As per the latest Binance Research report, due in part to possible policy measures like a national crypto reserve and stablecoin regulations, the cryptocurrency market recovered from its December decline and reached a high of US$3.76T in January 2025. But when DeepSeek, a new AI model, surpassed ChatGPT as the most downloaded app, late-month progress stalled, leading to a 2% drop in both the cryptocurrency and U.S. markets. Amid worries about possible U.S. tariff measures, early February witnessed increased market volatility that affected risk assets worldwide, including cryptocurrency. The next monthly report will go into more depth about these trends.
New crypto ETF registrations have surged as a result of the U.S. administration’s shift to President Donald Trump and pro-crypto Republicans, as well as the resignation of previous SEC Chair Gary Gensler. In the United States, there are now 47 active filings covering 16 different asset classes, including memecoins. Token-based ETFs have gained traction due to fresh confidence about digital asset regulation, although timelines are unpredictable since the new approval structure is still being developed.
More than 37 million tokens have been created as a result of the introduction of token launchpads and the memecoin frenzy, with estimates that will surpass 100 million by the end of the year. Because of the dispersed capital caused by this expansion, tokens find it more difficult to maintain prices and reach high values. The proliferation of new tokens discourages long-term holding, shortens attention spans, and increases speculation. The top 100 tokens account for almost 98% of the entire cryptocurrency market capitalization, whereas the majority of tokens have very little market cap despite the spike.
Every month since October 2024, Solana’s DEX volumes have surpassed Ethereum’s, with January volumes surpassing Ethereum by more than 200%. The Solana-to-Ethereum DEX volume ratio actually hit a record high of more than 300% in January. The introduction of the $TRUMP and $MELANIA memecoins in January further enhanced Solana’s success, which has been fueled by its leadership in the memecoin and AI agent narratives.
Major protocols including Jito, Raydium, Meteora, and Pump.fun have contributed to and maintained high fee generation, making Solana one of the few chains in the DeFi sector to demonstrate growth in 2025. The acquisition of the memecoin app Moonshot by Jupiter, a prominent DEX aggregator, is one of the noteworthy highlights. The debut of their new Jupnet liquidity aggregation network and the announcement of their buyback-and-burn program have also garnered a lot of interest.
The DeFAI sector closed January with a -10% return, after a strong start. Nonetheless, with 44% of Kaito’s Narrative Mindshare, the total AI narrative domination is still strong. Driven by open-source advancements, AI tokens symbolize the fast growth of conventional AI innovation. Monitoring the trading trends of these globally tradable AI tokens could yield important information about retail interest and the evolving AI landscape as the global AI race heats up.
