Objectively speaking, 2025 is undoubtedly the most pivotal year for Crypto/Web3 in the past decade.
If the past ten years were characterized by the "wild growth" of the crypto industry on the fringes of mainstream finance, then 2025 marks the inaugural year of its official "legal evolution":
From stablecoins to RWA, from abrupt policy shifts in Washington to finalized regulations in Hong Kong and the EU, the global regulatory logic is undergoing an epic paradigm shift.
I. United States: Crypto Receives Institutional Redress
For a considerable period, the regulation of the crypto industry in the United States resembled a protracted tug-of-war lacking consensus.
This was particularly exemplified by the era of Gary Gensler at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which frequently employed enforcement actions to define the legal boundaries of crypto assets. Lawsuits, investigations, and deterrence became the main themes, and this "enforce first, define later" regulatory approach not only plunged many developers and entrepreneurs into a highly uncertain environment but also kept the entire industry under prolonged pressure.
However, with the new government taking office in 2025, this situation underwent a fundamental reversal. Washington no longer attempted to forcibly fit crypto assets into the outdated securities law framework established in the 1930s but began to publicly acknowledge their status as "new hybrid assets" distinct from traditional securities, commodities, and currencies.
The pinnacle of this shift was the formal signing of the "GENIUS Act" in July 2025. This legislation not only established a federal-level regulatory framework for stablecoins, requiring issuers to hold 100% of high liquidity reserves (such as cash or U.S. Treasury bonds), but more importantly, it clarified that token holders have priority claims in the event of the issuer's bankruptcy. This means that the on-chain form of the dollar was for the first time included in the national institutional vision.
In tandem, in 2025, the U.S. also established a "National Digital Asset Reserve" through an executive order, designating previously confiscated Bitcoin as a strategic asset. This move fundamentally altered Bitcoin's position in global asset pricing, transforming it from a "marginal alternative asset" into a part of national strategic competition.
Of course, this shift was not coincidental. With the appointment of new SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, the long-standing "enforcement-style regulation" that had loomed over the market was declared over. Investigations and accusations against projects like Coinbase (COIN.M), Ripple, and Ondo Finance were gradually withdrawn or downgraded, allowing Crypto to officially return to the policy discussion table.
At the same time, the new government's core team demonstrated an unprecedented alignment with tech capital and crypto capital—ranging from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard—a group of decision-makers who clearly support AI, Web3, and new financial technologies entered the power center, and crypto assets were no longer an "anomaly" in the political system.
Interestingly, on December 2, during a speech at the New York Stock Exchange, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins officially announced the end of the "enforcement regulation" era for the crypto industry that had lasted for years, stating that the SEC would usher in a new compliance era starting in January 2026.
This new policy, referred to as "innovation exemption," also marks a shift from passive case-by-case enforcement to establishing a "compliance sandbox" with clear entry standards. According to the "Project Crypto" plan disclosed in November, eligible DeFi protocols and DAO organizations will receive a compliance buffer of 12 to 24 months, during which project teams will not need to undergo cumbersome S-1 securities registration but can operate by submitting simplified information.
This mechanism thoroughly resolves the long-standing dilemma faced by startup protocols that cannot bear high compliance costs yet face accusations for not being registered, while the new asset classification law refines digital assets into commodity-type, functional-type, collectible-type, and tokenized securities, providing a clear legal exit for assets that can prove "sufficient decentralization."
In summary, the signals of regulatory shifts in the U.S. in 2025 are already quite clear: Crypto is no longer a systemic risk that needs to be suppressed but is now an institutional variable that can be guided within rules.
II. European Union, Hong Kong, Japan: Establishment of a Multipolar Order
While the U.S. completed its policy reversal, other major economies did not choose to follow suit with lax regulations but instead pursued three distinct regulatory paths, all pointing towards incorporation.
European Union
First, the European Union, 2025 marks the first full year of the implementation of the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) (officially implemented in mid-2024). It is well-known that the core goal of MiCA is not to incentivize innovation but to exchange unified rules for financial stability and cross-border controllability. For example, through a "passporting" system, compliant crypto service providers can operate freely across 27 member states, but the cost is a significantly raised compliance threshold.
In this context, in 2025, to meet MiCA's stringent requirements for audit transparency, penetrating regulation, and high capital requirements, many small and medium-sized crypto service providers (VASPs) were forced to exit the European market due to their inability to bear compliance premiums. Even some leading DEXs temporarily removed their front-end trading functions in the European region due to failure to meet specific identity verification requirements.
In terms of stablecoins, the EU has also shown a strong "currency protectionism," particularly by imposing strict daily trading limits and reserve requirements on non-euro stablecoins, objectively building a barrier at the European retail end and forcing liquidity to flow back to compliant euro stablecoins (like EuROC).
Hong Kong
In contrast to the EU's defensive posture, Hong Kong exhibited a strong offensive stance in 2025. With the official implementation of the Hong Kong "Stablecoin Ordinance" on August 1, 2025, fiat-backed stablecoins were formally incorporated into the licensed system, marking Hong Kong's transformation from a retail trading center to a global institutional asset clearing center.
Hong Kong's strategic intent is very clear; it is no longer just a platform for buying and selling crypto assets but a regulatory interface connecting Chinese capital, international capital, and on-chain finance. Therefore, this year, Hong Kong has significantly promoted the tokenization of RWA, aiming to bring traditional assets like government bonds and trade financing into the global perspective through on-chain clearing.
Moreover, there is deeper significance in the functional dislocation between Hong Kong and the mainland in Web3. According to the latest reports from Caixin, Hainan Free Trade Port and Hong Kong form a complementary relationship: Hainan focuses on physical trade and data flow as a trade hub for domestic and international markets, while Hong Kong serves as a financial testing ground, undertaking high-pressure testing tasks such as Bitcoin strategic reserves and stablecoin cross-border payments.
This front-store, back-factory model allows Hong Kong to become the only unique node in 2025 and beyond that can reach traditional Chinese capital while seamlessly accessing Web3 native liquidity.
Japan
In contrast, Japan's regulatory path appears more restrained. Previously, it had long managed exchanges, custody, and intermediary businesses through segmented management and was viewed as a crypto desert due to extreme regulatory strictness and a comprehensive tax rate as high as 55% after 2018.
However, recently, Japan's tax reform outline for the 2026 fiscal year proposed gradually positioning crypto assets as "financial products that contribute to the formation of national wealth," exploring the application of separate taxation on profits from spot, derivatives, and ETF trading, with the tax rate expected to plummet from the 55% ceiling to 20%, on par with stocks, and introducing a loss carryforward of up to three years.
This could directly activate Japan's vast retail and institutional market. Coupled with Japan's lifting of the ban on Bitcoin spot ETFs and issuing the first batch of stablecoin operation licenses to giants like Circle and SBI, Japan is objectively attempting to leverage its mature compliance system to reclaim the long-lost Asian crypto financial discourse power.
III. After "Incorporation": The Restructuring of Stablecoins and the Repositioning of Web3
Globally, the regulatory main theme of 2025 is "incorporation."
Regulatory agencies have deeply realized that the decentralized financial power inherent in crypto technology cannot be completely eradicated. Therefore, the most effective governance strategy is to deconstruct and absorb its logic, ultimately incorporating it into the existing global financial landscape.
This incorporation does not negate the value of Crypto; on the contrary, it implies that regulators have implicitly accepted a premise: that crypto technology itself is efficient, irreversible, and worth preserving, but it must be integrated into a system structure that is understandable, auditable, and accountable.
It is precisely for this reason that this round of regulatory shifts has brought about an unprecedented dual effect. On one hand, there is a rapid return of liquidity and credit; after all, compliant identities indeed encourage massive capital to enter the market and institutions to allocate resources. On the other hand, there is a profound questioning of the initial spirit of Web3: when rules become a premise, how much decentralization remains?
In this paradigm shift, stablecoins have become the first and most typical pressure point.
The reason is not complicated. As the infrastructure where Crypto and TradFi intersect most deeply and widely, stablecoins are naturally at the center of regulators' attention. They connect fiat currencies, influence payments, participate in clearing, and are deeply embedded in DeFi and on-chain liquidity systems.
Thus, this year, stablecoins have clearly entered an epic reshuffling period ahead of others.
In July, U.S. President Trump officially signed the "GENIUS Act," marking the long-awaited legislation for stablecoins; in August, Hong Kong's "Stablecoin Ordinance" also came into effect, becoming the world's first regional regulatory framework. Meanwhile, major economies like Japan and South Korea are also accelerating the follow-up of regulatory details, planning to allow compliant entities to issue stablecoins.
In other words, the stablecoin sector has ushered in a genuine "regulatory window period"—evolving from a gray growth liquidity tool to a financial infrastructure that operates in parallel with compliance and experimentation (see further reading: "Gray Beasts vs. Whitelist Players: Insights into the 'Fork Moment' Brought by Compliant Stablecoins").
In this process, differentiation in the sector is inevitable. On one end are institutional stablecoins incorporated into the whitelist system, bearing payment and clearing functions; on the other end are crypto-native stablecoins that continue to serve on-chain native finance, emphasizing anti-censorship and self-custody spirit. They will not simply be in a life-and-death struggle but will serve entirely different scenarios and user groups.
The real change is that stablecoins are being asked for the first time to answer a question: what part of the financial system do you truly want to become?
This is also a question that other Crypto/Web3 sectors must answer in 2026.
Conclusion
2025 is undoubtedly a clear turning point.
Regulation is no longer a vague, confrontational, or passive existence but is beginning to systematically shape the structure, boundaries, and development paths of the crypto industry. From the U.S. to the EU, from Hong Kong to Japan, rules are being implemented at an unprecedented speed to incorporate Crypto into the institutional framework.
However, we must also recognize clearly:
Compliance is merely a means, not the end of Web3.
In this global-scale incorporation and reconstruction, discerning what is merely noise that will be washed away by the times and what truly serves as the cornerstone of the future will become a compulsory lesson for every Web3 participant.
Regulation is no longer the "enemy" of the crypto industry but a stepping stone to its access to a market scale of trillions of dollars.
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