After a year of regulatory changes and uneven market performance, crypto investors are reassessing where value has accumulated in 2025.
In a recent podcast, Pantera Capital partner Mason Nystrom, Hash3 co-founder Hootie Rashidifard, and Variant partner Alana Levin identified incumbents, such as Robinhood, alongside stablecoins and prediction markets, as this year’s top performers.
According to Nystrom, incumbents benefited from taking action once the regulatory environment became clearer. He pointed to Robinhood, which he said had taken a cautious stance toward crypto in recent years before making the move. more aggressively in 2025adding that the starters “did a great job of anticipating the direction the puck was going” as clarity emerged.
Stablecoins were another big winneraccording to Rashidifard, who highlighted the rapid growth in transaction volumes and issuer profitability, noting that “Tether is the most profitable company on the planet per employee.” He said:
“In 2022-2023, no one was touting their stablecoin project as the cool thing in their portfolio, and now people are saying, ‘oh wow, this is a really interesting and tricky business,’ and not just because it generates revenue, but because it actually provides value to an end customer.”
Variant levin highlighted prediction markets as one of the fastest growing categories in 2025, according to platforms such as Kalchi And Polymarket overcame earlier doubts about fictitious transactions and election-only activities. She said:
“I think a year ago Kalshi and Polymarket were valued under $1 billion, and to see the Intercontinental Exchange invest $2 billion in Polymarket this year is mind-blowing.”
Related: Polymarket Bets Increase on Lighter Airdrop as Hyperliquid Lists LIT
Losers in space in 2025
Venture capital executives also highlighted the obvious losers, citing both individuals and institutions that have weighed on the crypto industry this year.
Levin named Do Kwon, the co-founder of Terraform Labs, as a defining individual loser. Make Kwon was sentenced to 15 years in prison On December 11, after pleading guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy charges related to the collapse of Terra, which wiped approximately $40 billion from the crypto market in 2022.
Rashidifard pointed to the “Biden era” U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as a broader institutional loser, arguing that years of aggressive application produces few lasting benefits.
He described the period as “hostile for politicized reasons that made no sense,” saying it drove founders overseas before policy changed in 2025 after former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler left office. He added that the passage of the GENIUS Act and a crypto market structure bill signaled a broader shift in the government’s approach.
THE GENIUS Lawpassed in July, established a federal framework for stablecoin issuance, reserves and regulatory oversight in the United States, while the market structure bill was delayed until after the Senate Banking Committee postponed markup hearings until 2026.
Review: Do Kwon Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison, Bitcoin’s “Jerky Dance”: Hodler’s Digest, December 7 – 13
