Decoding the 2024-25 Crypto Yearbook: New and Old Forces at the Table, 12 MEMEs Linking a Year of Opportunities
12 memes that tell the stories of opportunities and fun moments throughout the year.Author: Deep Tide TechFlow
After reading so many annual reviews and outlooks from various institutions, are you feeling a bit of aesthetic fatigue?
Recently, CoinMarketCap also released the 2024-25 Crypto Market Yearbook, summarizing the significant innovations, market-shaking moments, and unforgettable milestones from the past year, while also looking ahead to 2025.
Interestingly, this yearbook is lively and interactive:
In the review section, CMC presents the major events of the past year in a more design-oriented, vibrant, and dynamic style; in the outlook section, unlike expert predictions from institutions, CMC hands over the decision-making power to the market—it's up to you to vote on the trends that may emerge in 2025.
For instance, which projects do you think will make big news in 2025? Is it the purely meme-based Fartcoin, or the Trump-related World Liberty Financial?
Moreover, the entire yearbook is filled with collectible charts and analyses, which Deep Tide TechFlow has refined and interpreted as follows.
Suits & Ties VS Laser Eyes, Both Are Winners
Throughout 2024, from the perspective of retail investors, you might be contemplating the rise and fall of certain coins; however, amidst the ever-changing landscape of the crypto market, the yearbook summarizes a more macro trend—"Suits & Ties VS Laser Eyes."
This is indeed a very precise cultural comparison.
Suits & Ties represent the traditional financial sector (Wall Street), symbolizing conservatism, professionalism, and established financial institutions; typical representatives include traditional financial institutions like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs.
Laser Eyes is a symbolic cultural icon of the cryptocurrency community, originating from Bitcoin supporters adding red laser eyes to their avatars on social media, representing cryptocurrency believers and supporters of emerging digital assets.
In 2024, both groups are actually winners.
These seemingly opposing groups have achieved a true integration in terms of assets for the first time:
Traditional financial institutions (like BlackRock) are starting to launch Bitcoin/Ethereum ETFs; meme coins have reached a market capitalization of a billion dollars, gaining mainstream recognition.
Perhaps Wall Street and Web3 are no longer adversaries, but partners influencing each other at the same negotiating table.
From past opposition to sharing the pie, the cryptocurrency market has entered a new stage of maturity.
Best Crypto Story of the Year: The Rise of TON
In the wave of AI Agents, have you forgotten about the soaring success of TON last year?
The L1 corresponding to Telegram has seen astronomical growth: users increased from 100,000 to an astonishing 17.4 million, ranking 8th on CoinMarketCap. With 1,400 dApps and seamless integration with Telegram's 950 million users, TON has proven it is not just another Layer 1; it is a movement.
And this movement has transcended the crypto circle.
On August 24, 2024, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris, facing charges related to controlling platform activities. This news could have triggered waves of uncertainty, but instead, it ignited a fire.
The Tg community united, posting supportive messages on social media and launching a meme project, becoming a rallying cry for justice.
CMC's yearbook also elevated the value of this event:
"This is a declaration of the crypto spirit. It reminds people that decentralization is power, and the purest technology is a tool for freedom, not a tool for error. In that moment, the TON community showed the world that it is not just a blockchain; it is a revolution driven by resilience, unity, and unwavering belief."
Although TON may not be as prominent now, it remains one of the many standout events from last year.
Best Asset Class of the Year: Meme Leads, A Flourishing Diversity
Considering popularity, the yearbook identifies the best-performing asset classes and projects as:
- MEME:
MEW: The fifth-largest Memecoin, utilizing unique tokenomics, with 90% of LP tokens burned, promoting a stable price floor and market confidence.
Popcat: The first cat-themed Memecoin to reach a market cap of $1 billion on Solana, achieving a valuation of $120 million and pioneering the "cat coin" trend.
WIF: Became the third-largest meme coin after DOGE and SHIB within four months, with a market cap of $3 billion driven by community engagement and endorsement from Elon Musk.
- Application Sector:
Polymarket: Invested $3.3B in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, leading decentralized prediction markets, dominating the field through automated smart contracts and KYC-free methods.
Pump.fun: A revolutionary change in meme coin creation on Solana, facilitating the development of over 3M tokens, attracting 150,000 users, while generating significant revenue. The platform has a major impact but is also controversial, sometimes fueling the most severe meme culture.
Binance Launchpool: Enhanced user participation through innovative farming mechanisms for new tokens, including successful releases like Notcoin, Scroll, and Catizen.
- Notable New Stars:
Story Protocol: Pioneered blockchain-based IP management, attracting over 100 projects while revolutionizing creator rights through programmable IP licensing infrastructure.
Monad: Next-generation Layer 1 achieving 10,000 TPS with finality in 1 second, raising $225 million while introducing the innovative MonadBFT consensus mechanism.
Berachain: An innovative Layer 1 with liquidity-proof consensus launched the Artio testnet, attracting 230 active development teams through unique DeFi integration.
Considering innovation, from AI-enhanced DeFi to real-world asset platforms, from decentralized infrastructure to core scaling solutions—these projects have pushed the boundaries of on-chain possibilities:
AI Sector:
Bittensor: Built a framework for decentralized AI development, expanding to 64 subnets while achieving full Ethereum compatibility and launching complex AI models.
Prime: Leading the AI gaming frontier with flagship games Parallel TCG and Colony, backed by OpenAI integration and the Wayfinder protocol for autonomous AI agents.
Near: Built the world's largest 1.4T parameter open-source AI model, launched the Nightshade 2.0 upgrade, achieving a 400% increase in transaction speed through innovative sharding.
DeFi Sector:
LIDO: Maintained dominance in liquid staking by staking 9.8 million ETH, launching institutional solutions, and reducing validator requirements from 32 ETH to 2.4 ETH.
Pendle: Innovated yield tokenization in DeFi, increasing TVL from $230 million to $1 billion through liquidity re-staking tokens and launching the Boros margin trading platform.
EigenLayer: Dominated re-staking with an 80% market share, achieving a TVL of $12.9B, re-staking 4.5 million ETH while fundamentally changing Ethereum's security model.
DePIN Sector:
Render: The leading decentralized GPU rendering service has successfully migrated to Solana, expanding to real-time streaming and dynamic NFTs while serving major entertainment and architecture clients.
Arweave: A permanent storage solution that maintains stable growth amidst market fluctuations, pioneering a "one-time payment, permanent storage" data storage model.
Aethir: A decentralized cloud computing platform that transforms GPU capabilities into shared resources for gaming and AI, supported by a $100 million ecosystem fund and major partnerships with Nvidia and Filecoin.
RWA Sector:
Ondo: The first platform to tokenize U.S. Treasury bonds exceeding $500 million within four months, capturing over 25% of the market share through partnerships with BlackRock and JPMorgan.
Clearpool: Redefined institutional liquidity in DeFi, with total loans exceeding $500 million, and launched Ozean, a Layer 2 network based on OP Stack for RWA yields.
Ethena: A synthetic dollar protocol that became the fourth-largest stablecoin, pioneering risk management through a delta-neutral strategy involving spot and short positions.
Infrastructure:
SUI: Built the world's largest 1.4T parameter open-source AI model, launched the Nightshade 2.0 upgrade, achieving a 400% increase in transaction speed through innovative sharding.
Wormhole: Built the world's largest 1.4T parameter open-source AI model, launched the Nightshade 2.0 upgrade, achieving a 400% increase in transaction speed through innovative sharding.
Arkham: Launched an on-chain perpetual trading platform utilizing intelligence data, pioneering entity-based blockchain analysis.
Note: The selection of all the above projects represents only the views of the yearbook. Interested readers can also visit the original website to view introductions for each project, which also includes a helpful short video for explanation.
Some projects from different ecosystems are not elaborated on due to space limitations, and are nominated as follows.
6 Treasure Charts to Take You Through 2024
As we all know, CMC excels in data analysis and visualization.
The yearbook has also selected 6 charts that depict the changes in the crypto market for 2024 from different data dimensions.
- Best and Worst Performing Tracks: Smart Contracts vs. Storage
Smart contract-related projects topped the list with a 6000% return, while the storage track performed the worst with an annual return of -24%.
- The Pattern of Bitcoin's Rise After Halving Continues
In 2024, Bitcoin halved, with a price around $63,000; we have all witnessed the journey from an experiment to $100,000, spanning 16 years of BTC's relentless run.
- Learning from History, the Bear Market Turning Point Seems Yet to Arrive
Bitcoin and the overall market generally follow a 3-4 year cycle. The chart below clearly shows that the black line, representing the new cycle in 2024, does not indicate a significant downward trend in Bitcoin's price.
- MicroStrategy Leads, Overview of Global Institutions/Countries' Bitcoin Holdings
MicroStrategy leads globally with a staggering 440,000 Bitcoin holdings, surpassing any country's BTC holdings; meanwhile, the U.S. and China have not widened the gap in Bitcoin holdings.
- The U.S. Remains the Country with the Most Users on the CMC Website
Surprisingly, the second place is India.
- The Most Popular Track: Meme Gradually Establishing Its Value (Blue Area in the Chart Below)
12 Memes Telling a Year Full of Opportunities and Fun
Last year presented many opportunities. Seizing just 1-2 of them could have made your story quite different.
If you missed too many opportunities, take a moment to reflect on the context and developments of the past year through these meme images.
January: SEC slower than hackers. The SEC's official Twitter was hacked to announce "Bitcoin ETF approved," and a few hours later, the SEC indeed officially announced the ETF approval…
February: Will the market rise if the ETF is approved? In fact, BTC was quite stagnant in February.
March: BTC reached a new high of $73K, while degens were busy claiming airdrops.
April: BTC holders explained the significance of halving to their friends and family, or dragged people to discuss halving.
May: Heard you are bearish on Ethereum? SEC approved the ETH ETF!
June: Iggy launched a token, kicking off the celebrity coin trend; please call her "Mother."
July: The "real vs. fake Satoshi Nakamoto" meme resurfaced, with Craig Wright's "Satoshi identity verification" case.
August: France arrested the Tg founder, and the community reacted, leading to related memes that actually set the trend for political coins.
September: That man, CZ, is back! The market improved as well.
October: The "October must rise" theory was postponed…
November: Comrade Trump returned, and crypto gained a foothold in Washington and the White House.
December: Expectations for interest rate cuts gradually materialized, and the crypto market seemed to see a savior.
Looking Ahead to 2025, What Are Your Choices and Predictions?
In this section, CoinMarketCap conducted an open poll, handing over the decision-making power for the 2025 outlook to users, essentially a market survey to see which tracks and projects people are optimistic about.
At the same time, the topics designed for the outlook section are as follows. Which projects do you think will prevail?
- Which projects will make big news this year?
Nominees: ETH, PEPE, Monad, Fartcoin, World Liberty Financial (Trump-related).
- Which narrative will explode this year?
Nominees: NFT/gaming, anti-quantum computing tokens, crypto IPOs, RWA, and AI agents.
- Which asset will be approved for ETF?
- Who will quietly enter the top 30 by market cap?
Alternates: Virtuals, FET, Pengu, Ethena, Ondo.
- Which old coins will bloom?
