Cryptocurrency Adoption in 2024
2024 was a monumental year for the blockchain industry and cryptocurrency markets, highlighted by a significant uptick in sentiment and renewed interest across a broad spectrum of investors due to several big political and economic catalysts.
Let’s go over a brief recap of some facts and figures surrounding crypto adoption in 2024 as well as the Cardano ecosystem, and some trends to look for in 2025.?
Key Takeaways
2024: Crypto Market Cap Nearly Doubles
Compared to 2023, the crypto markets in 2024 underwent a huge rally, with total capitalization rising by?96.2%?year-over-year. The gains were concentrated primarily in the first and fourth quarters with primary catalysts being the launch of the first?spot BTC ETFs?in the US and the US Presidential Election which jumpstarted a wave of institutional and retail capital coming into the crypto markets.?
Bitcoin was finally able to break the vaunted?$100K?mark in December 2024, with the ETF approval at the start of the year proving to add a major boost. This resulted in Bitcoin’s dominance?exceeding 60%?during December, a level unseen since 2021, and cementing its position as a flagship asset among cryptocurrencies.?
Another major catalyst for adoption was the fourth Bitcoin halving, which reduced mining rewards by half to?3.125 BTC?per block on schedule, thereby contributing to its price increase by further dwindling the available supply.
Increased Crypto Ownership and Adoption
According to a report by?Gemini, crypto ownership has remained steady in the developed world. Singapore has 26% of current crypto owners, the US has 21%, and the UK and France both have 18% of owners. It also shows that 77% of US citizens would consider buying crypto in 2025.?
The report further highlights Turkey as one of the main markets for crypto ownership. An impressive 58% of its population owns some form of crypto asset, one of the highest adoption rates in the world.?
Chainalysis’ Annual Report also ranks countries through its crypto adoption index. In its?“The 2024 Geography of Crypto Report,”?it mentions the Central & Southern Asia and Oceania region and its higher rates of adoption due to “a unique set of crypto markets with high levels of activity on local crypto exchanges, with merchant services, and in DeFi.” with India, Singapore, and Indonesia being listed as nations with significant investor activity.
Another major drive of crypto adoption was the low correlation between BTC compared to the SP500 and gold since 2020 according to?Coinbase’s Q4 2024 report, giving an incentive to those seeking a more diversified portfolio.
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Future Outlook
Blockchain remains a growing industry by the end of 2024. The year added an overall market capitalization of?96.2%?year-on-year, meaning it almost doubled in twelve months. With a more favorable embrace by the current US administration and momentum from the latter half of 2024, there is more positive sentiment heading into 2025.
Within the blockchain, development continues at a fast pace for many different applications, networks, and user tools to boost adoption.
In 2024, DeFi saw robust activity in all networks combined due to the growth and adoption of Layer-2 networks and increased DEX (decentralized exchange) accessibility across networks. There was a considerable flow of capital that propelled total value locked (TVL) up?by nearly 120%?to approximately $119.3 billion. The uptick has contributed to all the DeFi areas, including Money Lending Markets and DEXs, which saw major increases in users and liquidity.?
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The total market for the?tokenized assets?sector reached?$186 billion?by the end of 2024, with the bulk coming from stablecoins. That represents a 53% growth in tokenized RWAs, excluding stablecoins.?
Private credit was the?second-biggest?asset tokenized in 2024, behind stablecoins. By the end of the year, the market for this tokenized private credit reached 8.9 billion dollars. The trend is expected to accelerate in 2025 as more asset classes are tokenized and stablecoins continue to grow in global adoption.?
Another emerging sector within blockchain and Web3 in 2024 was the development of?AI agents?and related infrastructure. AI agents are software programs that can interact with a particular environment, collect data, and use the data to perform self-determined tasks to meet predetermined goals. Humans set goals, but an AI agent independently chooses the best actions it needs to perform to achieve those goals. They are one of the most promising technologies for integrating with blockchain. Currently, the behavior of AI agents is difficult to verify, and they are unable to make financial transactions due to the complexity of payment systems, among other issues.?
AI agents are becoming a trending narrative for 2025 in blockchain as detailed in the?Binance 2024 Report, with its potential to disrupt more traditional software-as-a-service products.
In Cardano, the?Masumi Protocol?is one example of a current AI agent-focused solution being built by NMKR and its partners.
The Cardano Ecosystem
Cardano had a big year in 2024, including its circulating market capitalization, increase in on-chain activity, and other metrics. The last quarter of 2024 was especially busy for the network, with the median fee reaching?$0.32. Quarterly fees (USD) rose nearly?95%?and the treasury balance (USD) rose?64%?year-over-year.?
The number of active wallets also increased during 2024, and the ADA staked in the network remained high at 72%. More is in store for Cardano in 2025, as the blockchain will receive many new upgrades during the year, including on the Cardano native stablecoin front with?Anzens USDA, governance-related features, and others.?????
Finally, 2024 marked another milestone for the network which added?100,000 smart contracts. Since the introduction of Cardano-specific programming languages Plutus V2 and Aiken, the number of smart contracts launched on-chain has increased quickly.??
The?Plomin hard fork?was Cardano’s first major upgrade in 2025, unlocking full decentralized governance features and on-chain voting for DReps and the community. It is the final step towards the minimum viable governance outlined in the network’s original roadmap and also opens participation in all Governance Actions to the community. The fork was successful, with?88%?of the pools upgrading to version 10.1.4 of Cardano Node as of February 2025. Having been drafted and signed at the?Convention?in 2024, the?Cardano Constitution?is also on its way toward community-led?ratification.
Finally,?Hydra?is expected to be launched as a complete layer 2 solution for Cardano. The protocol allows Cardano nodes to create dedicated channels connecting users and smart contracts. Transactions can flow much faster in these constructs, increasing scalability without congesting the main Cardano network.?
Even more details regarding Cardano’s growth can be found in the Cardano Foundation’s?2024 Report. Cardano’s governance era has begun in full earnest with the successful competition of the Plomin hard fork and the introduction of voting for Governance Actions on-chain.??
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