Crypto News Daily Squeeze

What 2025 taught us (the hard way)

Written by Gode S.,

Web3 Market Analyst

Last Updated: December 31, 2025

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Plus: From greed to disbelief in one year

GM. The year is wrapping up, but crypto clearly has unfinished business tonight.

Here's one last vibe check before the ball drops:

🎉 Crypto in January vs today;

🤯 What a year;

🪩 On-chain perpetuals surge, DEX LIT token drops + more

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🎉 Market spark today

Find out more about the Fear & Greed Index here.

Name		Price	24H	7D
Crypto Market Cap: $2.99T 0.43% (24H)
	Bitcoin BTC	$88,406.93	-0.31%	1.69%
	Ethereum ETH	$2,992.27	0.10%	2.81%
	BNB BNB	$867.98	0.81%	3.56%
	XRP XRP	$1.87	-0.09%	0.48%

Prices as of 10:00 AM EST. Click here to see live data.

At the start of 2025, crypto felt unstoppable.

Bitcoin was flexing above $100K, Ethereum was at around $3.6K. Sentiment bounced between confidence and borderline greed.

The market wasn't just optimistic; it was convinced this cycle was different.

... Well 🙂

Fast-forward to today, and the mood has changed.

Bitcoin is trading closer to $88K - $90K, Ethereum is hovering close to $3K, and instead of LFG, TO THE MOON, NUMBER GO UP, the dominant emotion is fear.

Early 2025 was powered by narratives:

👉 Institutional adoption;

👉 Spot ETF inflows;

👉 Regulatory clarity;

👉 This time it's different energy.

Money was flowing into risk. Altcoins were catching bids, memecoins were flying, and volatility mostly worked in bulls' favor.

Corrections happened - but they were bought aggressively.

Today? The market feels tired.

Prices are lower, yes - but more importantly, conviction is thinner. Trading volumes are lighter, rallies fade faster, and most investors are playing defense.

Bitcoin dominance has increased as capital hides in safer crypto assets, while many alts bleed.

Total crypto market cap chart from BitDegree, 12-31

Source: BitDegree

So.. wtf happened? 🤨

Not one big event - but a slow grind:

👉 Mid-year euphoria gave way to big corrections;

👉 Liquidity tightened;

👉 Macro uncertainty crept back in;

👉 ETF inflows cooled;

👉 Leverage got flushed (more than once).

The result is a market that's less emotional, less speculative, and more cautious than it was in January.

Fear and Greed index chart from BitDegree, 12-31

Source: BitDegree

But here's the interesting part 👇

Despite all the fear, prices are still historically high.

Bitcoin at ~$88k would've sounded insane not long ago. Ethereum holding ~$3k would've been considered a major win in past cycles.

The difference isn't valuation - it's expectations.

At the start of 2025, people expected higher. Today, people just want stability.

That's usually how bottoms start forming: with boredom, doubt, and disbelief that the next move up will ever come.

So, we didn't move from bull to bear; we moved from euphoria to uncertainty.

👉 Early 2025 was powered by optimism.

👉 Late 2025 is defined by fear, consolidation, and patience being tested.

And historically, that's often when long-term opportunities begin.

Let's see where 2026 takes us... 👀

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⏳ One last push before the year clocks out…

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🎆 Coins that popped

Skip the sparklers - today's memecoin gainers are exploding all on their own 🧨

Data as of 04:03 AM EST.

Check out these memecoins and plenty more here.

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🤯 What a year

We survived another unhinged year in crypto. Barely.

Now, before we collectively log off and touch some grass, here's a wrap-up of 2025 - the biggest stories, the core narratives, and the vibe.

The year of presidential rug pulls

This is the sentence historians are going to underline.

In 2025, politicians discovered memecoins, and the public learned why that's a terrible idea.

It started in January, when Donald Trump launched TRUMP. Days later, Melania Trump followed with MELANIA.

Both followed the same arc:

👉 Explosive launches;

👉 Extreme insider concentration;

👉 Massive fee extraction;

👉 Then brutal collapses that wiped retail.

And it wasn't just the US.

In Argentina, President Javier Milei publicly supported LIBRA, which pumped, crashed, and detonated into a national scandal dubbed Cryptogate - complete with lawsuits, investigations, and international embarrassment.

After these coins launched, presidential memecoins became a genre:

👉 Sitting presidents launching tokens;

👉 First families monetizing attention;

👉 Nationalist branding turned into on-chain liquidity.

And spoiler alert: most of those projects rugged.

Donald Trump rug pull

Source: @bored2boar

The year governments stopped fighting Bitcoin

While memecoins were embarrassing everyone, something serious happened at the same time.

In March, the US government formally created a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, treating BTC as a sovereign asset.

That was a huge change: Bitcoin went from speculative risk → national balance-sheet consideration.

And others took notes - countries like El Salvador, Bhutan, the UAE, Pakistan, and Singapore all started positioning Bitcoin as a strategic asset.

They don't know about the BTC reserve

Source: @SimplyBitcoinTV

The year Bitcoin broke $100K

Sure, this sounds strange given the current market situation - but it was really a big year for Bitcoin.

In 2025, it set a new all-time high above $126K.

.... Then reality checked in.

A brutal liquidation cascade followed, and it wiped out billions + reminded everyone (again) why leverage is a loaded weapon. Prices came down hard, volatility spiked, and sentiment flipped.

But Bitcoin didn't collapse; it reset.

For most of the year:

👉 BTC stayed structurally strong;

👉 Dips were violent, but buyers showed up;

👉 The "Bitcoin as a sovereign-grade asset" narrative held.

Altcoins, on the other hand? Not so lucky.

Outside some short-lived rotations, most alts never reclaimed previous highs, and liquidity stayed concentrated in BTC.

So, it was a Bitcoin-led year.

BTC price chart of 2025 from BitDegree

Source: BitDegree

The year stablecoins grew up

👉 In the US, the GENIUS Act was passed, and it gave banks and issuers clear rules covering reserves, disclosures, and who's allowed to issue stablecoins.

👉 In Europe, stablecoin rules under MiCA began taking effect.

👉 In places like Singapore and Japan, regulators tightened licensing and expanded bank-issued stablecoin pilots.

👉 Across emerging markets, stablecoins became what they were always supposed to be: a practical way to access dollars.

The result was subtle but big.

TradFi started participating. New regulated stablecoins launched. And stablecoins themselves changed status from niche crypto plumbing to actual financial infrastructure.

White House tweet about passing the GENIUS Act

Source: @WhiteHouse

The year hacks hit biblical levels

Crypto security had its worst year ever.

$3.4B+ in crypto was stolen in 2025. This includes the Bybit hack, where $1.5B was stolen (the largest crypto theft on record).

The dominant actors were state-linked hacking groups, operating with patience, resources, and geopolitical incentives.

Throughout the year, security incidents expanded beyond outright thefts to insider compromises, arrests, and cross-border investigations involving multiple law enforcement agencies at once.

Hacker