Bitwise: Ethereum returns to its peak in 2025

Author: Juan Leon, senior investment strategist at Bitwise; Compiler: 0xjs@金财经

Two key narratives dominated cryptocurrency headlines in 2024: Bitcoin’s meteoric rise, driven by the launch of a Bitcoin ETF and record inflows, and Solana’s emergence as a retail darling, driven by memecoin speculation.

This has left Ethereum — the world’s second-largest crypto asset — largely ignored. Of course, its year-to-date return of 66% isn't bad in absolute terms, but it pales in comparison to Solana's 106% and Bitcoin's 130%.

But something interesting has happened recently: Over the past 10 days, investors have begun to take an interest in Ethereum again.

You can clearly see this in the spot Ethereum ETFs, which have attracted a whopping $2 billion in net inflows during this time. By comparison, the same ETF saw net inflows of just $250 million in the first four months.

So what's going on here?

This realization dawned on me when I reviewed Bitwise’s recently released crypto predictions for 2025 . Among various price predictions, we lay out several “real-world” megatrends that we believe will shape the industry in the year ahead, from the continued rise of stablecoins to the proliferation of AI agents using cryptocurrencies to transact.

But one of the biggest and most overlooked opportunities centers around tokenization: the process of bringing the massive market for real-world assets (RWA) to the blockchain.

Today, the market is dominated by Ethereum.

"This is not just a story for tomorrow"

Tokenization is the process of digitizing traditional financial assets, such as Treasury bonds or real estate, into tokens that can be traded on the blockchain. Tokenization promises to make the buying, selling, and settlement of financial assets faster, cheaper, and more digital. Many believe it could upend the fundamental foundations of how financial markets work.

This is not just a story for tomorrow. Tokenized assets are currently growing rapidly, with companies such as BlackRock and UBS bringing tokenized real- world assets online, covering government securities, commodities, real estate, private equity, and more. BlackRock, for example, has a $578 million tokenized Treasury fund and is looking to do more. We believe tokenized fund assets will triple next year, with Ethereum being the driving force behind it.

Why Ethereum?

To paraphrase an old saying: you won’t get fired for building on Ethereum.

Ethereum is the most battle-tested, secure, and most decentralized smart contract platform. Since its founding in 2015, it has become a leader in decentralized applications, smart contracts, and tokenization. It currently dominates the tokenized asset market with 81%, and its long track record and large distributed network of validators make asset managers confident about the security and reliability of their assets when moving them on-chain. confidence.

Here's the thing: It's hard to overstate how big the RWA market is. Global real-world assets are worth approximately $100 trillion. Most of these assets will take time (perhaps decades) to move onto the tokenization track. But if that happens, the cost of RWA-related assets could exceed $100 billion annually. That’s more than 40 times Ethereum’s total fees of $2.4 billion so far this year. With the incoming pro-crypto SEC expected to provide the regulatory clarity needed to accelerate tokenization, investors betting on Ethereum now could be in for handsome returns in the coming period.

This is just one of the many reasons why we believe 2025 is the year Ethereum returns to its peak.