16/ Original post:

15/ The future of finance won’t be decided by “on-chain vs off-chain”. It will be decided by working use cases: hybrid, regulated, boring, and economically relevant.

14/ Those still here are improving infrastructure, optimizing processes, and integrating crypto into existing financial systems, not trying to replace them.

13/ The bottom line: 2025 wasn’t a year of winners. It was a year of sorting. Fast money moved on. Builders stayed.

12/ Mass adoption still struggles with complexity, governance, and liability. These are not technical issues alone, they’re organizational and legal ones.

11/ ❌ Structural maturity Despite progress, the gap between crypto narratives and everyday usability remains wide. Many applications work well, but mostly for crypto-native users.

10/ For regulated financial institutions, that’s a simple conclusion: As long as security standards lag behind, crypto remains a high-risk environment.

9/ ❌ Security & crime 2025 is on track to be a record year for crypto theft. Billions lost to hacks, including state-sponsored attacks, show that custody, key management, and operational security are still not industrial-grade.

8/ When political proximity looks monetizable, market integrity suffers. That’s not a crypto problem alone but crypto feels it faster and harder.

7/ ❌ Political instrumentalization Crypto once claimed to be neutral, borderless, apolitical. Pro-crypto narratives, especially in the US, fueled short-term optimism, but long-term volatility and trust issues. Markets hate perceived insider advantage.

6/ At the same time, crypto’s weaknesses became impossible to ignore. Let’s start with politics. 👇

5/ ✅ Regulation (MiCAR) didn’t accelerate innovation, but it stabilized the market. And that stability is exactly what banks and institutions needed to engage seriously.

4/ ✅ Tokenization moved beyond pilots. Especially for real-world assets like funds and bonds. Not revolutionary. But effective, which matters more.

3/ ✅ Stablecoins became infrastructure. Used in cross-border payments, treasury management, and platform economies. Not because of ideology. Because of efficiency.

2/ What survived weren’t loud narratives or hype cycles. What survived were use cases that actually work. That alone says a lot about where crypto stands today.

1/🧵 My latest column for @paymentbanking is a 2025 review. The crypto industry has grown up this year and that’s actually good news. 2025 wasn’t about big crypto dreams. It was a reality check.

15/ The future of finance won’t be decided by “on-chain vs off-chain”. It will be decided by working use cases: hybrid, regulated, boring, and economically relevant.

14/ Those still here are improving infrastructure, optimizing processes, and integrating crypto into existing financial systems, not trying to replace them.

13/ The bottom line: 2025 wasn’t a year of winners. It was a year of sorting. Fast money moved on. Builders stayed.

12/ Mass adoption still struggles with complexity, governance, and liability. These are not technical issues alone, they’re organizational and legal ones.