Funds have not yet exited, but the relationship between price and volume has already been rewritten: Interpreting the structural changes in the 2025 crypto market

The 2025 crypto market has exhibited a phenomenon capable of overturning traditional perceptions—funds have reached a record high in scale, yet the vast majority of asset prices continue to decline. This strange “divergence” between capital and prices is the key to understanding the market in 2025.

According to on-chain data, the total market cap of stablecoins grew from about $200 billion at the beginning of the year to over $300 billion by year-end, an increase of nearly $100 billion. Meanwhile, the scale of Bitcoin- and Ethereum-related ETP/ETF products has reached the trillions of dollars, and corporate holdings of digital assets related to DAT (Digital Asset Treasury Companies) have exceeded $130 billion. These figures clearly indicate that capital inflow into the crypto market has not decreased at all. However, according to Memento Research statistics, of the 118 tokens issued in 2025, about 85% are trading below their issuance price, with median drawdowns exceeding 70%.

Behind this seemingly contradictory phenomenon lies the most important truth of the 2025 crypto market: a profound change in capital structure has led to a redefinition of the relationship between price and volume.

The Root Cause of Price-Volume Divergence: Structural Shift in Policy Environment

In 2025, regulatory logic has undergone a historic shift. Unlike previous cycles characterized by “frequent bans and uncertain enforcement,” this year’s policy features a move from suppression to normalization—administrative orders are issued first, supervisory agencies’ approaches are aligned, and legislative frameworks are gradually advancing, replacing the previous enforcement-based regulatory model.

In early 2025, with Trump’s inauguration and the issuance of the Digital Asset Strategy Executive Order, followed by the formal enactment of the GENIUS Act in July, the crypto industry for the first time received clear, systemic legislative backing in the US. The significance of these changes is not in “creating a new bull market,” but in providing the market with a relatively clear lower bound—defining permissible boundaries of behavior and distinguishing assets with long-term survival potential from those destined to be marginalized.

This point fundamentally determines the shift in capital flow in 2025.

Differentiation of Capital Structure: Understanding the Logic Behind Price-Volume Relationship

The “Anchoring Logic” of Stablecoins and RWA

In past bull markets, stablecoins mainly served as intermediaries for trading or leverage fuel. But in 2025, stablecoins have evolved into tools for capital retention and settlement—no longer for quick currency exchanges, but for long-term on-chain residence.

This transformation is profound. The annual addition of $100 billion in stablecoins does not correspond to a proportional expansion in the overall market cap of competing coins. This indicates that the new capital is not flowing into risk assets for speculation but is seeking a “docking point” on-chain that does not participate in crypto price volatility.

The development of the RWA (Real-World Asset) market further confirms this trend. The main RWA implementations focus on low-risk assets such as government bonds and money market fund shares. As of October 2025, the TVL of RWA protocols has approached $18 billion. These funds are not seeking high returns but are looking for options with “near risk-free yields.” As a result, some capital can “stay on-chain but not participate in token price fluctuations,” directly weakening the traditional positive correlation between on-chain activity and token prices.

The “Selective Allocation” of ETFs and DAT

Spot ETFs provide compliant, low-friction channels for mainstream assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. However, this capital entry is highly selective—top-tier BTC/ETH spot ETFs hold close to 6%/4% of their circulating supply, forming clear institutional backing for these major assets.

The key is that this incremental capital has not spilled over into a broader asset spectrum. Bitcoin’s dominance (BTC market cap share) has not fallen rapidly as in previous bull markets but remains high. This reflects that institutional funds have not dispersed into long-tail assets; ETFs reinforce the capital absorption capacity of top assets but objectively intensify the market’s structural differentiation.

The DAT phenomenon further exemplifies this logic. By the end of 2025, nearly 200 listed companies have adopted similar strategies, holding over $130 billion in digital assets. These funds are invested in equity valuation and financing cycles, not directly into the secondary liquidity of long-tail tokens. Consequently, DAT further strengthens the capital absorption of mainstream assets, exacerbating capital stratification between major assets and alternative coins.

A New Era of Price-Volume Relationship: Market Narratives Being Filtered

The Boundary of Narrative Failure

2025 is not the end of narrative-based pricing but the starting point of narratives being filtered by capital structure.

According to Memento Research, the overall performance of tokens issued in 2025 is significantly negative. Even when weighted by FDV, projects with larger scale and higher issuance valuations tend to drag the market down more. This indicates that the issue is not “demand disappearing,” but demand being highly selective—capital is shifting its focus.

Against the backdrop of clearer policies and regulations, the crypto market’s capital structure is changing. However, this change is not yet enough to completely replace the short-term dominance of narratives and sentiment. Instead, a new dual structure has formed:

On the macro cycle level: Allocation logic is beginning to concentrate on mainstream coins and assets with institutional backing, with long-term capital and institutional funds entering more selectively into compliant and liquid assets.

On the micro cycle level: The market remains driven by narratives and sentiment. New narratives can still generate short-term price feedback under emotional influence, but lack the capital support to cross cycle fluctuations. Price declines often outpace narrative realization, leading to stage-wise and structural mismatches between supply and demand.

This is the deep reason behind the change in price-volume relationship.

Market Stratification in 2025: Which Assets Survived

Yield-Generating Assets: The First to Adapt to Price-Volume Differentiation

In an environment where narratives still dominate short-term prices but long-term capital begins to set thresholds, tokens with genuine yields are the first to adapt to the capital structure change.

Take USDe as an example. It does not rely on complex narratives but quickly gains recognition through a clear, explainable yield structure. In 2025, USDe’s market cap once surpassed $10 billion, becoming the third-largest stablecoin after USDT and USDC, with growth speed and scale significantly outpacing most risk assets of the same period.

The underlying logic is: some capital now views stablecoins as cash management tools rather than trading intermediaries. In a high-interest-rate environment with gradually clarified regulatory boundaries, long-term on-chain residence in stablecoins has become common. The pricing logic has shifted from “narrative flexibility” to “real, sustainable yields.”

This does not mean the crypto market has fully entered a cash flow valuation stage, but it clearly shows: when narrative space is compressed, capital prefers assets that can be justified without storytelling.

Looking ahead to 2026, capital will further concentrate on core value assets. Assets like BNB, SKY, ASTER, RAY—those with more direct value capture mechanisms—are more likely to be prioritized during panic periods for recovery. Meanwhile, assets like PENDLE and ONDO, with clear functional positioning but more differentiated value capture, will require structural filtering during emotional recovery phases after declines—those who can turn functional use into sustained income and verifiable token backing will qualify to evolve from “trading narratives” to “allocatable assets.”

DePIN projects follow the same logic. By 2025, the market has completed initial filtering: projects unable to demonstrate cost advantages or heavily reliant on subsidies to operate quickly lose patience; those that connect to real needs (computing power, storage, communication, AI inference, etc.) are beginning to be viewed as potential “income infrastructure.”

Prediction Markets and Perp DEX: Reshaping Speculative Demand

In a context where narratives are compressed and long-term capital is cautious, prediction markets and decentralized perpetual contracts have become some of the few sectors with counter-cyclical growth in 2025. The reason is simple and profound: they serve the most primitive and hardest-to-eliminate needs in crypto—pricing uncertainty and leverage trading.

Prediction markets are essentially information aggregation platforms, with prices continuously adjusting toward collective consensus. They are a naturally existing, relatively compliant “gambling” form—no house manipulating odds, outcomes determined by real-world events. The prediction markets around the 2025 US presidential election have quickly become a narrative with real influence. The total trading volume in 2025 has exceeded $2.4 billion, with open contracts around $270 million, indicating that this is not just a short-term traffic game but involves genuine risk-taking by capital.

The rise of Perp DEX more directly points to the core demand of the crypto industry—bringing opaque, high-counterparty-risk contract markets into a verifiable, settlement-ready, trustless environment. Transparent positions, liquidation rules, and fund pool structures give Perp DEX a security profile different from centralized exchanges.

AI and Robotics×Crypto: A Long-Term Direction Under Continuous Observation

If any sector in 2025 “failed” in price terms but became more important in the long run, AI and Robotics×Crypto are prime examples. Related tokens underperformed mainstream assets, and narrative premiums were quickly compressed. But this cooling is not due to the direction itself failing; rather, the productivity changes brought by AI are more reflected in systemic efficiency improvements, leading to a phase mismatch between their pricing logic and crypto market mechanisms.

Between 2024 and 2025, structural changes occurred within the AI industry: inference demand rose rapidly compared to training, the importance of post-training and data quality increased significantly, open-source model competition intensified, and agent economies began transitioning from concept to practical application. These are the areas where blockchain can play a long-term role—decentralized computing power and data markets, composable incentive mechanisms, and native value settlement and access control.

In the current market structure where narratives are compressed and capital prefers receivable assets, AI×Crypto is more like a continuously tracked direction that has not yet entered mainstream allocation zones. Its true value lies not in immediate pricing but in the potential upper limit once it enters valuation ranges—significantly higher than traditional application narratives.

From 2025 to 2026: A New Framework for Price-Volume Relationship

The New Definition of the Macro Cycle

Entering 2026, a more realistic and actionable framework is taking shape. On the macro cycle level, the market will continue to focus on mainstream assets and infrastructure with real utility, distribution capacity, and institutional backing. The role of policy shifts from “driving markets” to “risk containment,” from “creating volatility” to “stabilizing expectations.”

This implies that the traditional “four-year cycle of rebound→bear decline” pattern may be breaking down, replaced by a new valuation foundation driven by ongoing institutional capital inflows and improved regulatory frameworks. Bitcoin, for example, experienced a historic peak of over $100,000 at the start of 2026 but fell below $90,000 by year-end, reflecting this structural reconfiguration.

The Micro Cycle Remains Narrative-Driven

But it must be emphasized that on shorter time scales and within more localized sectors, narratives and sentiment remain the primary trading drivers. The recurring activity in prediction markets, Perp DEX, AI payments, Meme tokens, etc., indicates that the crypto market remains a highly speculative, decentralized arena of information and risk.

The difference is that these narratives are increasingly difficult to evolve into long-term valuation foundations. They are more like stage-wise opportunities centered around real use cases, trading needs, or risk expressions—being continuously filtered, rapidly validated, and quickly cleared by capital structure. In the short term, narratives are still worth participating in; but in the long term, they are no longer trustworthy.

Summary: Understanding the New Era of Price-Volume Relationship

Looking at the big picture, 2025 is not a “failed bull market,” but a profound restructuring of crypto market pricing power, participant structure, and value sources. On the policy front, regulatory logic is shifting from high uncertainty suppression to clear boundary and function delineation; on the capital front, long-term capital via ETFs, DAT, stablecoins, and low-risk RWAs is establishing compliant, auditable, low-volatility channels; on the market front, the price mechanism is undergoing substantive change—the new perspective for understanding markets is the price-volume relationship.

Narratives have not exited the market—in fact, on shorter time scales and in more localized sectors, they remain important. But narrative diffusion no longer automatically triggers linear upward feedback; the era of universal rallying coins is gradually fading, and structural differentiation is becoming the norm.

By 2026, for investors, the key is no longer betting on “the next full bull run,” but rather making more pragmatic judgments: which assets and sectors can survive in an environment of market contraction, regulatory constraints, and increasing competition, and which can, during phases of emotional recovery and risk appetite release, gain the first-mover advantage in elasticity and pricing power. Understanding the changes in the price-volume relationship is the foundation for making such judgments.