Crypto’s 12 biggest stories of 2025: From Trump’s policies to bitcoin all-time highs, OG whale moves, a DAT craze and the $1.4 billion Bybit hack
There's always something going on in the crypto space — and this year was no exception.From new U.S. crypto policies to OG bitcoin whale selling, the DAT craze, and the largest-ever hack, here are 12 of the top stories from 2025 to enjoy this Christmas.Trump signs executive order to pardon Ross UlbrichtTo kick things off in January, President Trump granted Ross Ulbricht a full and unconditional pardon just one day after entering office, fulfilling a core election campaign promise to the industry and igniting a wave of celebration across the Bitcoin community.Trump's move cast Ulbricht's harsh double-life-plus-40-year sentence as a symbol of government overreach while elevating his broader crypto agenda into the spotlight.The pardon capped years of pressure from OG Bitcoiners who credit Ulbricht with shaping Bitcoin's early trajectory, who also urged the president to keep his other crypto election pledges — including appointing a more crypto-friendly Securities and Exchange Commission Chair, ending "Operation Choke Point 2.0," and turning the U.S. into a bitcoin mining "powerhouse."Bitcoin strategic reserveTrump's first crypto-related executive order came within a few days of his inauguration on Jan. 20, creating a "President's Working Group on Digital Asset Markets" chaired by White House crypto czar David Sacks — tasked with developing a federal regulatory framework for digital assets and working to evaluate the creation of a "strategic national digital assets stockpile."The president accelerated this work on March 6, signing another executive order to establish a U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, created from the estimated 200,000 BTC already owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil proceedings, minus those that still need to be returned to victims of crime.Additionally, Trump directed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, provided they have no incremental costs to American taxpayers. Sen. Cynthia Lummis reintroduced her bill to create a strategic bitcoin reserve shortly afterward, outlining a plan to acquire one million bitcoin over five years that is still meandering around Congress.US House votes to move forward with stablecoin GENIUS, crypto market structure billsIn July, House lawmakers advanced the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act and the broader Clarity Act legislation after a stalled procedural vote, setting the stage for the first major overhaul of crypto regulation in years.Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law shortly afterward, providing the nation's inaugural stablecoin framework, while the Clarity Act headed to the Senate, where Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott aims for a floor vote in early 2026.The Senate is still negotiating its own market-structure approach amid partisan friction and competing drafts, leaving Clarity's final shape dependent on bipartisan compromise.Senate votes to repeal controversial IRS ruleIn March, the Senate voted 70 to 28 to repeal a late-Biden IRS rule that would have forced DeFi front-end operators to collect user data like traditional brokers, sending the measure to Trump, who then signed it in April.Crypto industry groups celebrated the rollback as a crucial win for privacy and innovation, arguing the rule would have pushed decentralized technologies offshore and saddled developers with overreaching reporting mandates.Democrats were split on the issue, with some warning that Republicans were weakening the IRS, while ultimate bipartisan support positioned the move to become the first crypto-related measure Trump signed into law.SEC approves new exchange listing standards, fast-tracking crypto ETF listingsIn September, the SEC approved new exchange listing standards for crypto ETFs on an accelerated basis, clearing a fast track that dramatically shortened the time to market for spot investment products tied to digital assets.The decision removed the need for lengthy 19b-4 reviews for qualifying funds, cutting the approval window from as long as 240 days to as little as 75 days and widening the pipeline for dozens of pending crypto ETFs.New crypto-friendly SEC Chair Paul Atkins framed the shift as a move to boost investor choice and streamline access to digital asset products, with spot ETFs from various issuers tracking Solana, Litecoin, XRP, Dogecoin, and HBAR following shortly after.SEC and Ripple end years-long legal battle, leaving XRP ruling intactIn August, the SEC and Ripple agreed to drop their appeals in the Second Circuit, ending the years-long legal fight and leaving Judge Torres' 2023 ruling — that Ripple's retail XRP trades did not constitute securities transactions but its institutional investment contract sales did — as the final, unchallenged judgment.Both sides absorbed their own legal costs, closing a headline case that has shaped the industry's understanding of token sales and delivering the regulatory clarity Ripple says it fought years and spent millions to secure.A few months later, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the U.S. won't return to the Gensler-era hostility toward crypto ever again, arguing the political landscape has shifted permanently as he pressed for equal access to financial infrastructure and renewed momentum for federal market-structure legislation.Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen sells $140 million in XRPA month earlier, Ripple was also at the center of one of the most read stories of the year after an address tied to co-founder Chris Larsen moved 50 million XRP in just seven days, routing roughly $140 million to exchange-linked wallets and parking the rest in two freshly created wallets as XRP hit all-time highs over $3.65.Onchain sleuth ZachXBT said Larsen-associated wallets still controlled about 2.81 billion XRP worth nearly $9 billion at the time, underscoring the heavy concentration of supply among Ripple's early insiders.The transfers came days after Larsen moved nearly $30 million in XRP to Coinbase, though XRP's rally has since cooled substantially during the broader market downturn.Dormant OG bitcoin whales wake upAmid bitcoin's move toward a series of fresh all-time highs and back down again this year, OG BTC whales ramped up their activity — some after as long as 14 years of dormancy — taking advantage of improved liquidity and regulatory conditions to offload billions of dollars in bitcoin, and contributing substantial sell pressure that offset ETF and DAT demand.In July, Galaxy Digital sold off more than 80,000 BTC, valued at over $9 billion at the time, to a Satoshi-era investor related to the client's estate planning requirements, though the market absorbed the large, relatively fast sale well.In September, another bitcoin OG significantly rotated from BTC to ETH. The wallet, which initially held over $5 billion in bitcoin, amassed nearly $4 billion in Ethereum within weeks.Barstool founder Dave Portnoy promotes 'JAILSTOOL' token in response to backlash from memecoin tradesIn a year marred with memecoin controversy, from the president's Official Trump token to Argentine leader Javier Milei's Libra debacle, a backlash over Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy's memecoin trading activities garnered the most interest.Portnoy triggered the backlash after touting a series of volatile memecoin trades to his 3.5 million followers, prompting accusations that he was dumping on retail as tokens he hyped rocketed to eight-figure market caps before crashing.He responded by promoting yet another new memecoin called JAILSTOOL, buying more than 50 million of the tokens while insisting his behavior was transparent, doubling down on the spectacle as critics pointed to his long history of chaotic crypto promotion.Bybit confirms hack as over $1.4 billion worth of ETH leaves walletsBack in February, hackers drained more than $1.4 billion in ETH from Bybit's Ethereum cold wallet after tricking its multisig signers into approving a malicious contract change that handed the attacker full control.The thief rapidly dispersed the stolen ETH and liquid-staking tokens across dozens of new addresses and DEX swaps, marking the largest crypto exchange hack in dollar terms and dwarfing past breaches at Coincheck, Mt. Gox, and FTX.Bybit stressed it remained fully solvent despite the unprecedented loss, even as researchers estimated roughly 75% of its users' ETH deposits were syphoned.Binance pays $283 million in compensation following historic deleveraging eventThings were looking rosy as bitcoin hit an all-time high of around $126,000 on Oct. 6, but just a few days later, the crypto market was hit by a historic deleveraging event that liquidated at least $20 billion in positions within hours, with reverberations throughout the rest of the year.Binance found itself at the center of the chaos, paying out $283 million in compensation to users after three Binance Earn assets — USDe, BNSOL, and WBETH — violently depegged during the crash, while insisting the broader market wipeout triggered the dislocations rather than the other way around.The exchange blamed years-old limit orders and thin liquidity for extreme prints in tokens like ATOM and IOTX, pledged structural fixes to its pricing indexes, and said it remained fully solvent.Strategy's accumulates over 3% of bitcoin supply as DAT craze fizzlesLeading bitcoin treasury company Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) continued its aggressive accumulation of the foremost cryptocurrency throughout the year, topping 3% of bitcoin's total 21 million supply and now holding a balance sheet of 671,268 BTC.Funnily enough, it was a pause to Strategy's regular weekly buy schedule in July that caught the greatest attention of its 2025 escapades, but timestamped peak hype for the DAT company craze that fizzled almost as quickly as it took off.While the number of bitcoin treasury companies has increased to around 200, the value of many of the cohort's shares is down substantially from those summer highs, and their market cap-to-net asset value ratios have sharply contracted. Strategy's common stock, though weathering the storm better than most, is down 64% since, with its mNAV dropping below 1 — meaning the company is now worth less than the value of the bitcoin it holds.Disclaimer: This article was produced with the assistance of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and reviewed and edited by our editorial team.Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.