2025-12-29 09:21:26

The crypto market in 2025 is indeed very divided.

On one side, it's a bloody scene—BTC has fallen over 30%, and many small coins have collapsed completely, with the "cryptocurrency is dead" voices echoing in the community. Newcomers who entered at the beginning of the year chasing the trend are the hardest hit, with some accounts shrinking by more than half, and some even uninstalling their trading apps. The sentiment in the crypto community has dropped to its lowest point since 2022.

But on the other side? Major institutions are frantically buying up assets.

This set of data clearly illustrates the situation. According to statistics, the total mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the crypto industry in 2025 have reached $8.6 billion, with 267 deals, an 18% increase year-over-year. This is nearly four times the scale of 2024 and exceeds the total of the past four years. If calculated on a broader basis, the total even surged to $12.9 billion.

The scale of several large transactions is truly shocking: a leading exchange spent 2.9 billion to acquire an options platform, setting a new record for acquisitions in the crypto industry; another top firm spent 1.5 billion to acquire a traditional futures platform, hailed as a "milestone in the fusion of TradFi and Crypto"; while a major public blockchain giant acquired Wall Street's main broker-dealer for 1.25 billion.

The market is like this—some are cutting losses, others are bottom-fishing.

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Web3ExplorerLin

· 9h ago

hypothesis: this is basically the crypto version of that ancient silk road dynamic—retail peasants getting rekt while institutional caravans quietly stack the goods. ngl the data's pretty wild tho, 86bil in m&a while retail's uninstalling apps? that's not market efficiency, that's straight up wealth transfer theater lmao

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YieldHunter

· 9h ago

honestly if you look at the data, this is just institutional accumulation disguised as market chaos lol... degens panic selling while the real players stack. seen this movie before tbh

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StakoorNeverSleeps

· 9h ago

Those who are cutting losses are getting anxious, while those buying the dip are laughing to death. This is what division looks like.

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ImpermanentLossFan

· 9h ago

The little guys are crying in the bathroom while the big players are frantically buying the dip... This is the crypto market.

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Deconstructionist

· 9h ago

The cries of cutting losses, the smiles of bottom-fishing, it's always the same old story. Retail investors really need to wake up, don't always think about getting rich overnight. Institutions are eating up, while we are still gnawing on bones. Large acquisitions keep happening, but small investors are still cutting losses, what a gap. This is the truth of the crypto market, naked and raw. When institutions are sweeping up, retail investors are just suffering heavy losses, how ironic. 29 billion, 15 billion, 12.5 billion, these big institutions are ruthless. Newcomers get wiped out first, only then do big institutions start to laugh. So, small investors will never outrun big capital, that's just the game rule. The data looks good, but I still can't understand how to make money.

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