Key Takeaways: 2025 cemented digital assets in the financial mainstream, powered by U.S. policy developments like the repeal of SAB 121 and the creation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. This "sovereign air cover" drove massive institutional adoption, mainstreaming the "MicroStrategy Playbook" and expanding ETFs into complex derivatives. BitGo capitalized on this momentum by securing the industry’s most comprehensive regulatory footprint, adding key licenses in Germany and Dubai. With this global infrastructure now built, the industry is poised for 2026 to be the year of "velocity," defined by atomic settlement and the rise of the "Stablecoin Standard."
2025: From Uncertainty to Infrastructure
The year began with a historic crescendo. On January 20, the moment President Trump took the oath of office, bitcoin surged to a euphoric all-time high of $109,000, capping off a months-long "Trump Trade" rally as the market priced in a transition to a crypto friendly administration. But as the festivities faded, the real work began.
The administration moved immediately to turn promises into policy. On January 23, just three days after inauguration, the banking sector received its signal to lean into crypto: the repeal of SAB 121. For years, this SEC bulletin had effectively banned banks from crypto custody by forcing them to hold client assets as liabilities. Its replacement with SAB 122, a risk-based framework, finally allowed Wall Street to treat digital assets like any other asset.
In March, President Trump signed an Executive Order establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR), formally designating 200,000+ seized BTC as a national asset. This was followed by the creation of a "Digital Asset Stockpile" for other tokens, signaling to the world that the U.S. government was no longer selling but locking in for the long haul.
This U.S. momentum acted as a catalyst for new regulatory frameworks to come online globally. Europe’s MiCA regulation took full effect, while Dubai’s VARA and Singapore’s MAS granted full-scope licenses. This year, for the first time ever, digital asset infrastructure could scale across jurisdictions under clear, harmonized rules.
Spot bitcoin ETFs held more than 800,000 BTC this year, with BlackRock’s IBIT briefly reaching $100 billion in AUM and claiming the title of the fastest growing ETF in history. The global crypto market cap topped $4 trillion, supported by pension funds and state governments allocating directly to the asset class. On the heels of this followed Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs) which captured the imagination of markets using crypto as a balance sheet asset, and a hedge against currency debasement.
The Year of Digital Asset Strategy
If 2024 was about ETFs opening the door to TradFi, 2025 was about Digital Asset Treasuries. This was the year the "MicroStrategy Playbook" stopped being an anomaly and became an industry standard. Across the globe, public companies began converting cash reserves into active digital assets, giving rise to a new corporate approach to treasuries.
Pioneered by Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), which continued its aggressive capital markets approach by raising billions to acquire bitcoin, a wave of new adopters emerged. Companies like Semler Scientific in the U.S. and Metaplanet in Japan formalized the model, leveraging debt and share issuance to accumulate bitcoin and reporting "BTC Yield" as a primary key performance indicator.
Bitmine Immersion Technologies ($BMNR) took this evolution a step further, adapting the playbook for the smart contract economy. By pivoting to an Ethereum-first treasury in July, BMNR amassed over 3.8 million ETH and pioneered the concept of "Treasury-as-Yield" by planning to stake its substantial holdings. DeFi Development Corp pushed this further, championing the "Active Treasury" model by deploying balance sheet assets directly into decentralized liquidity to drive institutional-grade protocol rewards.
Simultaneously, the ETF market evolved from simple "access" to true "utility". The product landscape expanded rapidly to meet this demand: Bitwise launched the first Spot Solana ETF with staking rewards (BSOL), turning a volatility asset into a yield-bearing instrument. Canary Capital took it a step further, partnering with Marinade Finance to launch the first ETF powered directly by a native DeFi liquid staking protocol generating rewards as dividends. Meanwhile, Franklin Templeton introduced multi-asset "Crypto Index" ETFs, allowing investors to index digital assets similar to their familiar S&P 500 or Nasdaq index funds.
This deep financialization, where corporations can hold digital assets directly for rewards and Wall Street builds diversified products on top, cemented crypto’s role as a foundational pillar of the global financial system, finally giving pension funds and nation-states the comprehensive vehicles they needed to allocate safely.
Despite all of this progress, it still only scratches the surface of what digital assets can deliver both to retail investors and institutional-scale holders.
Now, the industry looks forward to 2026 and what might be on the horizon.
Regulation, Integration, and Execution
In July, Congress passed the GENIUS Act, finally codifying how banks and qualified custodians could securely handle stablecoins and digital assets, effectively ending the era of regulation by enforcement. Regulatory clarity for stablecoins brought about immediate commercial action.
With the SBR providing a definitive regulatory shield, giants like Visa and PayPal scaled stablecoin-based settlement, and asset managers aggressively launched tokenized funds without fear of retroactive penalties. This legislative certainty transformed digital asset strategy from a compliance risk into a competitive necessity for global finance. Firms that had previously hesitated gave the green light to deployment, recognizing that the infrastructure for safe participation was finally codified in federal law.
By replacing ambiguity with clear statutory rules, the GENIUS Act gave institutions the confidence to build long-term strategies rather than short-term experiments.
Digital Infrastructure for Institutional Finance
Crypto rapidly shifted from exploration to full-scale deployment in 2025. BitGo moved early and moved globally, to provide the rails necessary to support the transition. The company debuted its Stablecoin-as-a-Service offering in March, a turnkey solution handling everything from reserve management to minting. This infrastructure served as the blueprint for World Liberty Financial in launching USD1 in April, creating a fully regulated foundation for institutional settlement.
On the global stage, BitGo built a regulatory fortress:
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Germany: Secured MiCA-compliant custody and trading licenses from BaFin in September.
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Dubai: Both VASP and Broker-Dealer approvals were secured in October to anchor MENA operations.
This convergence drove BitGo’s assets under custody to the $90 billion mark in July, culminating in a landmark win: approval for a national bank charter from the US OCC in December.
This approval authorizes the formation of BitGo Bank & Trust, National Association, elevating the firm to the same federal regulatory tier as the largest traditional banks in the country. By replacing a patchwork of state charters with a unified federal license, BitGo has one of the most comprehensive regulatory footprints in the industry, fully prepared to meet the needs of the digital asset industry in the year to come.
2026: The Year of Velocity and Convergence
The focus has shifted from merely holding assets to actively mobilizing them within a unified financial system, as the convergence of on-chain and off-chain worlds could drive four critical trends for the year ahead.
2025 began with the inauguration of a crypto-friendly administration that immediately began delivering on promises to bring the industry into a new era. With the GENIUS Act passed and the CLARITY Act on the way, 2026 is looking promising.
The market is beginning to see what digital assets can achieve when unhindered by regulatory obstacles.
BitGo will see you next year.
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BitGo is the digital asset infrastructure company, delivering custody, wallets, staking, trading, financing, and settlement services from regulated cold storage. Since our founding in 2013, we have been focused on accelerating the transition of the financial system to a digital asset economy. With a global presence and multiple regulated entities, BitGo serves thousands of institutions, including many of the industry's top brands, exchanges, and platforms, and millions of retail investors worldwide. For more information, visit www.bitgo.com.
©2025 BitGo, Inc. (collectively with its parent, affiliates, and subsidiaries, “BitGo”). All rights reserved. BitGo Bank & Trust, National Association (“BitGo Bank & Trust”) is a national trust bank chartered and regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). BitGo Bank & Trust is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BitGo Holdings, Inc., a Delaware corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Other BitGo entities include BitGo, Inc. and BitGo Prime LLC, each of which is a separately operated affiliate of BitGo Bank & Trust.
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