Original Title: "2025 Crypto Predictions Review: 10 Institutions, Who is Hitting Back and Who is Being Deified?"
Original Source: Deep Tide TechFlow
As the year comes to an end, it is expected that major institutions will release their 2026 crypto predictions and outlooks over the next month.
However, before looking at the new predictions, it might be worthwhile to review what these institutions said last year; after all, anyone can make predictions, but accuracy is the real skill.
Looking back at the end of 2024, market sentiment was high, with BTC just breaking through $100,000, and predictions were generally optimistic:
For instance, BTC was expected to hit $200,000, the stablecoin market was predicted to double, AI agents were set to ignite on-chain activities, and crypto unicorns were expected to flock to IPOs… Now, a year has passed; have those predictions come true?
We have sifted through various prediction reports from last year to highlight a few typical institutions and individuals' viewpoints to see who had a higher prediction accuracy.
1. VanEck: Accuracy 10%, Only Correctly Predicted Bitcoin Strategic Reserves
VanEck provided 10 predictions at the end of 2024, with the only hit being the Bitcoin strategic reserves.
The other 9 were all off the mark, and most were not minor deviations but rather orders of magnitude errors, such as predicting that crypto would peak in Q1 with Bitcoin reaching $180k and setting a new high by year-end; in reality, the timing and price targets were completely opposite.
Additionally, their market size predictions were overly optimistic. They predicted tokenized securities at $50 billion, while the actual figure was around $30-35 billion; DeFi TVL was predicted at $200 billion, but it was about $120-130 billion; NFT trading volume was forecasted at $30 billion, but the actual estimate was $5-6.5 billion.
Overall, VanEck's judgment on policy direction was quite accurate, but they systematically overestimated the on-chain economic scale.
2. Bitwise: Accuracy 50%, General Direction Correct but Price Predictions Wrong
Bitwise made 10 predictions, hitting 5, mainly focused on regulation and institutional adoption; their price and scale predictions were also systematically overestimated.
· Policy and Institutional Adoption Fully Hit. The entry of Coinbase and MicroStrategy into the US stock index came true; the year of crypto IPOs was realized, with several crypto companies going public; the number of countries holding BTC increased from 9 to nearly 30.
· Price Targets All Missed: The predicted prices for BTC, ETH, and SOL were far above the actual performance of these tokens this year. Coinbase's stock price was predicted at $250, which was 65% off the $700 target. The estimated $50 billion for RWA tokenization was clearly an overestimate.
Overall, Bitwise has a keen sense of policy and accurately grasped the rhythm of regulatory shifts and institutional adoption.
3. Coinbase: Accuracy Almost 100%, Only Discussed Direction, Not Price
Coinbase's predictions are divided into "macro" and "disruptive" categories, mostly directional judgments rather than precise numbers, representing trend foresight.
Some core verifiable predictions are as follows:
Other predictions were generally correct in direction but hard to quantify:
You can see that this company's predictions clearly avoided specific price targets, focusing on policy turning points and industry trends. The result is that all core prediction directions were hit.
· Regulatory Shift Fully Verified: The prediction that "the most crypto-friendly Congress in history" would bring benefits and more asset ETFs would be approved turned out to be true.
· Stablecoins and DeFi General Direction Correct: The prediction of stablecoins experiencing "explosive growth and expanding into commercial payments" was indeed realized this year, with Mastercard announcing support for USDC/PYUSD/USDG in June, Coinbase's own payment platform integrating with Shopify, and Stripe launching USDC subscription payments;
The prediction of DeFi's recovery was also accurate, with DeFi TVL reaching $120 billion, close to a three-year high since May 2022.
This strategy of "only discussing direction, not specific points" may lack topic appeal, but in hindsight, it is the most robust and least likely to be proven wrong.
4. Galaxy Research: Accuracy 26%, Almost All Data Predictions Wrong
Galaxy's researchers made a total of 23 predictions, making it the most quantifiable and detailed report among all institutions.
Looking back, the policy prediction team performed excellently (100% hit rate), while price and market size predictions were almost all wrong. In particular, the prediction that DOGE would break $1 now seems overly optimistic.
Additionally, Galaxy's predictions on ecological development were quite good. For example, they predicted that most mining companies would transition to AI and high-performance computing, which indeed became a significant trend in this year's AI boom.
When the number of predictions is high and the granularity is fine, even professional research institutions may not get everything right; the market did not move as everyone expected.
5. Hashkey: Accuracy 70%, Price Predictions Too Optimistic
Overall, HashKey's predictions were accurate regarding regulatory compliance progress (ETF, stablecoin legislation) and ecological structural changes (rise of DEX, L2 differentiation), but they remained overly optimistic about price cycles.
Interestingly, this prediction also reflected the sentiment of the crypto community at the time.
After HashKey Group released its top 10 market predictions for 2025, nearly 50,000 community users voted on the sixteen popular predictions summarized by HashKey researchers, analysts, and traders;
The results showed that 50% of voters were optimistic about the prediction that "Bitcoin will break $300,000, Ethereum will exceed $8,000, and the total market cap of crypto will reach $10 trillion."
Ironically, the prediction with the highest voting probability now seems the least likely to be realized by the end of this year.
6. Delphi Digital: Accuracy 40%, Consumer-Level DeFi Prediction is a Highlight
Delphi Digital's predictions regarding technological infrastructure and consumer-level applications were relatively accurate; among them, the prediction for consumer-level applications stated:
"2025 will be an important development node for consumer-level DeFi, with more and more crypto users fully embracing on-chain financial services."
This year, we indeed saw the emergence of various U cards and tokenization of US stocks, and traditional financial applications like Robinhood are gradually embracing on-chain solutions.
7. Messari: Accuracy 55%, Did Not Involve Specific Price Points
Although Messari is a data analysis platform, its predictions lean towards "trend direction" rather than "specific numbers," and looking back, its judgments on major trends were relatively accurate.
8. Framework Co-Founder: Accuracy 25%, Gave More Confidence to Invested Projects
Next, we also selected some representative individual predictions from last year to see how they turned out.
First is the prediction from Vance Spencer, co-founder of Framework, from which we selected the parts related to crypto:
Clearly, Vance had high expectations for the projects he invested in, such as Glow, Daylight, and Berachain, which represent the energy and public chain sectors.
Additionally, some quantitative targets were overly aggressive, such as a daily average inflow of $1 billion into ETH ETFs.
9. Blockworks Co-Founder: Accuracy 48%, Most Predictions Made
Blockworks co-founder Mippo (X: @MikeIppolito_) made the most predictions among the institutions and individuals we reviewed, and his accuracy rate was quite good, hitting nearly half.
Among the highlights, the prediction about the rise of Robinhood was completely correct, and he also accurately identified investment opportunities in L1, such as Hyperliquid and SUI, both of which had impressive performances this year.
10. Alliance DAO Wang Qiao & Imran: Accuracy 50%, Overly Optimistic About BTC Price
The two founders of Alliance DAO, Wang Qiao and Imran, also made predictions about the developments in 2025 during a podcast chat.
We have summarized their crypto-related viewpoints as follows:
It can be seen that the two founders were overly optimistic about BTC's performance; even the lowest predicted value of $150K is still quite far from this year's highest BTC price.
However, their judgment about the prediction market was very accurate, as they identified this key trend a year in advance.
Summary
After reviewing last year's predictions, several patterns are evident:
The number of predictions is negatively correlated with accuracy; the more predictions made, the more errors occur.
Attempts to predict specific price points and numbers generally lead to disappointment.
Predictions about policy are very reliable; the improvement of the regulatory environment and the U.S. becoming more crypto-friendly were correctly predicted by almost all institutions and individuals.
Finally, the author believes that the value of these institutions' predictions each year lies not in "telling you what to buy," but in "telling you what the industry is thinking." We can treat these predictions as indicators of industry sentiment; however, if you use them as investment guides, the results may be disastrous.
At the same time, it is a good habit to remain skeptical of any predictions with specific numbers, regardless of whether they come from a KOL, an institution, or an industry leader.
This does not mean we should criticize these industry elites; rather, incorrect predictions also hold value.
They tell you what the market once believed, and no one can predict the future.
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