Data & Insights: Prediction Markets and Perp DEXs in 2025

Perp DEXs in 2025

• 2025 was the year of decentralized perpetuals exchanges (perp DEXs) as they facilitated over $6.9 trillion in trading volume for the year.
  • The most notable metric for the sector as a whole is the DEX-to-CEX futures volume ratio, which tracks DEX futures volume relative to CEX futures volume.
  • The ratio has tripled this year, growing from less than 5% at the start of the year to over 17% by year-end, showcasing how on-chain venues are successfully siphoning liquidity and activity from centralized incumbents, driven by self-custody preferences and frictionless onboarding.
• As the sector matured over the year, the previous monopoly-like market dynamic slowly began to break down as well.
  • Hyperliquid dominated the first three quarters, maintaining a market share of over 60% throughout that time, while facilitating nearly $3 trillion in volume for the year.
  • However, Q4 saw a regime change as competitors Lighter and Aster aggressively brought down Hyperliquid’s monopoly.
  • Since then, the perp DEX landscape has shifted into an oligopoly, with Hyperliquid’s share at 25%, Lighter at 23% and Aster at 20%.
  • This equalization suggests that as feature parity is reached across platforms, traders have become more platform-agnostic, rotating capital based more on incentives and fee structures rather than outright loyalty to a specific platform.
  • With Lighter’s token launch looming and pre-TGE incentives ending, the protocol faces a pivotal liquidity test as the coming weeks will reveal whether Lighter can achieve post-token expansion similar to what Hyperliquid did, or if its recent market share gains were merely a function of transient airdrop farming.
• Ultimately, the Hyperliquid-Lighter rivalry showcases fundamental divergences in their respective strategies.
  • Hyperliquid, in addition to its own futures platform, looks to be positioning itself as a liquidity layer and backend infrastructure for an ecosystem of third-party applications with HIP-3.
  • Conversely, Lighter’s strategy seems to be more vertical, pursuing a consumer-first environment with its tiered fee structure (where its retail fees are 0%) to ignite a self-reinforcing loop of retail flow and market maker participation.

Prediction Markets in 2025

• Alongside perp DEXs, prediction markets have been the standout sector of the year, generating over $32 billion in annual trading volume.
  • While growth was fairly stagnant in H1, the sector effectively went vertical in September.
  • From September to December, monthly volumes on Polymarket tripled, while Kalshi volumes grew by 5x.
  • With this, the ratio of prediction market volume to centralized exchange (CEX) spot volume has grown from 0.03% to 0.73% this year.
  • This suggests prediction markets have begun to attract meaningful speculative attention from traditional crypto venues.
• However, there is a specific nuance to be considered regarding these figures.
  • While Kalshi currently claims the lion's share of activity with nearly 75% of total volume, their data is based on self-reported figures.
  • Polymarket, conversely, trails in volume, but their data is fully transparent and verifiable on-chain.
• Alongside volume, open interest (OI) on both platforms has grown steadily throughout the year.
  • Combined OI across both platforms stands at over $690 million, split evenly among the two as their OI inches back toward the all-time highs seen during the 2024 US election cycle.

BTC ETFs in 2025

• The institutionalization of Bitcoin accelerated meaningfully in 2025, with spot ETFs serving as the year’s primary structural catalyst. 
  • Across the 12 products, spot ETFs generated approximately $880 billion in trading volume as of November 2025, a 37% increase from $646 billion in 2024. 
  • Net inflows reached $16 billion for the year, and institutional allocators represented a growing share of incremental demand, reflecting the asset class’s deepening penetration into traditional portfolios. 
  • Despite turbulent Bitcoin price performance, total ETF AUM rose 16% to $120 billion by November, underscoring the stickiness of institutional flows.
• Bitcoin ETFs anchored much of the market as we navigated uncertain terms onchain. The stability is likely to continue benefiting the broader ecosystem in the future, while providing catalysts as more institutions are able to allocate to crypto through the ETF wrapper.

DAT-mania

• A defining development of 2025 was the emergence of digital asset treasury (DAT) companies as a major new institutional pathway into crypto. 
  • These publicly traded entities allocate substantial portions of their balance sheets to cryptocurrencies, often abandoning or deprioritizing prior business lines to focus exclusively on accumulating digital assets. 
• While Strategy pioneered the model in 2020, 2025 marked the first year in which the structure scaled into a full-fledged market category. Capital raised for DAT-style treasury purchases surged from $11 billion in 2024 to nearly $30 billion in 2025.
• As of November, over 100 DAT companies were active, spanning a wide range of assets well beyond Bitcoin. These companies have enabled investors to gain leveraged public-market access while also giving some tokens a much-needed liquidity boost. 
• As we head into the new year, it seems the momentum for DATs has cooled, with many trading below their net asset value. We’re watching closely to see if any of the DATs will be forced into selling their crypto. 

Stablecoins in 2025

• Stablecoins crossed a significant adoption threshold in 2025, evolving from a utility in the crypto market to a core component of global payment infrastructure. 
  • With total circulating supply sitting just under $300 billion, payment processors, fintech platforms, and card networks accelerated integration efforts and expanded stablecoin-native products at unprecedented scale.
• Onchain, stablecoin activity reached all-time highs in 2025. Ethereum stablecoin volume reached $30 trillion on an unadjusted basis, a 75% increase from 2024. Adjusted stablecoin transaction volume, which filters out bot activity and artificially inflationary transactions, reached $11.8 trillion, up 89% year over year. 
  • This year, we also saw the highly anticipated IPO of Circle and Tether’s commitment to officially launching in the US. This growth will likely carry into 2026 as adoption continues globally with many catalysts still to come.