In 2024, amidst the wave of drastic changes in the global financial landscape, the cryptocurrency industry experienced profound fluctuations and restructuring. After six months of consolidation and restoration, the total market value of the industry surpassed $3.8 trillion by the end of the year, with Bitcoin hitting a historical high of $100,000, declaring its core position in the global asset system. This is not only a price increase but also the beginning of a structural change: a dollar liquidity circulation chain has formed, with Bitcoin as the core asset, ETFs and US stocks as the funding bridge, and US-listed companies as the carrier.
Bitcoin is emerging as the world’s largest US-dollar-denominated financial asset, becoming a key tool for hedging against the US fiscal deficit and the US debt crisis. This financial transformation not only shapes a new asset value system but also injects sustained growth momentum into the blockchain industry. Benefiting from this, OKX Ventures has actively participated in this wave of transformation with a proactive attitude, and remains optimistic about the silent changes that blockchain products will bring to the traditional world in the next 10 years.
Review of 2024: Layout of 60+ Projects, Diverse Track Deployment
Outlook for 2025: 14 Predictions, Insights into the Future
Outlook 1: Further Compliance of Global Blockchain, Industry Becomes More Standardized
Outlook 2: AI Agents Become Important Market Participants, Engage in Asset Creation, Issuance, and Trading
Outlook 3: Security Projects Help Solve AI Security Issues
Outlook 4: AI Penetrates Existing Track Projects, Changing Industry Paradigms
Outlook 5: Blockchain Enhances Matching Efficiency of AI Elements
Outlook 6: Babylon and BTC Layer 2 Welcome BTC’s DeFi Summer
Outlook 7: Bitcoin’s Native Innovations Diversify and Deepen
Outlook 8: Ethereum’s Ecological Technology and Ecological Dual Breakthroughs
Outlook 9: RWA and Ethereum RWA Prospects
Outlook 10: Solana’s Continued Leadership
Outlook 11: Rise of Move-based Public Chains, Diversification
Outlook 12: Emerging Public Chains, Monad and Berachain Bring Hope
Outlook 13: Demo Effects of TON and Kaia Will Bring in More Internet Companies
Outlook 14: Decentralized Science (DeSci): Reshaping the New Driving Force of Scientific Research Economy
Closing Words on OKX Ventures
Disclaimer
In this year, OKX Ventures has actively increased its industry investments, dedicated to accelerating the innovation and development of the cryptocurrency industry. The total accumulated investment for the year exceeded $100 million, covering over 60 projects and funds, with a focus on the innovation and entrepreneurship of Solana, SUI, Aptos, TON, and BTC ecosystems, and deep exploration of high-quality projects. Looking at the investment distribution, infrastructure projects, AI projects, and BTC ecosystems accounted for the highest proportion. At the same time, there has also been extensive deployment in multi-chain ecology, DeFi, and various ecological funds.
Furthermore, OKX Ventures actively collaborates with ecological partners such as TON Ventures, Ankaa, and TGH funds and accelerators to jointly build a prosperous innovation ecosystem. Through providing financial support, strategic guidance, and technical resources, these collaborations aim to empower global entrepreneurs and help them transform their ideas into reality faster and more steadily. Whether it is incubation at the startup stage or acceleration at the growth stage, OKX Ventures always focuses on innovation, committed to promoting the popularization and application of blockchain technology, injecting more vitality and possibilities into the industry.
OKX Ventures deeply recognizes that the future of the blockchain industry is not only about capital investment but also about how to efficiently integrate global resources, gather industry wisdom, and empower innovative enterprises. While capital serves as the driving force, it also relies on strategic vision and systematic layout to propel the industry forward in multidimensional technological innovation, ecological development, and market expansion. Each investment decision is not just about capital flow but also about insightful prospects for the industry and support for innovative forces. From infrastructure construction to ecosystem expansion, and to the exploration of cutting-edge technologies, OKX Ventures always strategically positions itself around the industry’s evolution in the next decade, striving to provide a solid foundation and broad space for the widespread application and profound transformation of blockchain.
At the same time, the innovation of blockchain technology cannot solely rely on the drive of the capital market; it also depends on visionary entrepreneurial spirit and continuous exploration by technical teams. OKX Ventures’ mission is to help entrepreneurs who contribute value to the industry build great companies and drive breakthroughs in technology, market, and operations. This support goes beyond individual projects or teams; it lays the foundation for the future ecology of the entire industry.
OKX Ventures believes that the success of the blockchain industry lies not only in the success of a single technology or platform but in building an inclusive, innovative, and self-evolving industry ecosystem. It is this profound understanding of the industry and future vision that enables us to maintain foresight in the tide of this era’s transformation and drive the industry towards a more mature and sustainable future in constant evolution.
In 2025, the compliance environment of the blockchain industry will make significant progress, laying a solid foundation for its healthy development. The number of licensed institutions will increase significantly, providing users with safer and more reliable services. Star, CEO of OKX, stated that OKX has become the world’s first cryptocurrency exchange platform to obtain a comprehensive operational license in the United Arab Emirates.
There will be compliance innovations in the custody wallet field to address the contradiction between self-custody and regulation. Star believes that OKX is launching a self-custody wallet for retail users with compliance controls, including KYC transaction monitoring and other functions. This innovation can not only improve user experience but also meet increasingly stringent regulatory requirements, bringing new development directions to the industry.
The macro regulatory environment will become more positive, creating favorable conditions for the industry’s development. The UK government plans to consult on stablecoin and cryptocurrency asset regulatory frameworks in early 2025, indicating that the global regulatory environment is evolving towards clearer and more supportive directions. The national strategic Bitcoin reserve may also become a reality in 2025.
The participation of institutional investors will significantly increase. As of December 17th, the size of Bitcoin spot ETFs exceeded $114.97 billion, and MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin holdings reached 439,000 coins, with a total investment cost of approximately $27.1 billion. Traditional financial institutions are accelerating their entry into the cryptocurrency industry.
The fusion of technology and compliance will reach new heights, improving industry standards as a whole. Star predicts that by 2025, the compliance standards of many cryptocurrency companies will reach or even exceed those of traditional financial industries. OKX’s three major business lines: OKX Exchange, OKX Web3, and OKX Simple, cover a wide range of services from trading to decentralized applications. This all-around service model will become an industry standard, promoting the application and popularization of blockchain technology in more fields.
The blockchain industry in 2025 will present a more mature, regulated, and innovative outlook. As Star said, crypto finance is entering a new stage, which will witness the deep integration of traditional finance and blockchain technology, bringing revolutionary changes to the global financial system.
With the rapid development of extra-large language models (XLLMs) and multimodal models (XLMMs), new AI agents will gradually become important market participants. According to research reports, the global AI agent market is projected to reach $18.11 trillion by 2030, contributing approximately $16 trillion to the global GDP. The future of AI agents is not just a traditional tool; they will become major participants in the blockchain world with the ability to make autonomous decisions and take actions.
We expect to see more innovative AI agent application scenarios in 2025. For example, agent-to-agent interaction will become an important area, with the transparency and composability of blockchain providing an ideal foundation. We may see agents sending funds to each other, jointly issuing tokens, and even creating new social scenes. In addition, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) may also become hotspots, where multiple agent systems collaborate to complete tasks, solve problems, and manage protocols.
AI agents have high adaptability, clear goal setting, and self-correcting capabilities, enabling them to make independent decisions in complex environments. In the future, these intelligent agents will have their own digital wallets, actively create and publish content, participate in asset trading to maximize returns, and automatically issue assets based on market demand. This shift indicates that AI agents will play a more important role in the market and social platforms, similar to the emergence of AI agent frameworks like Eliza, combined with agent platforms represented by Myshell, which will drive this trend.
Finally, we expect to see more innovations in AI agent trading intentions and next-generation user trading interfaces. This may include using natural language for trading or developing new trading systems and tools specifically for AI agents. With the development of these technologies, the concept of “wallet as a browser” may ultimately be realized, thoroughly changing the way users interact with blockchain and AI systems.
The verifiability of blockchain can indeed be an important solution to address AI security issues. With the rapid development of AI technology, network security issues are becoming increasingly prominent, especially in areas such as impersonation and deepfakes. Therefore, establishing a “proof of personhood” mechanism is crucial to ensure interactions between users and real individuals. 61% of organizations reported an increase in deepfake attacks in the past year, with an expected increase of 50% to 60% in the future. The complexity of AI security issues mainly manifests in two points: dynamic attack vectors and prompt injection vulnerabilities. The rapid iteration of AI models means that new vulnerabilities are constantly emerging. For example, different versions of models may exhibit completely different behaviors, leading to ever-changing attack methods.