2025 Cryptocurrency Prediction Review: 10 Institutions, Who is Slapping Whom and Who is Becoming a Deity?

We can treat these predictions as indicators of industry sentiment, but if you use them as investment guides, the results could be disastrous.

Written by: 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 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 to the end of 2024, market sentiment was high, with BTC just breaking through $100,000, and predictions were generally optimistic:

For example, BTC was expected to hit $200,000, the stablecoin market was predicted to double, AI agents were expected to ignite on-chain activity, and crypto unicorns were anticipated to flock to IPOs… Now, a year later, 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 whose prediction accuracy was higher.

1. VanEck: 10% Accuracy, Only Correctly Predicted Bitcoin Strategic Reserves

VanEck provided 10 predictions for the end of 2024, with the only accurate one being the Bitcoin strategic reserves.

The other 9 were all incorrect, 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 new highs 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 about $30-35 billion; DeFi TVL was predicted at $200 billion, but the actual was around $120-130 billion; NFT trading volume was predicted at $30 billion, while 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: 50% Accuracy, 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 Accurate. The entry of Coinbase and MicroStrategy into U.S. stock indices 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 is 65% off the $700 target. The estimated $50 billion for RWA tokenization was clearly also an overestimate.

Overall, Bitwise has a keen sense of policy and accurately grasped the rhythm of regulatory shifts and institutional adoption.

3. Coinbase: Nearly 100% Accuracy, Only Discusses Direction, Not Prices

Coinbase's predictions are divided into "macro" and "disruptive" categories, mostly consisting of directional judgments rather than precise numbers, focusing on trend foresight.

Some core verifiable predictions are as follows:

Other predictions were generally correct in direction but difficult to quantify:

You can see that this company's predictions clearly avoid specific price targets, focusing instead on policy turning points and industry trends. As a result, all core prediction directions were hit.

Regulatory Shifts Fully Verified: The prediction of "the most crypto-friendly Congress in history" bringing benefits and more asset ETFs being approved was indeed the case.
Stablecoins and DeFi General Direction Correct: The prediction of stablecoins "experiencing explosive growth and expanding into commercial payments" was validated this year with Mastercard announcing support for USDC/PYUSD/USDG in June, Coinbase's payment platform integrating with Shopify, and Stripe launching USDC subscription payments.

The prediction of DeFi 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 sensationalism, but in hindsight, it is the most robust and least likely to be contradicted.

4. Galaxy Research: 26% Accuracy, Almost All Data Predictions Wrong

Galaxy's researchers made a total of 23 predictions, making it the most quantified and detailed report among all institutions.

Looking back, the policy prediction team performed excellently (100% accuracy), but 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 regarding 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 amid 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: 70% Accuracy, Price Predictions Too Optimistic

Overall, Hashkey's predictions were accurate regarding regulatory compliance progress (ETFs, stablecoin legislation) and ecological structural changes (DEX rise, 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: 40% Accuracy, Consumer DeFi Predictions Stand Out

Delphi Digital's predictions regarding technological infrastructure and consumer applications were relatively accurate; one of the predictions regarding consumer applications stated:

"2025 will be a significant development node for consumer 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 U.S. stocks, and traditional financial applications like Robinhood are gradually embracing on-chain solutions.

7. Messari: 55% Accuracy, 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: 25% Accuracy, More Confidence in Invested Projects

Next, we also selected some representative personal predictions from last year to see how they turned out.

First is the prediction from Framework co-founder Vance Spencer, from which we organized the parts related to crypto:

Clearly, Vance has 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 inflow of $1 billion into ETH ETFs.

9. Blockworks Co-founder: 48% Accuracy, Most Predictions Made

Blockworks co-founder Mippo (X: @MikeIppolito_) made the most predictions among the institutions and individuals we reviewed, with a decent accuracy rate of nearly half.

Highlights include the completely accurate prediction regarding the rise of Robinhood, as well as correctly identifying investment opportunities in L1, such as Hyperliquid and SUI, both of which had impressive performances this year.

10. Alliance DAO Wang Qiao & Imran: 50% Accuracy, Overly Optimistic on 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 organized 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 regarding the prediction market was very accurate, as they seemingly foresaw 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 contrary outcomes.
Predictions regarding policy are very reliable; improvements in the regulatory environment and the U.S.'s friendliness towards crypto were accurately 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 could be disastrous.

At the same time, it is a good habit to remain skeptical of any predictions with specific numbers, regardless of who they come from—be it a KOL, an institution, or an industry leader.

This is not to say that we should criticize these industry elites; rather, incorrect predictions also hold value.

They will tell you what the market once believed, and no one can predict the future.

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