This week began with a promising recovery within the cryptocurrency market after a $19 billion market crash earlier this month, as demand for digital assets began to rise and a possible end to the tariff wars loomed.
Crypto investors' attention has largely been focused on US President Donald Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping to secure a trade deal to avert latest import tariffs.
However, the positive momentum took a pointy activate Wednesday as Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded $470 million in outflows despite the Federal Reserve's decision to chop rates of interest by 25 basis points.
Investor concerns were fueled by Thursday's tariff meeting between the 2 presidents ending with none significant announcements on import tariffs, adding uncertainty to global and digital asset markets.
Bitcoin ETF inflows, all-time chart. Source: SoSoValue.com
According to Saylor, Bitcoin could rise to $150,000 by the tip of 2025
Michael Saylor, co-founder of MicroStrategy, the biggest Bitcoin (BTC) financial firm by holdings, predicted that Bitcoin would reach $150,000 by the tip of 2025.
“I feel these 12 months have probably been the most effective 12 months within the history of the industry,” Saylor told CNBC on Monday on the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas.
Saylor cited the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's support for tokenized securities, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's support for stablecoins to guard dollar dominance, and the general regulatory shift within the U.S. as reasons to stay optimistic. He said:
“We currently expect it to be around $150,000 by the tip of the yr, and that’s the consensus of equity analysts who cover our company and the Bitcoin industry.”
The forecast got here amid falling crypto asset prices following a market crash triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of 100% additional tariffs on China, sparking investor fears of macroeconomic instability.
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Standard Chartered expects $2 trillion in tokenized RWAs by 2028, such as stablecoins
According to investment bank Standard Chartered, tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) could reach a complete value of $2 trillion over the subsequent three years as more global capital and payments move onto efficient blockchain rails.
The bank said in a report shared with Cointelegraph on Thursday that the “trustless” structure of decentralized finance (DeFi) is poised to challenge the dominance of traditional financial systems (TradFi) controlled by centralized entities.
The increasing use of DeFi in payments and investments could boost non-stablecoin tokenized RWAs to a market cap of $2 trillion by 2028, the investment bank predicted.
Of the $2 trillion, $750 billion is predicted to flow into money market funds, one other $750 billion into tokenized U.S. stocks, $250 billion into tokenized U.S. funds and one other $250 billion into “less liquid” segments of personal equity, including commodities, corporate bonds and tokenized real estate.
“Stablecoin liquidity and DeFi banking are key enablers for rapid expansion of tokenized RWAs,” said Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered, adding:
“We expect RWA to grow exponentially in the approaching years.”
Reaching a $2 trillion market cap represents over 57x growth in RWAs over the subsequent three years from their current total value of $35 billion, based on data from RWA.xyz.
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“No BlackRock, No Party” for Bitcoin and Altcoin ETF Investments: K33 Research
The long-awaited approval of altcoin ETFs without the participation of asset management giant BlackRock may not bring the huge inflows investors expect, based on market data.
BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF received $28.1 billion in investments in 2025, making it the one fund with positive year-to-date inflows, bringing total spot Bitcoin ETF inflows to a cumulative $26.9 billion.
Excluding BlackRock's fund, spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen a cumulative net outflow of $1.27 billion year-to-date, based on K33 research director Vetle Lunde.
Inflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs will probably be the important thing driver of Bitcoin price momentum in 2025, Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered, recently told Cointelegraph.
BlackRock is the world's largest asset management firm with $13.5 trillion in assets under management as of the third quarter of 2025.
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Solana ETFs Could Attract $6 Billion in First Year as SOL Moves to the “Big League.”
Investors are closely watching the launch of the primary Solana stake ETF, a move that is predicted to inject billions of dollars into Solana and the broader altcoin market.
According to Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas, at the very least three altcoin ETFs are expected to hit the market later Tuesday: Bitwise's Solana (SOL) ETF and Canary's Litecoin (LTC) and Hedera (HBAR) ETFs.
According to Bitget exchange chief analyst Ryan Lee, the SEC's approval of the primary Solana stake ETF was a “transformative” milestone that might attract $3 billion to $6 billion value of additional capital to the altcoin inside the first yr.
“Solana could now attract between $3 billion and $6 billion in its first yr.”
The latest ETF's staking feature leads to an extra 5% passive income for its holders, a dynamic that might potentially bring more institutional capital into the broader altcoin sector beyond pure ETFs, the analyst added.
Staking signifies that you lock your tokens on a proof-of-stake blockchain network for a predetermined time period to secure the network and earn passive income in return.
New crypto-based ETFs could push underlying altcoins to all-time highs. For Bitcoin, ETFs accounted for about 75% of latest investments as Bitcoin reclaimed $50,000 on February 15, lower than a month after spot BTC ETFs debuted on January 11.
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DYdX community votes on payout proposal of $462,000 after failure
Decentralized exchange dYdX released a post-mortem and community update detailing plans to compensate traders affected by a series halt that disrupted operations for about eight hours during last month's market crash.
The exchange said on Monday that its governance community would vote to compensate affected traders with as much as $462,000 from the protocol's insurance fund.
DYdX wrote that the October 10 outage was “as a result of a misordered code process and its duration was exacerbated by delays in validators restarting their Oracle sidecar services.” According to the DEX, when the chain resumed, the matching engine processed transactions/liquidations at incorrect prices as a result of outdated oracle data.
DYdX said no user funds were lost on-chain, but some traders suffered liquidation-related losses through the halt.
The dYdX governance community will vote on whether to compensate affected traders using funds from the protocol’s insurance fund.
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Overview of the DeFi market
Most of the highest 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week within the red, based on data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView.
The Plasma (XPL) token fell over 18%, marking the largest drop of the week in the highest 100, followed by DoubleZero (2Z), which fell over 17% last week.
Thank you for reading our roundup of probably the most influential DeFi developments this week. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and data on this dynamically evolving field.
