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Regulatory changes could be the catalyst to spark significant adoption of stablecoins and blockchain tech in 2025, according to investment banking giant Citigroup.

“2025 has the potential to be blockchain’s ‘ChatGPT’ moment for adoption in the financial and public sector, driven by regulatory change,” a team of Citigroup financial analysts said in an April 23 report. 

A combination of growing regulatory support and adoption by financial institutions has set the stage for the stablecoin market cap to fly as high as $3.7 trillion by 2030, or in a base case, $1.6 trillion.

“The main catalyst for their greater acceptance may be regulatory clarity in the US, which could enable greater integration of stablecoins specifically, and blockchain more widely, into the existing financial system,” Citi said in its report. 

“The tailwinds of regulatory support and the increased integration of digital assets into incumbent financial institutions are setting the scene for increased usage of stablecoins.”

On the heels of US President Donald Trump’s crypto-friendly administration assuming power earlier this year, lawmakers are weighing stablecoin legislation, such as the GENIUS Act, which seeks to regulate US stablecoins, ensuring their legal use for payments. 

A US regulatory framework for stablecoin would also support demand for dollar risk-free assets inside and outside the US, according to the report. 

“The stablecoin issuers will have to buy US Treasuries, or comparable low risk assets, against each stablecoin as a measure of having safe underlying collateral,” Citi said. 

“Stablecoin issuers could hold more US Treasuries by 2030 than any single jurisdiction today.” 

US will continue to dominate stablecoins 

In the future, Citi predicts the stablecoin supply will remain US dollar-denominated, with non-US countries promoting national currency or a central bank digital currency.

In April, the stablecoin market cap had crossed $230 billion, an increase of 54% since last year, with Tether (USDT) and USDC (USDC) dominating 90% of the market. 

“While the dollar’s dominance may evolve over time, with the euro or other currencies being promoted by national regulations, stablecoins may be viewed by many non-US policy makers as an instrument of dollar hegemony,” Citi said. 

“Geopolitics remain fluid. Should the world continue to drift into a multi-polar system it is likely that policymakers in China and Europe will be keen to promote central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) or stablecoins issued in their own currency.” 

Related: Russia finance ministry official floats country making own stablecoins: Report

However, there are still some challenges ahead for the market. The stablecoin market cap could settle around $500 billion if “adoption and integration challenges persist.” 

Depegging has also been flagged as a potential issue, with 1,900 instances in 2023, according to Citi, including the major USDC depeg following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

“A major depegging event would likely dampen crypto market liquidity, trigger automated liquidations, impair trading platforms’ ability to meet redemptions, and potentially have broader contagion effects for the financial system,” the firm said. 

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Billion-dollar asset manager ARK Invest has raised its “bull case” Bitcoin price target from $1.5 million to $2.4 million by the end of 2030, driven largely by institutional investors and Bitcoin’s increasing acceptance as “digital gold.”

ARK’s “bear” and “base” case scenarios for the price of Bitcoin (BTC) were also bumped up to $500,000 and $1.2 million, ARK research analyst David Puell said in an April 24 report.

The new bear and base targets were bumped up from ARK’s $300,000 and $710,000 Bitcoin price predictions on Feb. 11.

ARK’s price projections were modeled on Bitcoin’s total addressable market (TAM), penetration rate — the percentage of Bitcoin’s TAM that it could capture in certain cases — and Bitcoin’s supply schedule.

“Institutional investment contributes the most to our bull case,” said Puell, who estimated that Bitcoin would achieve a 6.5% penetration rate into the $200 trillion financial market in a best-case scenario (that figure excludes gold).

Bitcoin’s acceptance as “digital gold” was also a major contributor to the lofty estimate, with Puell estimating that it could capture up to 60% of gold’s $18 trillion market cap (2024 figures) by the end of 2030 in a bull scenario.

Bitcoin becoming a “safe haven” in emerging markets was the third-largest contributor to ARK’s $2.4 million bull case prediction at 13.5%.

“This Bitcoin use case has the greatest potential for capital accrual,” Puell said, pointing to Bitcoin’s ability to protect wealth from inflation and devaluation in developing countries.

Nation-state and corporate Bitcoin treasury strategies and Bitcoin financial services were also factored into ARK’s Bitcoin price projections.

ARK’s Bitcoin predictions are bold

A $2.4 million Bitcoin price tag would send Bitcoin’s market cap to $49.2 trillion, assuming that Bitcoin’s total supply will have reached 20.5 million by the end of 2030.

A $49.2 trillion valuation would be almost larger than the current gross domestic products of the US and China combined.

It would also put Bitcoin in a good position to overtake gold as the world’s largest asset, which currently boasts a market cap of $22.5 trillion.

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Even ARK’s bear and base targets of $500,000 and $1.2 million would mean Bitcoin needs to increase at a compounded annual growth rate of 32% and 53% by the end of 2030 — a return that isn’t achieved too often for assets that have already notched trillion-dollar valuations.

Since then, Bitcoin has recovered from a 2025 low of $75,160, soaring back up to the $94,000 range, while the Trump administration established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

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The capital city of Slovenia — Ljubljana — has been named the world’s most crypto-friendly city by migration advisory firm Multipolitan.

The city outranked runners-up Hong Kong and Switzerland’s economic powerhouse Züric, which scored the same in the Crypto-Friendly Cities Index, found in its 2025 Crypto Report.

The index featured 20 cities and ranked their crypto-friendliness based on their regulations, tax environment, lifestyle factors and digital and crypto infrastructure.

Multipolitan said its evaluation included weighing areas such as a city’s licensing frameworks, capital gains tax rates, GDP per capita, housing affordability and internet speeds.

“The presence of crypto ATMs and retail adoption rates were analysed to reflect each city’s embedded cryptocurrency culture,” it explained. “High concentrations of these assets earned the top scores.”

The city-state of Singapore and the United Arab Emirates’ capital of Abu Dhabi were respectively ranked fourth and fifth after the second-place tie. Both cities were already attractive to businesses due to offering low or no taxes, but they’ve also worked to attract crypto companies with industry-specific licensing and regulatory regimes.

Madison, the capital city of the US state of Wisconsin, was the only city in the Americas to rank on the index, hitting the same 11th place score as Latvia’s capital of Riga, Qatar’s capital of Doha, and Saudi Arabia’s capital of Riyadh.

Slovenia’s crypto embrace

Slovenia also topped Multipolitan’s Crypto Wealth Concentration Index, combining crypto ownership rates and trading volumes, which reported that the average Slovenian crypto owner held around $240,500 worth of assets.

The figure outranked second-place Cyprus by over $65,000, with the average crypto-holding Cypriot hanging onto around $175,000. Hong Kong came in third with holdings averaging $97,500.

Related: Slovenia’s finance ministry floats 25% tax on crypto transactions 

The US ranked at the bottom of the 20-strong list, coming in 17th spot with average crypto holdings of around $23,300, just above Malaysia’s nearly $21,000 average holdings.

Slovenia, being part of the EU, regulates crypto under the bloc’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which the industry received as mostly positive.

The advocacy group Blockchain Alliance Europe is based in Ljubljana. The city also houses the blockchain real estate platform Blocksquare, which teamed up with Vera Capital on April 18 to tokenize $1 billion worth of US real estate.

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The Italian municipality of Fornelli in the Molise region of Italy will be dedicating a monument to pseudonymous Bitcoin (BTC) creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

In an April 23 Facebook post from the municipality, Fornelli said it plans to unveil the Satoshi artwork on May 1. Details surrounding the monument were unclear in the announcement, but the municipality said it had been designed by artist Mattia Pannoni and financed by the local government. 

“It is important, indeed fundamental, as an administration, to take into consideration all the new ideas that come from our young people,” said Fornelli Mayor Giovanni Tedeschi.

According to the local government, Fornelli has the “highest density of Bitcoin adoption in the world” among its roughly 1,800 residents. Other regions have attempted to use BTC or other cryptocurrencies to attract visitors, including the Bitcoin Beach area of El Salvador and the Swiss city of Zug, which accepts crypto payments for many local goods and services. 

Portraying a faceless individual through art

The identity of Satoshi, whether a single individual or a group of people, remains one of the biggest mysteries in the crypto space since the publication of the Bitcoin white paper in 2008. 

Related: Italy finance minister warns US stablecoins pose bigger threat than tariffs

Many artists, both crypto investors and otherwise, have released artwork attempting to represent the pseudonymous creator through statues and digital images. A common theme in these pieces is showing Satoshi without any clearly defined facial features, sometimes wearing a hoodie or working on a computer. 

According to the announcement, the monument will be unveiled in the Piazza Umberto I area of Fornelli on May 1.

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The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has delayed a decision on whether to approve a proposed exchange-traded fund (ETF) holding Polkadot’s native token, regulatory filings show. 

According to an April 24 filing, the regulator has extended its deadline for a final ruling until June 11, nearly four months after the Nasdaq sought permission to list Grayscale Polkadot Trust on Feb. 24.

Grayscale’s ETF filing adds to a roster of roughly 70 proposed ETFs awaiting SEC approval, including funds holding altcoins, memecoins, and crypto-related financial derivatives, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.  

Asset managers are pitching ETFs for “[e]verything from XRP, Litecoin and Solana to Penguins, Doge and 2x Melania and everything in between,” Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas said in an April 21 post on the X platform. Asset manager 21Shares is also awaiting permission to list its own Polkadot ETF.

Polkadot is a layer-1 blockchain network launched in 2020. Its native token, DOT (DOT), has a market capitalization of approximately $6.6 billion as of April 24, according to CoinMarketCap.

Related: Institutions break up with Ethereum but keep ETH on the hook

Altcoin ETF pipeline

Grayscale is among multiple asset managers seeking regulatory clearance to list altcoin ETFs in the US. The company is already behind several crypto funds, including spot Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) ETFs. 

The asset manager has also asked for permission to launch ETFs holding tokens such as Solana (SOL), Litecoin (LTC), XRP (XRP), Dogecoin (DOGE), and Cardano (ADA).

The pipeline of proposed fund listings comes as more than 80% of institutional investors say they plan to boost allocations to crypto in 2025, according to a March report by Coinbase and EY-Parthenon. 

However, analysts caution that demand for altcoin ETFs is likely to be much more limited than for funds holding core cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether. 

“Having your coin get ETF-ized is like being in a band and getting your songs added to all the music streaming services,” Balchunas said. 

“Doesn’t guarantee listens but it puts your music where the vast majority of the listeners are.”

Magazine: Altcoin season to hit in Q2? Mantra’s plan to win trust: Hodler’s Digest, April 13 – 19

The US Federal Reserve has announced it would withdraw guidance for banks engaging in crypto asset and stablecoin-related activities.

”The Board is rescinding its 2022 supervisory letter establishing an expectation that state member banks provide advance notification of planned or current crypto-asset activities,” the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve explained in an April 24 statement.

Any crypto-related activities will now be monitored through the Federal Reserve’s normal supervisory process, it said.

The Federal Reserve is also rescinding its 2023 supervisory letter that impacted how state banks could engage in stablecoin activities.

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.

The White House said on April 24 that it received more than 10,000 public comments on its planned artificial intelligence action plan, indicating widespread interest in the technology as the global race for AI leadership accelerates.

Among the stakeholders providing inputs were AI giants such as OpenAI, Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. In addition, organizations in academia, non-profits, and industry associations also took part in the discussion.

A preliminary review of comments from major private-sector companies highlighted several recurring themes, including the need for greater investment in US energy resources to support AI growth, foreign policy efforts to enhance the global influence of American AI firms, and improved infrastructure to advance AI development domestically.

In addition, many companies lobbied for an open, innovative framework to guide the American AI industry and provide safeguards to individuals.

The White House issued a request for comments on Feb. 6. The administration says these comments “will help define the priority policy actions needed to sustain and enhance America’s AI dominance.” US President Donald Trump has pledged to make the United States the “world capital” of AI and crypto.

National security concerns

National security emerged as a key concern among companies submitting feedback. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz wrote that “AI model development is an issue of national concern that should be regulated on a national level. It is critical to American national security, geopolitical objectives, and the nation’s economic and social welfare.”

OpenAI also raised the issue, explicitly naming China as a competitor with “strategic advantages,” including the capacity, as an “authoritarian state,” to rapidly mobilize resources.

In January 2025, Chinese company DeepSeek launched their R1 model, sparking alarm in the US tech sector and triggering volatility in domestic equity markets.

AI and crypto are widely viewed as two of the most transformative emerging technologies, with growing overlap of AI-powered agents and digital financial products.

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Global cross-border payment platform Axiym is targeting the rising demand from money services businesses (MSBs) for blockchain-based infrastructure and stablecoin solutions for international transactions, the company told Cointelegraph.

Headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Axiym disclosed on April 24 that it has processed more than $132 million in cumulative volume on the Avalanche blockchain.

The platform uses Avalanche to deliver real-time credit and liquidity infrastructure to MSBs worldwide.

MSBs — a broad category that includes money transmitters like Western Union, currency exchanges, crypto platforms, fintech firms, and check cashers — are embracing these innovations, Morgan Krupetsky, head of institutions and capital markets at Ava Labs, told Cointelegraph.

In the case of Axiym, “MSBs themselves don’t operate onchain,” Axiym CEO Khibar Russel told Cointelegraph. Instead, “Axiym connects their existing payment operations to Avalanche behind the scenes using blockchain to automate, move, and manage capital far more efficiently.” 

“Under the hood, Axiym has built an application that provides credit to global MSBs using stablecoins to power payments — these transactions occur on the Avalanche C-Chain,” Krupetsky said, adding:

“This enables real-time cross-border liquidity provisioning that would be difficult or expensive through legacy payment rails or slower blockchains.”

Related: Luxury app Dorsia taps MoonPay for crypto payments

The case for cross-border payments continues to grow

Russel told Cointelegraph that Axiym’s clients are primarily licensed payment companies based in major financial centers like the UAE, the United Kingdom and Singapore. However, these companies’ users often send funds to major remittance hubs across Asia, Africa and Latin America, he said.

Axiym’s platform has been developed to address many of the pain points in traditional cross-border payments, including “capital inefficiency, SWIFT-based delays, high costs and fragmented frameworks,” Russel said.

While blockchain offers significant advantages in speed and transparency, regulatory fragmentation has made it harder for the technology to replace legacy payment systems. 

Axiym is attempting to solve this problem by “embedding blockchain capabilities directly into existing payment operations” using Avalanche, Russel said.

Blockchain-based stablecoins have become a key tool for enabling low-cost, efficient cross-border payments, which explains why these fiat-pegged assets have gained traction in emerging markets.

A 2024 Chainalysis report showed that stablecoin remittances from Sub-Saharan Africa are 60% cheaper than traditional fiat rails. 

As Cointelegraph recently reported, blockchain company Ripple has partnered with African payment infrastructure provider Chipper Cash to support cross-border crypto transactions.

Meanwhile, crypto-focused payment startups are also gaining traction in venture capital circles, with the Tether-backed Mansa recently closing a $10 million funding round to expand its stablecoin cross-border payment services.

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Ether (ETH) price has climbed above $1,700 after 16 days of selling pressure caused by macroeconomic uncertainty and a sharp decline in onchain activity. Despite the rebound, Ether has underperformed the broader altcoin market by 23% year-to-date.

Some traders claim that ETH is set for a “generational” bull run by offering a “truly” decentralized and permissionless financial system, but is that really the case?

Ether was one of the few major cryptocurrencies that did not reach a new all-time high in 2025, unlike competitors such as Solana (SOL), Tron (TRX), and BNB (BNB).

Some critics argue that moving away from proof-of-work mining removed a competitive advantage that Ethereum once had over its rivals.

Ethereum fee drop signals ETH price weakness

Eventually, Ether may outperform its competitors, even if only for a short period, and influencers who are calling for a “generational bottom” will celebrate their predictions, despite the lack of strong fundamentals to support lasting price growth. However, considering the 95% drop in Ethereum fees since January, the chances of an immediate ETH surge seem low.

The low demand for data processing on the Ethereum network causes ETH to become inflationary, as the built-in burn mechanism is not enough to balance the new coins issued to cover staking rewards.

Despite being the clear leader in Total Value Locked (TVL), traders are generally uninterested in this metric since it hasn’t translated into higher demand for the Ethereum network or increased scarcity for ETH.

As a result, even if Ethereum’s fundamentals improve, optimism among ETH holders is declining, while competitors—especially Solana (SOL) and XRP (XRP) investors—are hopeful about the approval of their spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US. Currently, spot ETFs in the US are only available for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), so additional offerings would likely reduce the potential institutional demand for altcoins.

Adding to the concerns, US-listed spot Ether ETFs saw $10 million in net outflows between April 21 and April 23, while similar BTC instruments experienced record-breaking inflows.

History shows ETH price rallies seldom last long

Historical evidence does not favor a lasting outperformance compared to competitors, which lowers the odds of a sustainable ETH rally.

Related: Bitcoiner PlanB slams ETH: ‘Centralized & premined’ shitcoin

For example, Ether’s market share in the altcoin capitalization reached a low point in June 2022 at around 26.5% when the ETH price dropped below $1,100. After a quick rally to $2,000 by August 2022, the momentum faded, and ETH’s price fell below $1,200 less than three months later. This sudden correction likely left many investors frustrated, as they had to wait eight months for ETH to reclaim $2,000 in April 2023.

A similar pattern happened in April 2021, when Ether’s altcoin market share bottomed out at 26.8%. After that, the ETH price climbed from $2,100 to $4,200 by May 2021, only to fall below $2,000 the following month. Again, traders who bought near the cycle top had to wait six months just to recover their investment. This history has taught Ether traders to take profits quickly, which reduces the chances of reaching a new all-time high.

It is difficult to pinpoint what triggered previous Ether bull runs, especially as the narrative has shifted from utility tokens to NFT marketplaces, artificial intelligence, memecoins, and, more recently, RWA tokenization. While some influencers believe in strong ETH momentum, others warn there could be another 15% drop compared to Bitcoin’s performance.

In the end, historical evidence does not support a lasting ETH price rally, even if it bottoms out relative to the broader altcoin market capitalization.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Ethereum’s focus on scaling through many layer-2 networks, each with its own transaction processing speed and parameters, potentially gives the network an unlimited number of unique high-throughput chains, according to Anurag Arjun, co-founder of Avail, a unified chain abstraction solution.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Arjun acknowledged that Ethereum and high-throughput competitors with monolithic architecture are fundamentally different products. However, Ethereum’s choice to scale through a plethora of L2 solutions gives it an overlooked quality:

“The under-appreciated beauty of this rollup-centric roadmap architecture is that it allows multiple teams to experiment with different execution environments and different block times.”

This allows a diverse set of high-throughput sidechains to appear rather than just one singular architecture on any monolithic layer-1s, the executive added. However, without true interoperability, switching between L2s will remain as complex as bridging assets between different blockchain ecosystems altogether, Arjun warned.

The Avail co-founder’s perspective runs contrary to the many critics of Ethereum’s L2-focused approach, who say that the network’s scaling solutions silo liquidity and are ultimately corrosive to the base layer. Ethereum’s critics argue that L2s are one of the primary causes of Ether’s (ETH) poor price performance in the last year.

Related: Vitalik Buterin proposes swapping EVM language for RISC-V

Ethereum fees drop to five-year lows

Fees on the Ethereum layer-1 network dropped to five-year lows in April 2025, with the average transaction fee sitting at around $0.16.

According to Brian Quinlivan, the marketing director for the Santiment onchain analytics firm, the reduction in fees signals decreased demand for the base layer and waning investor interest in Ethereum.

“This large reduction in fees coincides with fewer people sending ETH and interacting with smart contracts,” Quinlivan wrote in an April 16 blog post.

These smart contract interactions include transactions across decentralized finance, digital collectibles like non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other digital asset sectors, the Santiment executive added.

Ether’s declining base layer transaction fees and reduced retail interest also caused many institutional investors to slash their Ether allocations and issue revised price outlooks for the second-largest digital asset by market capitalization.

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