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- 🥛 Stablecoins flipped Visa in 2024! 🤯
🥛 Stablecoins flipped Visa in 2024! 🤯
What we learned from Bitwise’s Q1 crypto market review
Chevy Cassar
April 18, 2025
Today’s edition is brought to you by EarnPark – a lending platform offering high-yield products on crypto assets.
GM. This is Milk Road, the 'Now That’s What I Call Music' of crypto news — we only bring you the hits!
Here’s what we got for you today:
✍️ 6 takeaways from Bitwise’s crypto market review
🎙️ The Milk Road Show: The Mind Behind Ethereum: What Drives Vitalik Buterin
🍪 Supermarkets are now accepting Bitcoin
6 BIG TAKEAWAYS FROM BITWISE’S Q1 2025 CRYPTO MARKET REVIEW (P1) 🤯
We clocked 6 HOLY SH*T moments while reading the Bitwise Q1 crypto market report…
→ 5 of them are great!
→ 1 is honestly kinda worrying…
(The culprits behind the worrying data? SBF, Do Kwon, and Sam Altman.)
Here’s everything you need to know. 👇
1/ Stablecoins vs. Visa
Visa has been around for 67 years, with an estimated 4.3B+ cards in use worldwide – that’s more than half the global population!
Meanwhile, stablecoins have been around for 11 years, and are held across ~158.3M wallets.
Now, despite Visa’s 56-year head start – stablecoins somehow racked up MORE transaction volume than Visa did in 2024!
That’s product-market-fit (PMF) right there. 👇
2/ Bitcoin Mined vs. Bitcoin Purchased by ETPs
Bitcoin’s value is a game of scarcity.
As long as $BTC’s demand outstrips its available supply – number go up.
Since launch, the demand for $BTC from US spot ETPs (aka: ETFs) alone has outpaced mining output by more than 2x! 💪
Remember: the demand for $BTC is likely only going to increase over time – while the supply is capped and daily mining output is only going to go down.
(Our technical analysis? This is v bullish.)
3/ Polymarket PMF: confirmed
One of the big questions our team was asking in Q4 of last year:
“Is Polymarket going to die after the election?”
Well, we have our answer...
NOPE.
They’re still putting up numbers and showing massive growth between Q1 ‘24 and Q1 ‘25! 👇
Ready for the holy sh*t moment that got us a little worried?
Keep scrolling to the next article. 👇
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6 BIG TAKEAWAYS FROM BITWISE’S Q1 2025 CRYPTO MARKET REVIEW (P2) 🤯
Alright, where were we?
Oh yeah…our moment of concern.
4/ Blockchain developer count is dropping (long-term)
Month-to-month fluctuations in developer count? We rarely worry about those kinds of peaks/troughs – because over the long-term, the trend has a habit of moving up and to the right.
At least, it did…
It looks like the long-term upward trend broke in Q3 ‘22.
Our crackpot theory: the Luna and FTX collapses scared off many blockchain developers & investors → they ran into the open arms of the AI industry.
5/ Total Bitcoin held by governments
Alright – back to more bullish news!
Global governments now collectively own 2.49% of the total $BTC supply.
🥇 1st is the US w/ 198,012 $BTC
🥈 2nd is China w/ 190,000 $BTC
🥉 3rd is the UK w/ 61,245 $BTC
The holy sh*t moment?
Global governments own 2.49% of the $BTC supply…
Michael Saylor / Strategy owns 2.53%! 🤯
(Is this too much power for one man? Should we be worried?)
6/ Q1 2025 was the quarter of ‘peace deals’ between the SEC and crypto
It’s one thing to hear about these lawsuits getting dropped individually, and a whole other thing to see them lined up together!
What a monumental change Q1 represented as far as “crypto’s legal status in the US” goes. 👇
Alright, that’s everything that we could sanely fit into a single newsletter.
There’s way more than 6 big moments in the report itself – so if you want to dig more out for yourself, check out the report here!
If anyone needs us we’ll be working on our Michael Saylor fan fiction, where he starts his own egalitarian nation/government on a remote island once $BTC hits $1M.
(Working title: Come Sayl Away.)
Want front-row access to Avalanche’s next chapter? Head to Avalanche Summit in London for all the exciting announcements!*
Supermarkets are now accepting Bitcoin. Spar, a supermarket in Switzerland, now accepts Bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network.
Are you buying Ethereum at current prices? A dormant whale just scooped up $16M worth of $ETH at an average price of $1585.
The U.S. vs China saga continues. In today’s episode, China has stopped buying liquefied gas from the U.S. - the list just keeps growing.
We’re hosting meetups, baaaby! In case you’re heading to Consensus Toronto or Permissionless in New York, come grab a beer with the Milk Road crew. We’ll see you there!
Whether you’re interested in trading spot, futures or even options - OKX is the spot. They’ve got something for everyone.**
*this is sponsored content.
**this is partner content.
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