Multicoin Capital 2025 Vision: DeFi-Native DAOs Explode in Growth; On-Chain Securities Take Flight

By: blockbeats|2025/01/08 03:30:03
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Original Article Title: Frontier Ideas For 2025
Original Source: Multicoin Capital
Original Translation: Bitpush News

2025 is expected to be a pivotal year for the crypto industry. The path to the first crypto-supportive regulatory framework, along with the maturation of Layer 1 blockchains, DeFi protocols, DePIN networks, and stablecoins, has created fertile ground for the next wave of frontier innovations.

In keeping with our tradition, we will share the ideas and opportunities that excite us the most for the coming year.

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network Robotics (DePIN Robotic) and 0-Employee Companies

—Managing Partner Kyle Samani

DePIN Robotic—Rumors suggest that the incoming Trump administration will push to elevate autonomous driving (AD) regulation from a state level to a national level, creating a unified standard for autonomous driving companies. As GPU clusters continue to scale (e.g., exceeding 100,000 H100 GPUs), AI-based autonomous driving technology using Transformer models will mature further and is poised for widespread real-world applications. Following this, I expect an explosive growth of robot-based DePIN. Many startups have raised funds from non-crypto VCs but have not yet truly commercialized. I am optimistic that many of them will adopt the DePIN model, shifting the risk from the developing company's balance sheet to a global network of robot professionals and "prosumers." Many early adopters of these robotic products will capture crucial data for developing autonomous robots. I know of a company in this space today—Frodobots—that I look forward to seeing more of. Although not a specific robotics company, our portfolio company Hivemapper is exploring many similar ideas.

0-Employee Companies—0-Employee Companies are based on artificial intelligence. With the help of OpenAI's o3 and other more advanced thinking-chain reasoning models, models are reaching a level where they can think, plan, execute, and self-correct. This lays the foundation for AI agents to perform all tasks within a business.

To keep 0-Employee Companies functioning smoothly, they will require human guidance as AI is bound to make mistakes and may exceed its context window. Over time, as AI continuously improves self-correction and expands its context window, I expect the degree of human guidance to decrease. I believe the governance of these 0-Employee Companies may be done through DAOs, and I anticipate that the crypto capital markets will fund ambitious attempts of 0-Employee Companies.

Startups often succeed while large companies fail because they face unique constraints. I believe zero employee constraints will bring some incredible breakthroughs to all business operations.

On-Chain Securities

—Co-founder and Managing Partner Tushar Jain

With the incoming Trump administration and the full Republican sweep in Congress, on-chain securities have finally seen meaningful takeoff.

Transactions on blockchains like Solana can be completed almost instantly, eliminating the common waiting times seen in traditional finance. Faster capital movement increases capital efficiency and should lead to more efficient pricing.

Blockchain ensures that all participants have access to real-time, tamper-proof records of transactions. This level of transparency and security stands in stark contrast to the opaque and sometimes risky centralized databases of traditional financial institutions. Transaction costs on blockchain networks are far lower than traditional banking systems, as evidenced by comparing the cost of sending a stablecoin on Solana ($0.001) versus the cost of a wire transfer ($30). Solana's tokenomics now enable precise granular control of tokenized securities. Issuers can restrict their security holders to whitelist addresses, recall tokens if ordered by a court, and comply with other securities laws or transfer agent requirements or best practices.

Undoubtedly, blockchain's near-instant finality, low-cost transactions, and transparency offer a better settlement than the slow, expensive, and opaque traditional financial rails. The only real obstacle is regulation, and a more innovation-friendly SEC could open the doors to security tokenization.

I don't believe public equities will be the first type of tokenized security widely adopted by the mass market. Less liquid, more opaque markets that benefit more from tokenization are more likely to be adopted first. This could be equity in startups that have no reason to pay Carta or Angelist to manage their cap tables when blockchain can do it for free. It could be fixed income instruments that Figure has been researching for years. It could be LP interests in funds.

Buy Now, Pay Never, Consume Your Portfolio, Portfolio Margin

—Investor Spencer Applebaum

Building on Tushar's idea, we will start to see interesting new products emerge when all assets are programmable and tradable on-chain. Here are a few examples:

Buy Now, Pay Never—Affirm and Klarna have popularized the concept of Buy Now, Pay Later, and I'm sure you've seen these widgets on Amazon and other merchant websites. Today, on-chain users can earn about 8% APY on SOL and about 15% APY on stablecoins. What if users don't need to prepay subscription fees but can instead deposit their tokens with a merchant (from a web2 company like Netflix to a web3 company like Dune Analytics), allowing the merchant to accrue staking/lending rewards over time in exchange for payment? The user's tokens would be locked for a period to ensure payment. We believe there is a strong consumer psychological factor here, where the opportunity cost of yield seems more palatable than upfront payment.

Consume Your Portfolio—When all assets are tokenized and aggregated in one place (a web3 wallet), users should be able to pay for medium to large-ticket items with their portfolio. It makes sense. Imagine Alice has $10,000 in BTC, $10,000 in interest-bearing USDC, $10,000 in TSLA stock, and $10,000 in gold. She wants to buy a $4,000 sofa. Instead of converting her USDC to fiat, waiting for a bank transfer, sending the payment, and then going through the reverse process to rebalance her portfolio, what if she could automatically sell $1,000 of each of her four holdings on-chain and immediately pay the sofa merchant? She remains fully allocated to her existing portfolio without worrying about the rebalancing process.

Portfolio Margining—Within the next 3-5 years, as major crypto brokers and unified super protocols emerge, users should be able to cross-margin all assets. For example, Alice should be able to short BTC perpetual contracts using her AAPL stock and borrow USDC on-chain. Or she should be able to use her tokenized whiskey as collateral to purchase tokenized debt on-chain. We are starting to see this in a holistic manner (e.g., Ostium bringing forex trading on-chain), but everything will become more apparent when spot assets are tokenized.

Validating Off-chain State On-chain

—Venture Partner Shayon Sengupta

Asset ledger systems like Bitcoin and Solana represent a critical step in cryptocurrency evolution. These systems fundamentally deal with money, enabling value storage and transfer on a global scale through permissionless channels. Today, the cryptographic primitives enabling these systems to operate are beginning to cross-pollinate with non-ledger systems, unlocking entirely new markets. In the next 12 months, cryptography will establish itself as a validation layer for data and computation through three novel pathways: network proof, privacy-preserving data processing, and identity/media provenance.

I see it as a fusion of "Monetary Cryptography" and "Validation Cryptography," serving as a coordination layer that will give rise to new economic models and incentive mechanisms.

Emerging Markets: Zero-Knowledge Proofs Unlocking New Possibilities

The first opportunity lies in zkTLS and the market it unlocks. zkTLS refers to constructing zero-knowledge proofs through TLS signatures on a webpage to verify arbitrary data units on the internet in a completely untraceable and tamper-proof manner (e.g., your Equifax credit score or your Strava workout history). Some teams have started deploying zero-knowledge proofs in web sessions to build untraceable and anti-fraudulent applications. Our investments in p2p.me and ZkMe are early examples of this. p2p.me is a cash-in/cash-out platform in India that leverages network proofs to circumvent the region's fragmented market structure. ZkMe is a sovereign identification KYC credential system that allows applications to verify user identity in a privacy-preserving way. The same principle can be extended to dozens of new markets such as ticketing, reservations, and other systems where fraud is the primary bottleneck to liquidity.

Homomorphic Encryption: Unleashing AI Potential

Next, Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) is about to enter its golden age. As AI systems experience diminishing returns from training on public datasets, post-training and fine-tuning in private or secure environments become increasingly critical. This creates a new design space for coordinating datasets that were previously inaccessible as inputs to models, especially as vast amounts of valuable enterprise and consumer data continue to shift from on-premises to cloud systems. Token-based incentive mechanisms will play a key role at this layer, and breakthroughs in this area will elevate top-tier base models.

Identity Verification and Media Attribution: Essential Tools in the AI Era

In the post-AI era where content generation costs approach zero, verifying the authenticity of identities and content will become an indispensable element in consumer applications. Early systems like Worldcoin, Humanity Protocol, and Humancode use cryptographic proofs to authenticate biometric information or government-issued credentials and utilize token incentives as the primary means to mobilize participants at scale. Similarly, standards like C2PA differentiate between authentically captured media and AI-generated media by marking content at the hardware level, but broad adoption of these standards at the application layer may require some form of token-based coordination mechanism to overcome consumer inertia. These tools are crucial for addressing the risks of information saturation on the consumer internet in the AI era.

Transaction Towards Multiplayer, Full-Stack Media Companies

—Investor Eli Qian

Transaction Towards Multiplayer Games—sharing financial gains and losses and engaging in speculation in a collective manner is a behavior rooted in human nature that is highly contagious. People are eager to discuss how much money they've made (or lost!) in various areas such as stocks, sports betting, and even meme coins. However, the currently popular cryptocurrency, stock, and sports betting trading platforms are mostly designed for a single-person experience. Robinhood, FanDuel, BONKBot—none of these prioritize a multiplayer game experience. Nevertheless, the demand for social trading is undeniable. Today, users create their own temporary social experiences through online forums and group chats. A significant portion of the content on Crypto Twitter revolves around these discussions.

One of the biggest advantages of cryptocurrency is permissionless liquidity. It has opened the door for anyone to build multiplayer trading tools for crypto assets. I am very excited to see developers leverage the viral nature of social trading to create multiplayer experiences in 2025. Such products will allow users to share trades, compete on profit and loss tables, and co-own positions with a single click or tap. The design space is vast, including Telegram bots, Twitter Blinks, Discord mini-apps, and more. While 2023 and 2024 witnessed the rise of single-user tools like BONKBot and BullX, 2025 will be the year of the transaction towards multiplayer games.

Full-Stack Media Companies—people have tried many times to use tokens to enhance media and content, but few companies have been able to fully realize their potential. However, we are starting to see the rise of media companies that control end-to-end content creation, including tokens, distribution, and human capital. These "full-stack" media companies have the ability to push the primitives of cryptocurrency further than ever before. For example: athlete tokens, creator tokens, live streams with prediction markets, and more.

One example is Karate Combat. Instead of building the product around existing UFC fighters, they started from scratch to create a new combat league, giving them more control over rules, distribution, and athletes. While the utility of UFC fighter tokens is limited, karate combat allows token holders to vote on training regimens, match attire, or anything else—something that's only possible in the case of karate combat controlling token design and athlete contracts.

Future live streams, sports leagues, podcasts, and reality shows will achieve deep vertical integration in terms of content, distribution, tokens, and human capital. I am very excited about investing in and consuming the next generation of token-enhanced media.

The Rise of the Alpha Hunter

— Investor Vishal Kankani

In 2024, some decisive events took place that foreshadowed interesting new phenomena emerging in 2025.

Firstly, issuing a new token almost costless (around 0 USD) and practically permissionless became a reality. This led to a staggering number of token issuances in 2024, with the majority being meme coins characterized by lifecycles measured in hours, extremely short-lived.

Secondly, the market sentiment in 2024 circled back to a high-throughput, low fully-diluted valuation (FDV) fair launch token issuance model — reminiscent of the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) era of 2017. In this type of market, centralized exchanges (CEXs) struggle to keep up with the pace of new coin listings, a trend we expect to continue into 2025 (as they have their own listing processes), incentivizing a shift towards on-chain trading and providing more liquidity to decentralized exchanges (DEXs). Therefore, DEXs are poised to gain more market share over CEXs in the coming year. With the explosive growth in token numbers and DEX trading activity, active traders will need more robust tools and models to real-time identify emerging tokens, analyze market sentiment and on-chain metrics, spot vulnerabilities, mitigate risks (such as rug pulls), and execute trades efficiently.

This brings us to the third development in 2024: AI agents. Thus far, we have seen AI agents creating content on social media to attract attention to their respective tokens. I anticipate the next iteration of AI agents to be the "Alpha Hunters" — meaning, their sole mission is to seek alpha and autonomously trade in real-time.

The Wave of Crypto Institutionalization

— Partner Matt Shapiro

We are entering the dawn of crypto institutionalization, and this process will unfold at an astounding pace.

Over the past five-plus years, the crypto industry has made significant strides in major technological advancements, product-market fit, and substantial user interface/user experience (UI/UX) improvements. However, the institutional cohort in the cryptocurrency space has essentially remained stagnant. The combination of regulatory and career risks has prevented many financial institutions from effectively entering the space, unable even to offer basic crypto products to their clients. With a pro-crypto administration in the U.S. and the record-breaking success of Bitcoin ETFs, we are about to witness the five-year institutional complacency race to catch up and swiftly find ways to embrace cryptocurrency.

In 2024, there was $350 billion in Bitcoin purchase demand that could not or would not easily be fulfilled through Coinbase. With most asset management firms and large brokerages still not fully onboard with crypto services, by 2025, more funds will be able to flow into the crypto market. We will see a wave of ETF launches to meet and capitalize on this demand. This will not only include ETFs for new crypto assets like Solana (SOL), but also ETFs holding a variety of crypto assets, as well as ETFs combining crypto assets with traditional assets like gold, stocks, or bonds. There will be leveraged ETFs, inverse ETFs, volatility-suppression ETFs, staking ETFs, and more. Essentially, all combinations you can think of to bundle crypto assets for institutional and retail investors will be explored.

We will witness major financial institutions racing to roll out core financial products around cryptocurrency. Every financial institution should explore creating product lines that allow their customers to trade crypto products. Financial institutions should seek to custody crypto assets and provide lending against these assets as they do today for more traditional assets. We may also see a significant increase in stablecoin issuance. Any bank accepting deposits should seek to issue a local stablecoin. I underscored in a conversation with Visa's Cuy Sheffield at the 2024 Multicoin Summit that every company needs a stablecoin strategy. Just as "e-commerce" eventually became integrated into "commerce" back in the day, "stablecoins" will similarly weave their way into various aspects of business, becoming an indispensable part of commercial activities.

These are just the tip of the iceberg. While not the most ambitious technically in the crypto space, the scale, scope, and finances involved in their deployment are massive.

Original Article Link

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Never Underestimate the Significance of the US Stablecoin 'Infrastructure Bill'

Original Title: "Never Underestimate the Significance of the US Stablecoin 'Genius Act'"Original Author: 0xTodd, Partner at Nothing Research


If the US stablecoin bill, the "GENIUS Act," passes smoothly this time, its significance will be tremendous. I even think it's significant enough to enter the top five in Crypto history.



Although abbreviated as the GENIUS Act, which translates directly to the Genius Act, it is actually the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins, which translates to "Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Dollar Stablecoins."


The proposal is lengthy, with several key points summarized for everyone:


· Mandatory 1:1 Full Asset Backing: Assets include cash, demand deposits, and short-term US Treasuries. At the same time, misappropriation and rehypothecation are strictly prohibited.


· High-Frequency Disclosure: Reserve reports must be published at least monthly, introducing external audits.


· Licensing Requirement: Once the circulating market cap of the issuer's stablecoin exceeds $100 billion, it must transition into the federal regulatory system within a specified timeframe, adopting banking-grade regulation.


· Introduction of Custody: The custodian of the stablecoin and its reserve assets must be a regulated qualified financial institution.


· Clear Definition as a Payment Medium: The bill explicitly defines stablecoin as a new type of payment medium, primarily regulated by the banking regulatory system, rather than restricted by the securities or commodities regulatory system.


· Embracing Existing Stablecoins: A maximum 18-month grace period after the bill's enactment, aimed at encouraging existing stablecoin issuers (such as USDT, USDC, etc.) to promptly obtain licenses or become compliant.


After finishing the main content, let's talk about the significance of this matter with an excited heart.


Over the years, when others asked, "After working in the Crypto industry for 16 years, what application have you created?"


In the future, you can confidently tell others—Stablecoins.


First, Clearing Concerns is a Prerequisite


Some people have held opposing views. In the past, people's impression of stablecoins was that they were an opaque black box. Every few months, there would be FUD — whether Tether's assets were frozen or Circle had a significant black hole deficit.


In fact, if you think about it, Tether easily rakes in billions of dollars a year just from the interest on those underlying government bonds. Circle, slightly less, also made a $1.7 billion profit last year.


They basically made money while standing there. From a motivational standpoint, they have no malicious intentions. In fact, they are the most eager for compliance.


Now, this opaque black box will become a transparent white box.


In the past, the only complaint was that Tether's funds might have been frozen by the United States. Now, they will be directly placed into U.S. compliant custodial institutions, with high-frequency disclosures, so you can rest assured.


【No need to worry about a rug pull】 is such a huge advantage—I think especially all Crypto people understand this.


Second, Mastering the Standard is Very Important


Stablecoins were once almost on the verge of being overtaken by CBDCs. In any country, if a central bank digital currency really exists, it is highly likely not built on a blockchain, at most it is built on some internal central bank consortium chain, which to be honest, is meaningless.


When CBDCs were at their peak, that was the most dangerous time for stablecoins.


If CBDCs had become a reality back then, stablecoins today would have been relentlessly suppressed into a dark corner, and blockchain would only be able to play a minimal role.


The remaining half-dead stablecoins would even have to learn the standards of central bank digital currencies, completely relinquishing their standard-setting power.


And now, stablecoins have won (or are about to).


Instead, everyone should learn the 【Blockchain + Token】 standard.


Nowadays, many blockchains actually have no meaningful applications on top, only stablecoin transfers. For example, with Aptos, the only scenario I use Aptos for is transfers between Binance and OKX.


And now, stablecoins will be legislated, what does that mean?


That's right, blockchain will become the only standard.


In the future, every stablecoin user will be the first to learn how to use a wallet.


As an aside, I actually think Ethereum's concerted push for EIP-7702 is quite forward-thinking. While other chains are all about memes, thank you Ethereum for sticking to account abstraction.



EIP-7702 is about Account Abstraction, which can support, for example:


· Social Account Registration Wallet

· Paying GAS with Native Coin

· And more


This paves the way for future new users to heavily use stablecoins, solving the last-mile problem.


Third, Deposit Enters a New Era


Furthermore, once stablecoins receive legislative support, deposits and withdrawals will become even easier.


Let's imagine a scenario: previously, hindered by the gray nature of stablecoins, but after the bill passes, many traditional brokerages can support stablecoins themselves. The money from a US stock investor can be converted into stablecoins in minutes and instantly deposited into Coinbase. Believe it or not.



Let's imagine another scenario: if the brilliant bill smoothly passes through the House of Representatives, next, you will see:


Due to the extremely lucrative nature of this trading, existing stablecoin leaders and newly entering traditional giants will crazily start promoting their stablecoin products.


And an outsider, due to these promotions, will start using stablecoins. And then one day, after finding out that the wallet account has been created, will explore Bitcoin inside. Is mining Bitcoin difficult?


Stablecoins are a huge Trojan horse. The moment you start using stablecoins, you unwittingly step half a foot into the Crypto world.


Fourth, Conclusion


As a large reservoir for digesting US debt, although stablecoins cannot directly absorb debt, they at least provide ammunition for the US debt secondary market. These functions are quite important, and slowly, stablecoins are becoming a part of the US debt market's body. Therefore, once the US legislation is passed and experiences the benefits, there is no turning back.


And, we are also confident that stablecoins are indeed one of the great innovations in our industry. People who have used stablecoins will find it hard to return to the traditional cash-banking system.


Once the bill is passed, users can't go back. In the future, concerns are about to be resolved, standards will be mastered, and the era of large deposits seems to be on the horizon.


Original Article Link

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$COIN Joins S&P 500, but Coinbase Isn't Celebrating

On May 13, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Coinbase would officially replace Discover Financial Services in the S&P 500 on May 19. While other companies like Block and MicroStrategy, closely tied to Bitcoin, were already part of the S&P 500, Coinbase became the first cryptocurrency exchange whose primary business is in the index. This also signifies that cryptocurrency is gradually moving from the fringes to the mainstream in the U.S.



On the day of the announcement, Coinbase's stock price surged by 23%, surpassing the $250 mark. However, just 3 days later, Coinbase was hit by two consecutive events: a hack where employees were bribed to steal customer data and a demand for a $20 million ransom, and an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) into the authenticity of its claim of having over 100 million "verified users" in its securities filings and marketing materials. These two events acted as mini-bombs, and at the time of writing, Coinbase's stock had already dropped by over 7.3%.


Coincidentally, Discover Financial Services, being replaced by Coinbase, can also be considered the "Coinbase" of the previous payment era. Discover is a U.S.-based digital banking and payment services company headquartered in Illinois, founded in 1960. Its payment network, Discover Network, is the fourth largest payment network apart from Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.


In April, after the approval of the acquisition of Discover by the sixth-largest U.S. bank, Capital One, this well-established digital banking company of over 60 years smoothly handed over its S&P 500 "seat" to this emerging cryptocurrency "bank." This unexpected coincidence also portrayed the handover between the new and old eras in Coinbase's entry into the S&P 500, resembling a relay race scene. However, this relay baton also brought Coinbase's accumulated "external troubles and internal strife" to a tipping point.


Side Effects of ETFs


Over the past decade, cryptocurrency exchanges have been the most stable "profit machines." They play a role in providing liquidity to the entire industry and rely on trading fees to sustain their operations. However, with the comprehensive rollout of ETF products in the U.S. market, this profit model is facing unprecedented challenges. As the leader in the "American stack," with over 80% of its business coming from the U.S., Coinbase is most affected by this.



Starting from the approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs, traditional financial capital has significantly onboarded users and funds that originally belonged to exchanges in a more cost-effective, compliant, and transparent manner. The transaction fee revenue of cryptocurrency exchanges has started to decline, and this trend may further intensify in the coming months.


According to Coinbase's 2024 Q4 financial report, the platform's total trading revenue was $417 million, a 45% year-on-year decrease. The contribution of BTC and ETH's trading revenue dropped from 65% in the same period last year to less than 50%.


This decline is not a result of a decrease in market enthusiasm. In fact, since the approval of the Bitcoin ETF in January 2024, the inflow of BTC into the U.S. market has continued to reach new highs, with asset management giants like BlackRock and Fidelity rapidly expanding their management scale. Data shows that BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) alone has surpassed $17 billion in assets under management. As of mid-May 2025, the cumulative net inflow of 11 major institutional Bitcoin spot ETFs on the market has exceeded $41.5 billion, with a total net asset value of $1214.69 billion, accounting for approximately 5.91% of the total Bitcoin market capitalization.


Chart showing the trend of net outflows for Grayscale among the 11 institutions


Institutional investors and some retail investors are shifting towards ETF products, partly due to compliance and tax considerations. On one hand, ETFs have much lower trading costs compared to cryptocurrency exchanges. While Coinbase's spot trading fee rate varies annually in a tiered manner but averages around 1.49%, for example, the management fee for IBIT ETF is only 0.25%, and the majority of ETF institution fees fluctuate around 0.15% to 0.25%.



In other words, the more rational users are, the more likely they are to move from exchanges to ETF products, especially for investors aiming for long-term holdings.


According to multiple sources, several institutions, including VanEck and Grayscale, have submitted applications to the SEC for a Solana (SOL) ETF, with some institutions also planning to submit an XRP ETF proposal. Once approved, this may trigger a new round of fund migration. According to a report submitted by Coinbase to the SEC, as of April, the platform's trading revenue from XRP and Solana accounted for 18% and 10%, nearly one-third of the platform's fee revenue.



However, the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs passed in 2024 also reduced the fees for these two tokens on Coinbase from 30% and 15% to 26% and 10%, respectively. If the SOL and XRP ETFs are approved, it will further undermine the core fee revenue of exchanges like Coinbase.


The expansion of ETF products is gradually weakening the financial intermediary status of cryptocurrency exchanges. From their original roles as matchmakers and clearers to now gradually becoming mere "on-ramps and off-ramps" for funds, exchanges are seeing their marginal value squeezed by ETFs.


Robinhood Takes a Stand, Traditional Brokerages Join the Fray


On May 12, 2025, SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins gave a keynote speech at the Tokenization and Cryptocurrency Working Group roundtable. The theme of his speech revolved around "It is a new day at the SEC," where he indicated that the SEC would not approach enforcement and regulation the same way as before but would instead pave the way for cryptocurrency assets in the U.S. market.



With signs of cryptocurrency compliance such as the SEC's "NEW DAY" declaration, an increasing number of traditional brokerages are attempting to enter the cryptocurrency industry. One of the most representative cases is the well-known U.S. brokerage Robinhood, which began expanding its crypto business in 2018. By the time of its IPO in 2021, Robinhood's crypto business revenue accounted for over 50% of the company, with a significant boost from the Dogecoin "moonshot" promoted by Musk.


In Q1 2025 earnings report, Robinhood showcased strong growth, especially in revenue from cryptocurrency and options trading. Fueled by Trump's Memecoin, cryptocurrency-related revenue reached $250 million, nearly doubling year-over-year. Consequently, Robinhood Gold subscription users reached 3.5 million, a 90% increase from the previous year, with the rapid growth of Robinhood Gold providing the company with a stable source of income.



Meanwhile, RobinHood is actively pursuing acquisitions in the cryptocurrency space. In 2024, it announced a $2 billion acquisition of the long-standing European cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp. Additionally, Canada's largest cryptocurrency CEX, WonderFi, which recently went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange, also announced its integration with RobinHood Crypto. After obtaining virtual asset licenses in the UK, Canada, Singapore, and other markets, RobinHood has taken a proactive approach in the compliant cryptocurrency trading market.



Furthermore, an increasing number of brokerage firms are exploring the same path. Futu Securities, Tiger Brokers, and others are also dipping their toes into cryptocurrency trading, with some having applied for or obtained the VA license from the Hong Kong SFC. Although their user bases are currently small, traditional brokerages have a natural advantage in user trust, regulatory licenses, and low fee structures. This could pose a threat to native cryptocurrency platforms in the future.



User Data Breach: Is Coinbase Still Secure?


In April 2025, security researchers discovered that some Coinbase user data was leaked on the dark web. While the platform initially responded by attributing it to a "technical misinformation," it still raised concerns among users regarding its security and privacy protection. Just two days before Dow Jones Indexes announced Coinbase's addition to the S&P 500 Index, on May 11, 2025, Coinbase received an email from an unknown threat actor claiming to have obtained customer account information and internal documents, demanding a $20 million ransom to keep the data private. Subsequent investigations confirmed the data breach.


Cybercriminals obtained the data by bribing overseas customer service agents and support staff, mainly in "non-U.S. regions such as India." These agents abused their access to Coinbase's internal customer support system and stole customer data. As early as February this year, blockchain detective ZachXBT revealed on X platform that between December 2024 and January 2025, Coinbase users lost over $65 million to social engineering scams, with the actual amount potentially higher.


Among the victims was a well-known figure, 67-year-old Ed Suman, an established artist in the art world for nearly two decades, having been involved in the creation of artworks such as Jeff Koons' "Balloon Dog" sculpture. Earlier this year, he fell victim to an impersonation scam involving fake Coinbase customer support, resulting in a loss of over $2 million in cryptocurrency. ZachXBT critiqued Coinbase for its inadequate handling of such scams, noting that other major exchanges have not faced similar issues and recommending Coinbase to enhance its security measures.


Amidst a series of ongoing social engineering incidents, although there has not been any impact on user assets at the technical level so far, it has raised concerns among many retail and institutional investors. Especially institutions holding massive assets on Coinbase. Just considering the U.S. BTC ETF institutions, as of mid-May 2025, they collectively hold nearly 840,000 BTC, and 75% of these are custodied by Coinbase. If we price BTC at $100,000, this amount reaches a staggering $63 billion, which is equivalent to the nominal GDP of two Iceland in the year 2024.


Visualization: ChatGPT, Source: Farside


In addition, Coinbase Custody also serves over 300 institutional clients, including hedge funds, family offices, pension funds, and endowments. As of the Q1 2025 financial report, Coinbase's total assets under management (including institutional and retail clients) reached $404 billion. The specific amount of institutional custodied assets was not explicitly disclosed in the latest report, but it should still be over 50% based on the Q4 2024 report.


Visualization: ChatGPT


Once this security barrier is breached, not only could the rate of user attrition far exceed expectations, but more importantly, institutional trust in it would undermine the foundation of its business. Therefore, after a hacking event, Coinbase's stock price plummeted significantly.


CEXs are All in Self-Rescue Mode


Facing a decline in spot trading fee revenue, Coinbase is also accelerating its transformation, attempting to find growth opportunities in derivatives and emerging assets. Coinbase acquired a stake in the options platform Deribit at the end of 2024 and announced the official launch of perpetual contract products in 2025. This acquisition fills in Coinbase's gap in options trading and its relatively small global market share.



Deribit has a strong presence in non-U.S. markets, especially in Asia and Europe. The acquisition has enabled Coinbase to gain a dominant position in bitcoin and ethereum options trading on Deribit, accounting for approximately 80% of the global options trading volume, with daily trading volume remaining above $2 billion.


Meanwhile, 80-90% of Deribit's customer base consists of institutional investors, with their professionalism and liquidity in the Bitcoin and Ethereum options market highly favored by institutions. Coinbase's compliance advantage, coupled with its already robust institutional ecosystem, makes it even more suitable. By using institutions as an entry point, it can face the squeeze from giants like Binance and OKX in the derivatives market.



Facing a similar dilemma is Kraken, which is attempting to replicate Binance Futures' model in non-U.S. markets. Since the derivatives market relies more on professional users, fee rates are relatively higher and stickiness is stronger, making it a significant source of revenue for exchanges. In the first half of 2025, Kraken completed the acquisition of TradeStation Crypto and a futures exchange, aiming to build a complete derivatives trading ecosystem to hedge the risk of declining spot transaction fee income.


With the surge of Memecoin in 2024, Binance, OKX, and various CEX platforms began massively listing small-market-cap, highly volatile tokens to activate active trading users. Due to the wealth effect and trading activity of Memecoins, Coinbase was also forced to join the battle, successively listing popular tokens from the Solana ecosystem such as BOOK OF MEME and Dogwifhat. Although these coins are controversial, they are frequently traded, with fee rates several times higher than mainstream coins, serving as a "blood-boosting" method for spot trading.


However, due to its status as a publicly traded company, this practice is a riskier endeavor for Coinbase. Even in the current crypto-friendly environment, the SEC is still investigating whether tokens like SOL, ADA, and SAND constitute securities.


In addition to the forced transformation strategies carried out by the aforementioned CEXs, they are also starting to lay out RWAs and the most talked-about stablecoin payment fields, such as the PYUSD launched through a collaboration between Coinbase and Paypal, Coinbase's support for the Euro stablecoin EURC by Circle that complies with EU MiCA regulatory requirements, or the USD1 launched through a collaboration between Binance and WIFL. In the increasingly crowded trading field, many CEXs have shifted their focus from just the trading market to the application field.


The golden age of transaction fees has quietly ended, and the second half of the crypto exchange platform game has silently begun.


Arthur Hayes: Why I'm Betting on ETH While the Market Is Obsessed with SOL

"I personally have also allocated 20% to gold, expecting the price of gold to potentially rise to $10,000-20,000 by the end of this market cycle."

May 16 Key Market Information Gap, A Must-Read! | Alpha Morning Report

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