Van Eck's top 10 predictions for 2025 - how many of them have come true?
1. Crypto bull market hits a medium-term peak in Q1, sets new highs in Q4
2. U.S. embraces bitcoin with strategic reserve(s) and increased crypto adoption
3. Value of tokenized securities exceeds $50 billion
4. Stablecoins daily settlement volumes reach $300 billion
5. AI agents’ onchain activity surpasses 1 million agents
6. Bitcoin layer-2s reach 100,000 BTC in total value locked (TVL)
7. Ethereum blob space generates $1 billion in fees
8. DeFi hits all-time highs with $4 trillion DEX volumes and $200B TVL
9. NFT market recovery with trading volumes reaching $30 billion
10. DApp tokens narrow the performance gap with L1 tokens
Bitcoin's L2 Total Value Locked
(TVL, as of early 2025)
CORE (1): $845M
Bitlayer (2): $478M
Liquid Network (3): $309M (highly centralized)
Rootstock (4): $245M
Stacks (5): $141M–$216M
Merlin Chain (6): Limited data, likely low due to recent launch
Mintlayer (7): Limited data, nascent ecosystem
Lightning Network (8): $309M (focus on payments, not DeFi, limits TVL relevance)
Botanix launched this month - likely trails Stacks and Rootstock but above Merlin and Mintlayer
today i attended a blockchain event - someone was talking about did - decentralized identity using merkle root. what's the real use case here? should i get a decentralized identity? uncertain because it seems like a troublesome thing. but the guy mentioned that you can avoid worrying when there's a data breach - no personal identifying info will be stolen by thieves.