In 2024, the cryptocurrency industry experienced significant fluctuations and reconstruction amidst the rapid changes in the global financial landscape. After six months of consolidation and recovery, the total market value of the industry surpassed $3.8 trillion by the end of the year, with Bitcoin reaching a historic high of $100,000, declaring its core position in the global asset system. This is not only a price increase but also the beginning of a structural change: a dollar liquidity circulation chain has been formed, with Bitcoin as the core asset, ETFs and US stocks as the bridge for funds, and US-listed companies as the carriers.
Bitcoin is rising to become the world’s largest dollar-denominated financial asset, becoming a key tool to hedge against the US fiscal deficit and the US debt crisis. This financial revolution not only shapes a new asset value system but also injects lasting growth momentum into the blockchain industry. Benefiting from this, OKX Ventures actively participates in this wave of transformation with a proactive attitude and continues to have a positive outlook on the profound changes that blockchain products will bring to the traditional world in the next 10 years.
Review of 2024: Wide-ranging Layout with 60+ Projects in Multiple Tracks
Outlook for 2025: 14 Predictions, Insights into the Future
Outlook 1: Global Blockchain Further Compliance, Industry More Standardized
Outlook 2: AI Agents Become Important Market Participants, Involved in Asset Creation, Issuance, and Trading
Outlook 3: Security Projects Help Solve AI Security Issues
Outlook 4: AI Penetrates Existing Track Projects, Changing Industry Paradigms
Outlook 5: Blockchain Enhances Matching Efficiency of AI Factors
Outlook 6: Babylon and BTC Layer 2 Welcome BTC’s DeFi Summer
Outlook 7: Bitcoin’s Native Innovations Diversify and Deepen
Outlook 8: Ethereum Ecosystem Technology and Dual Breakthrough
Outlook 9: RWA and Ethereum RWA Prospects
Outlook 10: Solana Sustains its Leadership Position
Outlook 11: Rise of Public Chains like Move, Diversification
Outlook 12: Emerging Public Chains, Monad and Berachain Bring Hope
Outlook 13: TON and Kaia’s Demonstrative Effects Will Bring in More Internet Companies
Outlook 14: Decentralized Science (DeSci): Reshaping the New Driving Force of the Research Economy
Written at the End: About OKX Ventures
Disclaimer
In this year, OKX Ventures actively increased its industry investment, committed to accelerating the innovation and development of the cryptocurrency industry. With a total accumulated investment of over $100 million, covering more than 60 projects and funds, the focus was on Solana, SUI, Aptos, TON, and BTC ecosystem innovation and entrepreneurship, deeply exploring high-quality projects. From the distribution of investments, infrastructure projects, AI projects, and BTC ecosystem projects accounted for the highest proportion, while also having extensive layouts in multi-chain ecosystems, DeFi, and various ecological funds.
Moreover, OKX Ventures actively collaborates with ecosystem partners such as TON Ventures, Ankaa, and TGH funds and accelerators to jointly build a prosperous innovation ecosystem. Through providing financial support, strategic guidance, and technical resources, these collaborations aim to empower global entrepreneurs, helping them transform their ideas into reality faster and more steadily. Whether it is incubation in the early stage or acceleration in the growth stage, OKX Ventures always focuses on innovation, committed to promoting the popularization and application of blockchain technology, injecting more vitality and possibilities into the industry.
OKX Ventures deeply understands that the future of the blockchain industry is not only about capital investment but also about how to efficiently integrate global resources, gather industry intelligence, and empower innovative enterprises. While capital serves as a driving force, it also relies on strategic vision and systematic layouts to continuously advance the industry in multidimensional technological innovation, ecological development, and market expansion. Each investment decision is not only about capital flow but also demonstrates profound insights into industry prospects and support for innovative forces. From infrastructure construction to ecosystem expansion, to the exploration of cutting-edge technologies, OKX Ventures always positions itself based on the industry’s evolution in the next decade, striving to provide a solid foundation and broad space for the widespread application and profound transformation of blockchain.
At the same time, the innovation of blockchain technology cannot solely rely on the drive of the capital market but also depends on visionary entrepreneurial spirit and continuous exploration by technical teams. OKX Ventures’ mission is to help entrepreneurs who contribute value to the industry build great companies and drive breakthroughs in technology, market, and operations. This support is not only for individual projects or teams but also lays the foundation for the future ecology of the entire industry.
OKX Ventures believes that the success of the blockchain industry lies not only in the success of a single technology or platform but in building an inclusive, innovative, and self-evolving industry ecosystem. It is this profound understanding of the industry and future vision that enables us to maintain foresight in the tide of this era’s changes, promoting the industry towards a more mature and sustainable future through continuous evolution in technology, ecosystem development, and market expansion.
In 2025, the compliance environment of the blockchain industry will make significant progress, laying a solid foundation for the industry’s healthy development. The number of licensed institutions will increase significantly, providing users with safer and more reliable services. Star, CEO of OKX, pointed out that OKX has become the world’s first cryptocurrency exchange platform to obtain comprehensive operational licenses in the UAE.
The custody wallet field will see compliant innovations to address the contradiction between self-custody and regulation. Star believes that OKX is introducing a self-custody wallet with compliance controls for retail users, including KYC transaction monitoring and other functions. This innovation not only enhances user experience but also meets increasingly stringent regulatory requirements, bringing new directions for the industry’s development.
The macro regulatory environment will become more positive, creating favorable conditions for the industry’s development. The UK government plans to hold consultations on stablecoin and cryptocurrency asset regulatory frameworks in early 2025, indicating that the global regulatory environment is evolving towards greater clarity and support. The national strategic Bitcoin reserve may also become a reality in 2025.
The involvement of institutional investors will significantly increase, with the Bitcoin spot ETF reaching a scale of over $114.97 billion as of December 17th, and MicroStrategy holding around 439,000 Bitcoins with a total investment cost of approximately $27.1 billion. Traditional financial institutions are accelerating their entry into the cryptocurrency industry.
The fusion of technology and compliance will reach new heights, raising the standards of the entire industry. Star predicts that by 2025, the compliance standards of many cryptocurrency companies will meet or even exceed those of traditional financial industry. OKX’s three major business lines: OKX Exchange, OKX Web3, and OKX Simple, cover a wide range of services from trading to decentralized applications. This all-around service model will become an industry standard, driving the application and popularization of blockchain technology in more fields.
The blockchain industry in 2025 will present a more mature, standardized, and innovative appearance. As Star stated, encrypted finance is entering a new stage, witnessing the deep integration of traditional finance and blockchain technology, bringing revolutionary changes to the global financial system.
With the rapid development of super large-scale language models (XLLMs) and multimodal models (XLMMs), new AI agents will gradually become important market participants. According to research reports, the global AI agent market is expected to reach $18.11 trillion by 2030, contributing about $16 trillion to the global GDP. The future of AI agents is not just about being traditional tools; they will become major participants in the blockchain world, possessing the ability to make autonomous decisions and actions.
We expect to see more innovative AI agent application scenarios in 2025. For example, agent-to-agent interaction will become an important area where the transparency and composability of blockchain provide an ideal foundation. We may see agents sending funds to each other, jointly issuing tokens, and even creating new social scenes. In addition, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) may also become a hotspot, where multi-agent systems collaborate to complete tasks, solve problems, and manage protocols.
AI agents possess high adaptability, clear goal setting, and self-correction capabilities, enabling them to make independent decisions in complex environments. In the future, these intelligent agents will have their own digital wallets, actively create and distribute content, participate in asset transactions to maximize returns, and automatically issue assets based on market demand. This transformation indicates that AI agents will play a more important role in the market and social platforms, similar to the emergence of AI agent frameworks like Eliza, combined with agent platforms represented by Myshell, driving the development of this trend.
Finally, we expect to see more innovations regarding AI agent transaction intent and the next generation of user transaction interfaces. This may include using natural language for transactions or developing new transaction systems and tools specifically for AI agents. With the development of these technologies, the concept of “wallet as a browser” may eventually be realized, completely changing the way users interact with the blockchain and AI systems.
The verifiability of blockchain can indeed become an important solution to address AI security issues. With the rapid development of AI technology, network security issues are becoming increasingly prominent, especially in areas such as impersonation and deep fakes. Therefore, establishing a “proof of personhood” mechanism is crucial to ensure interactions between users and real individuals. 61% of organizations report an increase in deep fake attacks in the past year, and it is expected to increase by 50% to 60% in the future. The complexity of AI security issues is mainly reflected in two points: dynamic attack vectors and hint injection vulnerabilities. The rapid iteration of AI models means that new vulnerabilities emerge continuously. For example, different versions of models may exhibit completely different behaviors, leading to constantly changing attack methods.
