This week started with a promising cryptocurrency market recovery after a $19 billion market crash earlier in the month, as demand for digital assets started rising with a potential end to the tariff wars on the horizon.
Crypto investor attention was largely focused on US President Donald Trump’s meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping, aimed at securing a trade deal to avert new import tariffs.
However, the positive momentum took a sharp turn on Wednesday, when Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) posted $470 million in outflows despite the US Federal Reserve decision to cut interest rates by 25 basis points.
Fueling investor concerns, Thursday’s tariff meeting between the two presidents ended with no significant announcements related to import tariffs, resulting in more uncertainty for global and digital asset markets.
Saylor says Bitcoin can surge to $150,000 by the end of 2025
Michael Saylor, the co-founder of MicroStrategy, the largest Bitcoin (BTC) treasury company by holdings, forecast that Bitcoin would hit $150,000 by the end of 2025.
“I think that these 12 months have probably been the best 12 months in the history of the industry,” Saylor told CNBC at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas on Monday.
Saylor cited the US Securities and Exchange Commission embracing tokenized securities, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent endorsing stablecoins to protect dollar dominance and the overall regulatory pivot in the US as reasons to remain bullish. He said:
“Our expectation right now is that by the end of the year, it should be about $150,000, and that’s the consensus of the equity analysts who cover our company and the Bitcoin industry.”
The forecast came amid depressed crypto asset prices, following a market crash that was ignited by US President Donald Trump announcing 100% additional tariffs on China, sparking investor fears of macroeconomic instability.
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Standard Chartered sees $2 trillion in tokenized RWAs by 2028, matching stablecoins
Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) may reach a cumulative value of $2 trillion in the next three years as more global capital and payments migrate onto efficient blockchain rails, according to investment bank Standard Chartered.
The bank said in a Thursday report shared with Cointelegraph that the “trustless” structure of decentralized finance (DeFi) was poised to challenge the dominance of traditional financial (TradFi) systems controlled by centralized entities.
DeFi’s growing use in payments and investments may boost non-stablecoin tokenized RWAs to a $2 trillion market capitalization by 2028, the investment bank predicted.
Of the $2 trillion, $750 billion was projected to flow into money-market funds, another $750 billion into tokenized US stocks, $250 billion into tokenized US funds, and another $250 billion into “less liquid” segments of private equity, including commodities, corporate debt and tokenized real estate.
“Stablecoin liquidity and DeFi banking are important pre-requisites for a rapid expansion of tokenised RWAs,” said Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, who added:
“We expect exponential growth in RWAs in the coming years.”
Reaching a $2 trillion market capitalization implies an over 57-fold growth for RWAs in the next three years from their current $35 billion cumulative value, according to data from RWA.xyz.
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“No BlackRock, no party” for Bitcoin, altcoin ETF investments: K33 Research
The long-awaited approval of altcoin ETFs may not bring the massive inflows investors expect without participation from asset management giant BlackRock, according to market data.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF received $28.1 billion in investments in 2025, as the only fund with positive year-to-date inflows, pushing total spot Bitcoin ETF inflows to a cumulative $26.9 billion.
Without BlackRock’s fund, the spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded a cumulative net outflow of $1.27 billion year-to-date, according to K33’s head of research, Vetle Lunde.
The inflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs were the primary driver of Bitcoin price momentum in 2025, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, told Cointelegraph recently.
BlackRock is the world’s largest asset management firm, with $13.5 trillion in assets under management as of the third quarter of 2025.
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Solana ETFs may attract $6 billion in first year as SOL joins “big league”
Investors are closely watching the launch of the first Solana staking ETF, a move expected to inject billions of dollars into Solana and the broader altcoin market.
At least three altcoin ETFs were expected to launch later on Tuesday: Bitwise’s Solana (SOL) ETF and Canary’s Litecoin (LTC) and Hedera (HBAR) ETFs, according to Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas.
The SEC’s approval of the first Solana staking ETF was a “transformative” milestone that may attract an additional $3 billion to $6 billion worth of new capital into the altcoin within the first year, according to Bitget exchange’s chief analyst, Ryan Lee.
“Solana could now attract between $3–$6 billion in its first year.”
The new ETF’s staking feature introduces an additional 5% passive income for its holders, a dynamic that may bring more institutional capital into the wider altcoin sector beyond just ETFs, added the analyst.
Staking means locking your tokens into a proof-of-stake blockchain network for a predetermined period to secure the network and earn passive income in exchange.
New crypto-based ETFs may propel the underlying altcoins to all-time highs. For Bitcoin, the ETFs accounted for about 75% of new investment when Bitcoin recaptured the $50,000 mark on Feb. 15, less than a month after spot BTC ETFs debuted on Jan. 11.
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DYdX community to vote on $462,000 payout proposal following outage
Decentralized exchange dYdX released a post-mortem and community update detailing plans to compensate traders affected by a chain halt that paused operations for about eight hours during last month’s market crash.
The exchange said on Monday that its governance community will vote on compensating affected traders with up to $462,000 from the protocol’s insurance fund.
DYdX wrote that the Oct. 10 outage stemmed “from a misordered code process, and its duration was exacerbated by delays in validators restarting their oracle sidecar services.” According to the DEX, when the chain resumed, “the matching engine processed trades/liquidations at incorrect prices due to stale oracle data.”
DYdX said no user funds were lost onchain, but some traders suffered liquidation-related losses during the halt.
The dYdX governance community will vote to decide whether affected traders should be compensated with funds drawn from the protocol’s insurance fund.
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DeFi market overview
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the red.
The Plasma (XPL) token fell over 18% marking the week’s biggest decline in the top 100, followed by DoubleZero (2Z), down over 17% during the past week.
Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.
