their Bitcoin assets.”

Like Babylon and CoreChain Bitcoin L2 like this pays stakers a fee to secure their network by locking BTC as collateral.

Liquid Staked Tokens (LSTs), which represent claims against pledged BTC, are currently proliferating. According to stakingrewards.com, as of December 19, the total value locked (TVL) of Bitcoin LST was a whopping $2.5 billion.

Matt Hougan, head of research at asset management firm Bitwise, believes that Bitcoin-staking ETFs may also gain traction by 2025.

"There's a lot of demand for Bitcoin income. Whether it will become an ETF structure in the U.S., I'm not sure, but in Europe, certainly," Hougan said.

Source: Stakingrewards.com

Polygon Global Head of Institutional Capital Colin Butler said at 8 Month noted that tokenized real-world assets (RWA) — digital tokens that represent claims on anything from U.S. Treasuries to art — are a $30 trillion market opportunity globally.

They have captured about $14 billion in TVL, according to RWA.xyz. Tokenized U.S. Treasuries with yields are particularly popular, with TVL exceeding $3 billion.

“Tokenizing real-world assets such as real estate and carbon credits will unlock unprecedented liquidity, while advances in payments will further simplify cross-border transfers,” Raj Brahmbhatt, CEO of Web3 settlement platform Zeebu pointed out.

Even the U.S. Treasury Department has praised tokenization’s potential to improve liquidity and reduce “operational and settlement frictions.”

Brahmbhatt said: "In the United States, with the victory of (President-elect Donald) Trump, I am very optimistic that the United States will become the global leader in this field by the end of this year."

Source: RWA.xyz

According to CoinGecko, 2024 In 2016, tokens related to agent-based artificial intelligence (machines that autonomously pursue complex goals) had a combined market capitalization of nearly $10 billion.

Analysts predict that the fusion of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology will transform Web3, creating a future where autonomous artificial intelligence builds decentralized applications and conducts transactions with human users.

J.D. Seraphine, CEO of AI protocol Raiinmaker, noted that agent-based AI “has proven to be core to the future of the industry.”

Seraphine said that in 2025, "artificial intelligence agents are expected to play a more important role in the decentralized community."

Hougansaid that the potential areas for AI agents are almost limitless, adding:

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t know exactly what’s going on, as long as you know what’s going on is really potentially important. Meaning, and you want to be in touch with it.”