Recently, Huobi HTX's global investment department HTX Ventures released the latest research report “2025 Annual Review: Crypto Assets Move Toward Mainstream Adoption”, which reviews the key progress made in the industry across three dimensions: "regulatory shift, global on-chain movement, and accelerated institutional adoption." Based on our practical perspective as long-term ecosystem builders, the report deeply explains how these trends reshape investment logic and value discovery, and clarifies our future focus.
The report points out that in the past year, mainstream adoption has moved beyond mere slogans and has gradually solidified into operational, auditable, and scalable business links through stablecoin payments, RWA asset tokenization, and institutional compliance.
Regarding the industry outlook for 2026, HTX Ventures predicts that the competitive focus will shift from "narrative and price" to "whether infrastructure can continuously create value"—whoever can establish replicable capabilities in key areas such as compliance frameworks, payment settlement, asset tokenization, and institutional channels is more likely to gain an advantage in the next phase of mainstream adoption.
As a long-term participant deeply engaged in the industry, Huobi HTX and HTX Ventures continue to focus on building underlying capabilities that can transcend cycles: on one hand, tracking structural trends from a research perspective to help the market identify long-term directions; on the other hand, supporting teams with real product capabilities and sustainable business models through investment and ecosystem collaboration, promoting the entry of crypto technology into broader real-world scenarios in a more robust and sustainable manner.
Regulation Becomes "Predictable": Compliance Frameworks Are Bringing Institutional Funds In
HTX Ventures points out that in 2025, the regulatory gray areas in major global jurisdictions have significantly narrowed, with regulation moving from "gray tolerance" to the "rule-setting" stage, focusing on stablecoin frameworks, market structure compliance, and stricter trading, custody, and information disclosure requirements. In the U.S., the GENIUS Act establishes a federal framework for payment-type stablecoins and strengthens requirements for 1:1 backing; Europe has significantly raised compliance thresholds following the implementation of MiCA, pushing the industry from "incremental expansion" to "compliance competition." Hong Kong is also advancing a licensing system for stablecoin issuers and promoting the effectiveness of new regulations. HTX Ventures believes that the increased clarity of rules directly reduces the uncertainty of institutional participation, providing a more executable path for compliant funds to enter.
The World is Going On-Chain: Stablecoins Achieve Payment Scale, RWA Enters Expansion Phase
In 2025, the key changes in on-chain infrastructure come from the dual drivers of stablecoin expansion and the institutional adoption of RWA.
On one hand, stablecoins accelerated their evolution from crypto-native tools to global financial infrastructure in 2025: the total market capitalization of stablecoins reached a new high of $308 billion in October, stabilizing around $309.4 billion by mid-December, with an annual growth rate of 50.3%; the total on-chain transfer volume exceeded $46 trillion, comparable to the annual total of the three major traditional payment networks: Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal.
On the other hand, RWA has entered a scaling phase: as of December 17, 2025, the value of on-chain distributed RWA assets reached $18.74 billion (excluding stablecoins), more than tripling since the beginning of the year; among them, tokenized U.S. Treasury bonds accounted for about $8.7 billion, or 47.3%, with iconic products such as BlackRock BUIDL (approximately $2.006 billion) emerging, promoting deep integration between traditional asset management forces and on-chain tokenization. The research report believes that the "on-chaining" of real assets and business processes is pushing blockchain from a phase of "self-growth" to a new stage of "serving the external."
Institutional Entry Paths Are Clearer: From "Do They Want to Allocate" to "How to Allocate Compliantly"
HTX Ventures defines 2025 as the year when institutional adoption paths became "quantifiable": the core change for institutions is not about "fully betting on high-volatility assets," but rather entering the crypto space in a more auditable, standardized manner that aligns closely with traditional balance sheet language, and breaking down on-chain capabilities into deployable financial modules.
Specifically, institutional participation is advancing along several clear paths: incorporating crypto exposure into traditional investment vehicles through ETFs/ETPs; including BTC on balance sheets through corporate treasuries; moving payments and settlements "on-chain" via stablecoins; and transforming "cash equivalents and collateral" into on-chain composable assets through RWA/tokenization. These paths collectively drive the market to become more "institutionalized": liquidity concentrates towards leading assets, volatility is more constrained by macroeconomic factors and risk control, and market depth becomes more predictable, while institutional activities remain highly concentrated in "safe zone" assets such as BTC, ETH, and on-chain USD.
More importantly, institutional entry is changing the "operating mode" of the market. HTX Ventures summarizes this structural impact in three points: increased market concentration (funds further tilt towards mainstream assets), significantly heightened importance of compliance and risk control (raising higher demands for data transparency and compliance reporting), and yield curves and pricing logic becoming closer to traditional finance (concepts such as term structure and cost of capital more deeply entering the crypto pricing system). Strategically, institutions prefer low-risk/neutral yield strategies such as arbitrage, market making, and hedging, positioning themselves more as "structure providers" rather than short-term price movers.
In 2026, What Directions Will HTX Ventures Focus On
Alec, the head of HTX Ventures, stated: "After the structural changes of 2025, the industry is entering a critical stage of infrastructure competition. Funds are flowing along the track of 'regulatable, auditable, and scalable,' so the focus of the next phase will no longer be on short-term price performance, but on who can continuously create value at the key infrastructure level."
In line with the aforementioned trends, HTX Ventures, as a long-term builder in the industry, will focus on the following directions in 2026:
● AI × Blockchain: AI agent frameworks, machine accounts and payments, on-chain execution automation, data feeding and settlement loops
● Stablecoins and Payment Infrastructure: Compliant issuance and reserve management, on-chain clearing and reconciliation, risk control and anti-money laundering, enterprise-level wallet permissions, payment routing optimization
● RWA Expansion and Secondary Liquidity: Extending from cash equivalents to private credit and institutional asset issuance on-chain, and improving trading and liquidity facilities
● User Experience and Productization: Applications and protocols that lower the on-chain financial threshold (more user-friendly interactions, one-click cross-chain, mobile security)
● Multi-Chain Strong Application Ecosystem: Finding "strong applications" and integrated platforms that can retain users, cash flow, and developers in a multi-chain landscape
For the crypto industry, the significance of 2025 lies in its transition from "feasible" to "scalable": crypto technology is being embedded into the global financial system in a compliant, transparent, and integrable manner. Looking towards 2026, Huobi HTX and HTX Ventures will continue to dig deep into value creation with a long-term perspective, focusing on key infrastructure and real use case implementation, promoting the popularization and mainstream adoption of crypto technology as long-term builders in the industry, and contributing to the construction of a more open, fair, and transparent future financial system.
About HTX Ventures
HTX Ventures is the global investment department of Huobi HTX, integrating investment, incubation, and research to identify the best and brightest teams globally. As an industry pioneer, HTX Ventures has over 11 years of blockchain building experience and excels at identifying cutting-edge technologies and emerging business models in the field. To drive growth within the blockchain ecosystem, we provide comprehensive support for projects, including financing, resources, and strategic advice.
HTX Ventures currently supports over 300 projects across multiple blockchain domains, with some high-quality projects already trading on Huobi HTX. Additionally, as one of the most active FOF funds, HTX Ventures invests in 30 top global funds and collaborates with leading blockchain funds such as Polychain, Dragonfly, Bankless, Gitcoin, Figment, Nomad, Animoca, and Hack VC to jointly build the blockchain ecosystem. Visit us.
For investment and collaboration inquiries, please feel free to contact VC@htx-inc.com
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