The cryptocurrency exchange Binance has published its monthly report on the state of the crypto industry, revealing very interesting data.
From the analyses, it emerges that the crypto sector grew in December, despite some difficulties on the speculation front in the second part of the month.
Bitcoin has reached a new high at 108,000 dollars, meanwhile the rest of the market has been driven by significant changes.
Let’s see everything in detail below.
The report by Binance on the price of Bitcoin
The Binance report “Monthly Market Insight” focuses in the first part on the trend of the crypto market, particularly on the performance of Bitcoin.
In the month of December, the overall capitalization of all crypto assets reached a peak at 3.91 trillion dollars, driven by the growing institutional adoption.
Bitcoin has been an integral part of this rise, with its prices reaching a new ATH at 108,000 dollars.
In the second half of December, there were also difficulties: both BTC and altcoins felt the weight of end-of-year sales, closing the month with a -4.5%.
The reason for the market retracement is to be found in the monetary policies of the FED, which, even in the face of a 25 basis point rate cut, had to contend with the concerns raised by Jerome Powell.
Despite this, the report from Binance labels December as a rather positive month: Bitcoin closed the year with an excellent +123.4% increasing its popularity.
This result has made it the seventh global asset by market capitalization, ahead of Saudi Aramco and silver.
Michael Saylor with his recurring DCA on Bitcoin has inspired many other companies to replicate the same strategy, triggering a new potential narrative for 2025.
Finally, even the ETF spot BTC have started to smile again with new inflows, highlighting the tenacity of the cryptocurrency and strengthening the catalyst towards new price targets.
Evolution of the stablecoin landscape: Ethena’s USDe becomes the third stablecoin by market capitalization
The Binance report does not focus solely on Bitcoin but also looks at the rest of the sector, with an important focus on the niche of stablecoin.
The largest cryptocurrency exchange observed how Ethena’s USDe significantly increased its market capitalization in the last month.
This resource, driven by the high yield offered to stakers, managed to rise to 5.9 billion dollars, reaching the podium in the ranking of the major stable.
The rise of USDe in the market, according to the report by Binance, has been such that it has even surpassed rivals DAI and USDS, despite being launched just a year ago.
We remind you that currently the synthetic dollar of Ethena offers a yield of 10% in addition to an integration with the major DeFi protocols like Aave.
Contributing to its success is also the excellent work of Ethena Lbas, which in December announced the launch of a new project supported by the BUIDL fund of BlackRock.
This new offering provides users with a distinct product characterized by a different set of risks, while at the same time allowing Ethena to redirect the supporting assets of USDe during prolonged periods of negative funding rates.
At the peaks of the stablecoin market, above USDe, we find USDT by Tether and USDC by Circle.
The first reigns supreme with a capitalization of 137 billion dollars while the second maintains a wide gap from the other competitors with 45 billion dollars.
Analysis of spot and perpetual volumes of DEX: all-time highs in December
Another very interesting topic covered in the Binance report concerns the trend of spot and perpetual volumes of decentralized exchanges.
In December, this metric reached new all-time highs at 356 billion dollars, thanks to the flourishing trading activity recorded during the month.
In total, trading on perps dex has increased by over 370% since the beginning of the year, driven by the great speculative opportunities offered by the new protocols.
First of all, Hyperliquid offered a giant economic incentive to its users, who capitalized on record profits with the HYPE token airdrop.
Beyond Hyperliquid, however, Binance notes in its report that a large portion of the spot volumes have been driven by Solana-based memecoins, through the exchange Raydium.
The mania of speculation continued at crazy levels even in December, following record numbers during the previous months.
Very interesting to note how the relationship between decentralized perpetual volume and centralized perpetual volume has reached a record level of over 10%.
Even though the ratio between DEX and CEX volumes remains just below its all-time high of 11.8%, this growth represents a milestone for the future of DeFi.
To mention also how in the month of December the lending and liquid staking protocols reached new TVL highs, respectively of 55 and 71 billion dollars.
The Binance report states that in the coming months this growth could continue under the new pro-crypto administration of Trump.
Binace Report and the future of artificial intelligence: the narrative of AI agents
Finally, the Binance report focuses on a new hot trend that could have a strong impact in 2025, namely that of AI agents.
For those who do not know, an AI agent is an autonomous software capable of planning, executing tasks, and working towards a defined goal without human intervention.
These differ from bots in terms of overall scope, level of autonomy, interaction capability, collaboration, and self-reflection.
In the last month, the main AI agents’ tokens have reached very high valuations on the wave of strong interest from speculators.
This narrative was initiated by Truth Terminal with the introduction of the GOAT token which exploded to 470 million dollars.
Sometimes there have been cases, like VIRTUALS and AI16Z, where billion-dollar capitalizations were reached, well above the expectations at the beginning of the month.
FARTCOIN, TURBO; AIXBT, ZEREBRO, ACT, GAME, and GRIFFAIN have also earned a place of merit in the ranking of the major crypto tokens.
Binance observes how the market of AI agents continues to grow after these stimuli, with a growing number of entertainment agents and other types.
The report from the exchange suggests that this could be a very hot narrative in 2025, with tokens linked to this sector potentially offering very interesting bull performances.
