Record Prices, Deep Fear, a $1.5 Billion Hack
Mohammedia – The crypto market closed 2025 battered but intact, marking a year defined by record prices, sharp reversals, regulatory breakthroughs, and the largest exchange hack ever recorded.
While digital assets again proved their resilience, the past 12 months also underlined how quickly optimism can turn to fear.
Bitcoin dominated the year’s narrative. It began January near $92,000 and surged to a series of all-time highs, first breaking $109,000 ahead of the US presidential inauguration before climbing above $126,000 by early October.
Institutional demand and steady inflows into spot exchange-traded funds provided a structural floor under prices, even as volatility intensified.
Total crypto market capitalisation briefly exceeded $4 trillion for the first time during the summer rally.
That momentum did not hold. Shifts in US monetary policy, escalating trade tensions, and repeated liquidation cascades drove sharp corrections.
In October, a single-day sell-off erased more than $19 billion in leveraged positions, the largest liquidation event on record.
By November, bitcoin had fallen below $100,000, and sentiment indicators slid back into extreme fear.
The year ended with bitcoin trading near $87,000, well off its highs but far above levels seen before 2024.
Read also: Coinbase Identifies 3 Core Markets Set to Shape Crypto Trading in 2026
Regulation emerged as one of 2025’s clearest turning points. The United States established a national bitcoin reserve using seized assets and passed landmark legislation governing stablecoins, giving banks and financial institutions a legal framework to issue and use dollar-pegged tokens.
Similar reserve discussions appeared in Europe and Central Asia, while stablecoin market capitalization climbed above $300 billion globally, cementing their role in payments and settlement.
The year’s darkest moment came in February, when a major exchange lost nearly $1.5 billion in a sophisticated breach later attributed to North Korean hackers.
The incident became the largest hack in crypto history and reignited debates over security, decentralization, and protocol responsibility.
Broader contagion was limited despite the scale of the theft, and customer funds across the industry remained largely protected.
Ethereum advanced on the technology front, deploying two major network upgrades aimed at scalability and usability, though its token price lagged the broader market.
Meanwhile, crypto firms increasingly entered public equity markets, with multiple listings signalling closer integration between digital assets and traditional finance.
By the end of 2025, crypto looked neither euphoric nor broken. It finished the year as a more regulated, more institutional, and more battle-tested market, still volatile, still risky, but firmly embedded in the global financial system.
