10 stories that rewired digital finance in 2025
This year opened with Bitcoin (BTC) proponents expecting a clean rally, driven by halving narratives, spot ETF momentum, and a Fed pivot all stacked neatly in their favor.
Instead, the year closed with BTC stuck 30% below its October peak, North Korean hackers walking away with $2 billion, and the US government quietly building a digital Fort Knox out of seized coins.
Between those bookends, crypto stopped being a speculative sideshow and started behaving like contested infrastructure: banks chartered stablecoin subsidiaries, Ethereum executed two hard forks that cut rollup fees in half, and Congress passed the first federal stablecoin law.
Additionally, regulators in Brussels, Hong Kong, and Canberra finished frameworks that turned “is…
