This Week in Web3: Blockchain for Business and Crypto Markets Regulation

The cryptocurrency industry has seen many milestones since bitcoin’s launch in 2009, but 2025 could be a watershed year.

The sector stands at a crossroads. Proponents believe that, buoyed by regulatory clarity, institutional adoption, and rapid innovation in payment systems, digital assets are moving from speculative investments to mainstream financial tools.

For businesses, regulatory clarity is not merely about compliance but also about unlocking growth. Stablecoins, for example, have immense potential to revolutionize payments and remittances, but their adoption depends on transparent rules that balance innovation with financial stability.

As blockchain matures, crypto markets innovate, and regulation evolves, the interplay among these forces is likely to shape the trajectory of the cryptocurrency industry in 2025 and beyond.

Crypto Markets Innovation

While 2022 and 2023 were marked by market turbulence, the final months of 2024 began to usher in a period of recalibration.

Crypto markets are no longer solely defined by speculative trading but are evolving into sophisticated ecosystems that cater to institutional investors, retail participants, and decentralized finance (DeFi) pioneers.

More than a dozen new cryptocurrency-focused exchange-traded funds (ETFs) reportedly could be launched in 2025, if they’re approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

This year will also likely see more governments and central banks purchase bitcoin. That’s according to a new report on the digital asset space Tuesday (Jan. 7), which argues that the world’s nation-states will be among the next “significant investors” in the most popular cryptocurrency.

“We anticipate more nation-states, central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and government treasuries will look to establish strategic positions in bitcoin,” the report said.

E-Trade, the online stock trading arm of Morgan Stanley, is reportedly considering adding cryptocurrency trading in a move that would make E-Trade one of the largest mainstream financial firms to offer crypto trading. E-Trade is considering doing so because it expects the regulatory environment to be more friendly to crypto under President-elect Donald Trump, a Jan. 2 report said.

Read more: The Five Not-So-Obvious Things That Will Change the Digital Economy in 2025

Search for Regulatory Clarity

Trump’s win in November sparked a crypto rally because he is seen as a more crypto-friendly candidate, standing in contrast to the Biden administration’s efforts to crack down on the industry following some high-profile scandals.

During his campaign, Trump pledged to transform the U.S. into the “crypto capital of the planet,” and, per the nonprofit industry group Stand With Crypto, the 2024 elections saw 250 “pro crypto” members of Congress elected along with 16 “pro crypto” senators.

Once the new administration takes their oaths of office, there are three key things to keep an eye on, including the potential establishment of a national reserve for bitcoin; clarity around whether the SEC or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has jurisdiction over which elements of the industry; and clarity around stablecoins, including their issuance.

“We signed more U.S. deals in the last six weeks of 2024 (since the election) than the previous six MONTHS,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse wrote this week in a post on social platform X. “… Say what you want, but the ‘Trump effect’ is already making crypto great again — through his campaign and in the administration’s Day 1 priorities.

“For Ripple, this is even more personal after Gensler’s SEC effectively froze our business opportunities here at home for years,” Garlinghouse added.

At the same time, the prospect of a warmer environment for crypto has reignited debates about the uneasy relationship between traditional financial institutions and the emerging crypto-FinTech ecosystem.

The crypto sector has for years maintained that it was being barred from U.S. banking services. Still, the accusations by U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase, as well as other stakeholders in the crypto space, that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) had for years been engaged in deliberating hindering the crypto sector’s access to banking activities had some cold water thrown on it with newly revealed regulator letters’ whose contents are contrary to industry allegations of widespread “debanking.”

Blockchain for Businesses

The stage is set for a potential future where blockchain and cryptocurrency transcend their speculative origins to become integral components of the global economy. But for that future to ultimately be realized, blockchain technologies must achieve greater enterprise usability.

Ripple said it has begun leveraging the Chainlink standard, a move designed to provide “high-quality pricing data” around its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin, the company said Tuesday (Jan. 7).

The announcement comes on the heels of what was — as PYMNTS wrote recently — a very good year for stablecoins, as these fiat-pegged tokens gained traction and financial service companies began exploring blockchain.

No longer the domain of blockchain enthusiasts and tech startups, crypto and blockchain solutions are becoming a vital tool in the treasury toolbox. Yet to successfully navigate this shifting landscape, it’s essential for finance professionals to master the specialized vocabulary that defines these payments innovations.

Staying ahead of terms like stablecoin sandwiches, zero-knowledge proofs, atomic swaps, on-chain liquidity, and others will allow financial leaders to make informed decisions about integrating these technologies into their payment systems.