This week commenced with a hopeful recovery in the cryptocurrency market following a $19 billion crash earlier this month, as interest in digital assets surged amid an anticipated resolution to trade wars.
Investor focus was significantly on US President Donald Trump’s discussions with China’s President Xi Jinping, aimed at finalizing a trade agreement to prevent new import tariffs.
Nevertheless, the upward trend sharply reversed on Wednesday when Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) experienced $470 million in outflows, despite the US Federal Reserve’s decision to lower interest rates by 25 basis points.
Investor anxiety was exacerbated when Thursday’s tariff discussion between the two presidents yielded no noteworthy announcements concerning import tariffs, introducing further uncertainty into global and digital asset markets.
Saylor predicts Bitcoin could reach $150,000 by 2025
Michael Saylor, co-founder of MicroStrategy, the leading Bitcoin (BTC) treasury company by holdings, forecasted that Bitcoin could hit $150,000 by the end of 2025.
“I believe these past 12 months have potentially been the best ever for the industry,” Saylor told CNBC at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas on Monday.
Saylor attributed his optimism to the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s acceptance of tokenized securities, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s support for stablecoins to ensure dollar dominance, and a general regulatory shift in the US. He stated:
“We expect Bitcoin to reach about $150,000 by the end of this year, which aligns with the consensus among equity analysts covering our firm and the Bitcoin market.”
This prediction comes during a period of depressed crypto asset prices, following a market crash triggered by US President Donald Trump’s announcement of 100% additional tariffs on China, inciting fears of macroeconomic instability.
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Standard Chartered anticipates $2 trillion in tokenized RWAs by 2028
Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) could achieve a cumulative value of $2 trillion over the next three years as global capital and payments increasingly transition to efficient blockchain technologies, according to Standard Chartered investment bank.
The bank indicated in a Thursday report shared with Cointelegraph that the “trustless” framework of decentralized finance (DeFi) is set to challenge traditional financial systems dominated by centralized entities.
The expanding use of DeFi in payments and investments might elevate non-stablecoin tokenized RWAs to a market cap of $2 trillion by 2028, as predicted by the investment bank.
Of this $2 trillion, projections include $750 billion directed toward money-market funds, another $750 billion into tokenized US stocks, $250 billion into tokenized US funds, and an additional $250 billion towards “less liquid” segments of private equity, such as commodities, corporate debt, and tokenized real estate.
“The liquidity of stablecoins and DeFi banking are crucial prerequisites for the rapid expansion of tokenized RWAs,” remarked Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, who added:
“We anticipate exponential growth in RWAs in the forthcoming years.”
Achieving a $2 trillion market cap indicates a growth rate exceeding 57 times for RWAs from their present cumulative value of $35 billion, based on data sourced from RWA.xyz.
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“No BlackRock, no party” for Bitcoin, altcoin ETF investments: K33 Research
The long-anticipated approval of altcoin ETFs may not yield the substantial inflows investors hope for without involvement from asset management titan BlackRock, according to market data.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF garnered $28.1 billion in investments in 2025, standing out as the only fund with positive year-to-date inflows, elevating total spot Bitcoin ETF inflows to a cumulative $26.9 billion.
In the absence of BlackRock’s fund, the spot Bitcoin ETFs posted a cumulative net outflow of $1.27 billion year-to-date, as reported by K33’s head of research, Vetle Lunde.
The inflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs were crucial in driving Bitcoin price movements in 2025, according to Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, who recently shared insights with Cointelegraph.
BlackRock stands as the world’s largest asset management firm, managing $13.5 trillion as of the third quarter of 2025.
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Solana ETFs could attract $6 billion in first year as SOL enters “big league”
Investors are eagerly awaiting the debut of the first Solana staking ETF, anticipated to funnel billions into Solana and the broader altcoin sector.
At least three altcoin ETFs are expected to launch later this Tuesday: Bitwise’s Solana (SOL) ETF and Canary’s Litecoin (LTC) and Hedera (HBAR) ETFs, as noted by Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas.
The SEC’s approval of the inaugural Solana staking ETF marks a “transformative” milestone that may draw an extra $3 billion to $6 billion in new capital into the altcoin within its first year, according to Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget exchange.
“Solana could now attract between $3–$6 billion in its first year.”
The ETF’s staking ability offers an additional 5% passive income to its holders, which may attract more institutional investment into the larger altcoin sector beyond just ETFs, the analyst added.
Staking involves locking tokens in a proof-of-stake blockchain network for a specified duration to secure the network and earn passive income in return.
New crypto-based ETFs are expected to propel underlying altcoins to new highs. For Bitcoin, ETFs contributed to approximately 75% of new investment when Bitcoin regained the $50,000 threshold on February 15, shortly after the debut of spot BTC ETFs on January 11.
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DYdX community to vote on $462,000 compensation proposal following outage
Decentralized exchange dYdX issued a post-mortem and community update outlining plans to compensate traders impacted by a chain interruption that halted operations for roughly eight hours during last month’s market crash.
The exchange declared on Monday that its governance community will vote on compensating affected traders with up to $462,000 from the protocol’s insurance fund.
DYdX reported that the outage on October 10 was caused by a misordered code process, and its duration was prolonged due to delays in validators restarting their oracle sidecar services. When the chain resumed, “the matching engine processed trades/liquidations at incorrect prices due to outdated oracle data,” according to the DEX.
DYdX assured that no user funds were lost on-chain, but some traders faced liquidation-related losses during the interruption.
The dYdX governance community will decide whether to compensate affected traders with resources drawn from the protocol’s insurance fund.
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DeFi market overview
Based on data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap concluded the week in the negative.
The Plasma (XPL) token dropped over 18%, marking the largest decline in the top 100, followed by DoubleZero (2Z), down more than 17% over the past week.
Thank you for reviewing our summary of this week’s most significant DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights, and education on this rapidly evolving sector.
