State of Crypto: 2025 in review

A lot happened in policy tied to crypto this year. Congress passed — and the president signed — the first major piece of crypto legislation in U.S. history this year. Federal regulators have dramatically scaled back their enforcement actions against crypto companies while announcing more rulemaking efforts aimed at bolstering the industry. Companies themselves have felt more emboldened to launch new products and services in the U.S.

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The narrative

Last year, CoinDesk’s policy team explained what we’d be looking for in 2025. Here’s how we did.

Why it matters

This is the final edition of this newsletter for 2025. A lot happened, and clearly we’ll all be busy well into 2026.

Breaking it down

On Dec. 31, 2024, I wrote that, “it seems pretty likely the agency may shift how it approaches future lawsuits against crypto industry participants. Less clear is how the agency might handle its ongoing cases against companies like Coinbase, Binance, Binance.US, Kraken and others. No attorney seems to think the SEC will outright dismiss these cases.”

The SEC has dismissed the vast majority of the cases it pursued last year.

Other court cases largely played out as expected; Sam Bankman-Fried’s appeal is ongoing, Roman Storm’s case ended in a partial conviction with post-trial motions still ongoing, Do Kwon pleaded guilty to some charges and there are still a small number of active cases we’re tracking.

Jesse Hamilton noted that while Congress would work on legislation, “Bottom line: Post-election excitement often settles into a why-is-this-taking-so-long vibe.”

While the GENIUS Act addressing stablecoins became law — confirming Cheyenne Ligon’s analysis as well — the continuing negotiations over the more important market structure bill bears Jesse’s analysis out.

The regulatory world has gotten vastly more complex as far as digital assets go, in the sense that an increasing number of nations are advancing their approaches toward digital assets. That ranges from rulemakings in the U.S. to new licenses being issued in the Middle East to Russia’s evolving approach toward digital assets.

This week

• Happy new year everybody!

If you’ve got thoughts or questions on what I should discuss next week or any other feedback you’d like to share, feel free to email me at [email protected] or find me on Bluesky @nikhileshde.bsky.social.

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See ya’ll next week!