For the past 15 years, crypto has been largely synonymous with bitcoin.
The past three months added a new chapter to the book.
Q3 2025 will go down as the quarter that crypto got a second story, with “stablecoins and tokenization” taking its place alongside “digital gold” as a key narrative for crypto.
On July 17, Congress passed the GENIUS Act, providing a comprehensive regulatory framework for stablecoins. This gave a green light to traditional financial institutions to embrace stablecoins and sparked a massive bull market in stablecoin-linked assets.
Over the quarter, Ethereum rose 65%, followed by assets like Chainlink (+58%) and Solana (+32%). Bitcoin rose just 6%.
But it was more than just returns. As the pages of this report show, metric after metric linked to stablecoins and tokenization reached new heights:
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Stablecoin AUM soared to all-time highs exceeding $275 billion.
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Stablecoins settled more value than Visa (and it wasn’t close).
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Ethereum Layer 2s posted record activity, rising 18% over the previous quarter.
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Tokenized assets—a close cousin to stablecoins—hit a new high-water mark.
None of this means we’re bearish on bitcoin, of course; far from it. We expect bitcoin’s price to exceed $1 million within a decade.
But we’re bullish on these new use cases for crypto. And as this report shows, they’re gaining traction—fast.
Bitwise Asset Management is a global crypto asset manager with more than $15 billion in client assets and a suite of over 40 investment products spanning ETFs, separately managed accounts, private funds, hedge fund strategies, and staking. The firm has an eight-year track record and today serves more than 5,000 private wealth teams, RIAs, family offices and institutional investors as well as 21 banks and broker-dealers. The Bitwise team of nearly 200 technology and investment professionals is backed by leading institutional investors and has offices in San Francisco, New York, and London.
