Bitcoin has stormed back in 2025, hitting a new all-time high of over $124,000 in August after a turbulent start to the year. The rally is more than a speculative rebound. It is the manifestation of crypto’s long-promised integration into the global financial system.

But unlike earlier cycles, this rally is not lifting the entire market. Investors are now rewarding utility and the CoinDesk 20 Index is emerging as the benchmark for separating signal from noise.

Institutions are all-in

Physical bitcoin exchange traded products (ETPs) pulled in nearly $38 billion over the past year, pushing global AUM beyond $165 billion. Hedge funds are exploiting basis trades, corporates are stockpiling bitcoin and the U.S. has gone as far as creating a strategic bitcoin reserve.

At the same time, liquidity and infrastructure have transformed. Per Glassnode, CME-listed futures now cover bitcoin, ether, SOL and XRP, while bitcoin options open interest has topped $50 billion. Bitcoin has never looked more institutional.

Macro tailwind

Trump’s second-term tax cuts and a U.S. debt pile north of $34 trillion have investors bracing for dollar debasement. Global reserve managers are hedging with gold and alternatives. Bitcoin’s scarcity and neutrality make it the obvious complement.

Our model places bitcoin at $250,000 by 2030 under base-case monetary expansion assumptions.. If fiscal policy turns more reckless, that upside could accelerate.

Altcoins face a reality check

Crucially, this bull cycle is no longer about a rising tide lifting all boats. Investors are rewarding protocols that deliver real-world impact. Solana has evolved into the leading consumer-grade blockchain. Ethereum has formed as the institutional backbone of on-chain finance. XRP, armed with legal clarity, is cementing itself as a low-cost, high-speed settlement layer for cross-border finance.

The market is finally demanding fundamentals, and projects without substance are fading into irrelevance.

CoinDesk 20: investible core

For institutions, the challenge is allocating without getting lost in noise. The CoinDesk 20 Index is fast becoming the selector’s benchmark. Covering nearly 85% of the investible market cap, it excludes memecoins and illiquid small caps, focusing instead on the assets that matter.

In many ways, it is crypto’s S&P 500: curated, liquid and institutionally scalable. For allocators looking to enter the market with conviction but without chaos, the CoinDesk 20 is the smart first step.

Bottom line

Crypto’s real economy moment has arrived. Bitcoin anchors the macro hedge, but the future is a broader, more functional market where utility drives value.

For a deeper dive, see WisdomTree’s autumn market outlook. 

- Dovile Silenskyte, CFA, director digital assets research, WisdomTree

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AI is stepping onto the trading floor. Not as software, but as an actor. Agents don’t just analyze markets, they strike deals, set terms and move capital across decentralized rails where settlement is final. For institutional crypto desks, that means faster trades, better products and entirely new exposures.

Now imagine two agents negotiating a derivatives contract but recording different numbers. One books $100 million, the other $120 million. Who is accountable when the gap triggers failures or investigations? This is not theory, it is the reality of the agentic era. AI learns, negotiates and acts inside financial systems where even small mismatches can create systemic risk.

But there’s a growing problem: agents could be acting on false or unverifiable data with real consequences. One AI system used by the UK’s national healthcare provider misdiagnosed a patient, citing a fictitious “Health Hospital” with a fake postcode. As we move beyond basic automation, we need systems rooted in verifiability and accountability. Just like the web needed HTTPS, the agentic web needs a trusted network.

Without a shared memory (also called ledger), agents diverge. Conflicting records create failures. Without audit trails, they become opaque, unaccountable, untrusted and consequently unfit for enterprise use.

Finance is a clear example. Imagine two AI agents negotiating an inter-bank derivatives contract. One records $100 million; the other, $120 million. That $20 million gap could trigger payment failures, regulatory action or major reputational damage. With billions in contracts traded globally every month, even tiny mismatches create systemic risk.

This isn’t a distant scenario. The infrastructure gap already exists. To navigate the agentic era, we need a foundation built on three core layers:

Decentralized networks must anchor this stack. Agents need systems fast enough to handle  thousands of transactions per second, identity frameworks that work across borders and logic that allows them to collaborate and work together, not just swap data.

To operate in shared environments, agents need three things:

Without these, agents can behave unpredictably across disconnected systems. And since they’re always on, they must be sustainable and trusted by design.

To meet this challenge, enterprises must build on systems that are transparent, auditable and resilient. Policymakers must back open source networks as the backbone of trusted AI. And ecosystem leaders and builders must design trust into the foundation, not bolt it on later.

The agentic era won’t just be automated. It will be negotiated, composable, accountable…and trusted, if we choose to build it that way.

-  Eric Piscini, CEO, Hashgraph

As always, get the latest crypto news from coindesk.com and market updates from coindesk.com/indices.

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