Breaking Crypto Events That Reshaped The Industry In 2025
On Feb. 24, the crypto industry faced a renewed security reckoning after about $1.4 billion was stolen from Bybit, making it one of the largest exchange-related thefts on record.
US authorities publicly attributed the attack to actors linked to North Korea and warned that the stolen assets would likely be laundered through a network of addresses and intermediaries.
For operator-led businesses, the takeaway was not “don’t use crypto.” It was that counterparty exposure and custody decisions, including exchange risk, wallet providers, signing flows and withdrawal assumptions, can become severe operational risks overnight, even when the underlying blockchain continues to operate normally.
In early April, crypto-linked equities fell, and Bitcoin (BTC) reached a new low for the year amid escalating tariff tensions and broader risk-off sentiment across global markets.
The drawdown underscored a pattern that became increasingly clear in 2025. For large pools of capital, crypto behaved less like a standalone alternative asset and more like a liquid, high-beta macro trade during periods of headline-driven stress.
The move reinforced that crypto is increasingly exposed to global macro shocks. As more institutional capital flows in, prices increasingly react to trade policy, risk sentiment and liquidity conditions, meaning crypto volatility can be driven by non-crypto headlines just as quickly as by onchain events.
On July 18, US President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law, establishing a federal regulatory framework for “payment stablecoins.”
The statute set baseline requirements for issuance, reserves and oversight, formally bringing qualifying dollar-pegged tokens under a federal supervisory framework.
For issuers, a federal framework creates clearer rules around reserves, disclosures and oversight, reducing regulatory uncertainty while increasing compliance obligations. For users, it strengthens confidence that dollar-pegged tokens are backed, supervised and treated as legitimate payment instruments, improving trust, reliability and long-term usability across platforms and borders.
In August, Circle, the issuer of USDC (USDC), announced the pricing of its public offering, marking one of the most prominent stablecoin-related entries into public markets to date.
Source: CoinTelegraph
