Compiled by: Jinse Finance
Catherine Wood, a well-known Wall Street investor, and her ARK Invest have released a "Big Ideas" report at the beginning of each year since 2017, which has always attracted much attention from the market.
For the Big Ideas reports of the previous two years, please see Jinse Finance previous reports “ A quick look at the Big Ideas 2023 report: the monetary, financial and Internet revolutions are at a turning point ” and “ A quick look at the crypto section of the Big Ideas 2024 report: how institutional allocations will affect BTC ” .
On February 4, 2025, ARK Invest released the “Big Ideas 2025” report , which is 148 pages long and consists of 12 parts.
There are four areas involving encryption, namely: AI agents, Bitcoin, stablecoins, and extended blockchains.
Jinse Finance has compiled these four parts of content to reward readers.
1. AI Agents: Redefining Consumer Interactions and Business Workflows
What is an AI agent?
AI agents are expected to accelerate the adoption of digital applications and bring about a revolutionary shift in human-computer interaction.
Understanding intent: Understanding user intent through natural language.
Plan actions: Use reasoning and relevant context to plan.
Take Action: Take action with the tools to achieve your intention.
Continuous Learning: Continuously improve through iteration and continuous learning.
AI is accelerating the adoption of hardware and software
OpenAI could exceed $10 billion in revenue in 2025, becoming profitable faster than social media companies in the past decade. If the adoption of ChatGPT is an indicator, AI will drive rapid demand for a range of new technologies.
AI agents will change the way consumers search and discover
AI agents are embedded in the operating system of consumer hardware, enabling consumers to hand over all search and research work to AI, which greatly saves time. Filtered AI results will provide context for digital advertising displays. If searches shift to personal AI agents, AI-mediated advertising revenues could soar significantly. By 2030, AI advertising revenues are expected to account for more than 54% of the $1.1 trillion digital advertising market.
AI-mediated advertising should account for the largest share of digital ad revenue by 2030
If search shifts to personal AI agents, AI-mediated advertising revenues could surge. We believe AI advertising revenues could account for more than 54% of the $1.1 trillion digital advertising market by 2030.
By 2030, AI-mediated shopping could approach 25% of global reachable online sales
The increasing use of AI agents in consumer shopping will simplify product discovery, personalized recommendations, and purchasing processes. ARK research shows that by 2030, AI agents could facilitate nearly $9 trillion in online spending worldwide.
Digital wallets’ market share in e-commerce is expected to continue to grow
ARK’s research suggests that digital wallets powered by AI purchasing agents—which are taking market share from payment methods like credit and debit cards—could account for 72% of all e-commerce transactions by 2030.
Digital wallets are integrating financial services and e-commerce
The market currently values leading digital wallet platforms such as Block, Robinhood, and SoFi at $1,800 per user based on their consumer-facing businesses. Digital wallet purchasing agents are likely to become central to the shopping journey, with “one-click checkout” giving way to “one-click query purchase.”
Digital wallet shopping agents may become the core of the shopping journey
Agentic lead generation should push digital wallets to move upstream in the industry chain to grab market share in global e-commerce and digital consumption. “One-click checkout” will gradually be replaced by “one-click query and purchase”.
Purchasing smart entities will increase the enterprise value of digital wallets, especially in the e-commerce sector
Based on lead generation charge rates, AI buying agents could generate $4 billion to $20 billion in global revenue for digital wallet platforms in 2030 (ARK’s base and bullish case forecasts, respectively). AI-driven buying agents could increase the enterprise value of U.S. digital wallets by $50 to $200 per user by 2030.
In the enterprise, AI agents will improve productivity through software
Companies that deploy AI agents should be able to increase production without increasing labor, and/or optimize labor for higher-value activities. As AI advances, agents may take on a higher percentage of the workload and complete higher-value tasks independently.
The decline in AI costs will significantly affect the economic benefits of intelligent agents
OpenAI and Salesforce's new products are cost-effectively supplementing the work of human customer service representatives. Even at a fixed cost of $1 per conversation, once AI agents can handle 35% of customer service inquiries, it can save companies a lot of money. AI agents should also reduce onboarding and recruitment costs, as well as seat-based software costs, and be easier to scale than human labor.
AI is reshaping the software value chain
Coding skills of AI agents are improving rapidly, accelerating software development cycles. As the cost of creating software decreases, software production should accelerate and influence enterprise “build vs. buy” decisions, displacing legacy software companies that have been slow to adapt. As client software becomes more prevalent, growth at all layers of the software stack should accelerate, although share will shift toward the platform layer.
AI will help knowledge work take off
AI is driving a “Cambrian Explosion” in software. By 2030, the amount of software deployed per knowledge worker is expected to grow significantly as businesses invest in solutions to improve productivity. Depending on the rate of adoption, global software spending could accelerate from the 14% annual growth rate of the past decade to 18% - 48%.
2. Bitcoin
A maturing global monetary system with a robust network foundation and growing institutional adoption
Bitcoin hits new all-time high in 2024
Spot Bitcoin ETF is the most successful ETF launch in history
The spot Bitcoin ETF attracted more than $4 billion in inflows on its first trading day, setting a new record for first-day inflows for ETFs, surpassing the $1.2 billion in inflows for the first month of the gold ETF in November 2004. The inflows for the spot Bitcoin ETF far exceeded the inflows of any of the approximately 6,000 ETFs launched in the past 30 years in their first month of issuance.
After the fourth halving, Bitcoin’s inflation rate drops below gold’s long-term supply growth rate
Bitcoin’s supply growth “halved” for the fourth time in history, dropping from about 1.8% annually to about 0.9%. The halving highlights Bitcoin’s predictable monetary policy and its status as a scarce asset.
Bitcoin’s annual volatility drops to record low, while its risk-adjusted returns still outperform most major asset classes
Bitcoin hashrate hits record high despite sharp drop in miner revenue after halving
Even though the halving has reduced Bitcoin miners’ revenue by 50%, its hash rate (a measure of the network’s security) has hit an all-time high, suggesting that miners’ long-term confidence in Bitcoin remains strong.
Bitcoin's daily transaction volume hits record high
Bitcoin’s daily transaction count hit an all-time high, thanks to the launch of the Runes protocol, which facilitates the creation of fungible tokens directly on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Bitcoin Withstands Significant Selling Pressure in 2024
In January 2024, the German government seized 50,000 bitcoins associated with an online piracy organization and sold them six months later. The market successfully absorbed this supply, and the price of bitcoin subsequently rose from $53,000 to $68,000. In addition, the much-anticipated mid-year repayment of Mt. Gox creditors distributed more than 109,000 bitcoins, eliminating its biggest potential selling pressure.
More and more public companies hold Bitcoin
There are currently 74 public companies holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets. The value of Bitcoin on corporate balance sheets has increased fivefold over the past year, from $1.1 billion in 2023 to $5.5 billion in 2024.
Bitcoin’s Total Cost Basis Hits New High in 2024
In 2024, Bitcoin’s realized market value, or cost basis, increased by 86%, with its average acquisition cost reaching an all-time high of $40,980 per coin, for a total of $811.7 billion.
Bitcoin’s transaction speed and holding behavior highlight its role as a store of value
In 2024, Bitcoin's transaction velocity fell to a 14-year low, while the supply of Bitcoin held for three years or more reached an all-time high.
Bitcoin is on track to reach our 2030 price target
3. Stablecoins: Reshaping the digital asset sector
One of the fastest growing segments in the digital asset space, stablecoins are expected to surpass Mastercard and Visa in terms of total transaction value by 2024
After two years of bear market, when its market value dropped by more than 70%, the development of stablecoins is still unabated. In 2024, the annualized transaction value of stablecoins will reach 15.6 trillion US dollars, which is about 119% and 200% of Visa and Mastercard respectively. The number of transactions per month reaches 110 million, which is about 0.41% and 0.72% of the number of transactions processed by Visa and Mastercard. This means that the value of each stablecoin transaction is much higher than that of Visa and Mastercard.
Stablecoin transaction volume hits all-time high in December 2024
In December 2024, stablecoin trading volume reached a new high. Solana, Tron, Ethereum, and Base are the main blockchains driving stablecoin trading volume in 2024. In that month, the daily trading volume of stablecoins reached 27 billion US dollars, and the monthly trading volume reached 2.7 trillion US dollars, fully demonstrating the rapid development of this field.
Ethena Labs tokenizes popular niche transactions, accumulating $6 billion in 12 months
Innovation is thriving in the stablecoin space, and Ethena Labs is one of the fastest-growing projects. Despite its controversial design, the project has captured a significant share of the non-fiat-backed stablecoin market, becoming a serious competitor in this $20 billion market. By tokenizing delta-neutral positions, Ethena Labs can provide a yield of up to 20%-30% depending on market conditions, although the yield may be negative in a bear market. In its first 12 months, its total locked value reached $6 billion, and it currently accounts for 10% of Ethereum's total open interest, and is expanding delta-neutral trading for Solana and Bitcoin.
After shrinking in 2023, stablecoin supply and active addresses hit a record high in 2024
USDT dominates the stablecoin market, followed by USDC (Circle's stablecoin), which together account for 90% of the total supply. Stablecoins are "multi-chain" and have penetrated almost every major first-layer blockchain. The total supply of stablecoins is $203 billion, accounting for about 0.97% of the US M2 money supply. In December 2024, the number of active stablecoin addresses reached 23 million, a record high. In terms of monthly active addresses, the Tron network leads the way, favored in emerging markets for its low transaction fees.
As some countries reduce their holdings of US dollars, digital assets are moving closer to the US dollar
The digital asset space is experiencing "stablecoinization" and "dollarization". At the same time, China and Japan sold off large amounts of U.S. Treasuries, Saudi Arabia ended the 45-year petrodollar agreement, and the BRICS countries reduced their reliance on U.S. dollar payments by bypassing the SWIFT network. In the past, Bitcoin and Ethereum were the main bridges into the digital asset ecosystem, but in the past two years, stablecoins have taken their place and currently account for 35%-50% of total on-chain transactions. Stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar dominate, accounting for more than 98% of the supply, followed by gold-backed and euro-backed stablecoins, accounting for about 1% and 0.5%, respectively. ARK's research shows that Asian currency-backed stablecoins will also appear in the market in the future.
Stablecoins attract retail investors thanks to the low cost and high efficiency of Layer 2
Retail investors have flocked to the field due to the lower cost and more convenient stablecoin transactions provided by Layer 2, which has increased the market share of blockchains such as Arbitrum, Base and Optimism. However, large investors and institutions still mainly trade on the Ethereum mainnet. Transactions below $100 on Base and Optimism dominate, while transactions above $100 on the Ethereum mainnet are dominant.
Peer-to-peer transactions and personal wallet storage dominate the use cases of stablecoins
In the use of stablecoins, externally owned accounts (EOAs), which are standard Ethereum addresses used for peer-to-peer (P2P) trading and storage, account for 60% of USDC usage, while centralized exchanges account for 11%, bridges across Layer 2 solutions account for 7%, and decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and money markets account for 1.7% each. With the surge in decentralized finance (DeFi) usage in the coming years, DEXs, bridges, and money markets may take back market share from P2P trading. However, due to product-market fit, P2P trading and storage are more resilient in scenarios other than trading, and their usage fluctuates less with market cycles.
Four stablecoin issuers dominate digital asset revenues
In terms of revenue in the digital asset space, a handful of stablecoin issuers dominate. Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC) account for 60% of the revenue generated by the top five networks and applications. In the second half of 2024, stablecoins such as USDT, USDC, DAI/USDS and USDE generated a total of $3.35 billion in revenue, an annualized revenue of $6.7 billion. Among them, Tether, which has less than 200 employees, reported a profit of $5.2 billion in the first half of 2024, covering USDT and other products and services, as well as unrealized gains on digital assets, making it one of the most capital-efficient companies in history.
Tether’s financial performance is amazing
Tether has fewer than 200 employees, compared to more than 300,000 each for JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway. In the first half of 2024, the only institutions in the S&P Financial Select Industry Index with net income exceeding Tether are Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.
Stablecoins increase demand for U.S. Treasuries
Amid the global trend of deglobalization and de-dollarization, stablecoins may drive stable demand for U.S. Treasuries. As of December 2024, Tether and Circle have become the 20th largest holder of U.S. Treasuries. In populous emerging markets such as Brazil, Nigeria, Turkey, Indonesia, and India, individuals and businesses use stablecoins as a means of storing value, a method of payment, and a cross-border currency. Stablecoins may become an effective way to export dollars.
Stablecoin issuers transfer risk-free interest rates to users
Circle and Tether have earned billions of dollars in revenue from U.S. Treasuries and other securities used as collateral for stablecoins. However, in 2024, due to competition and market demand, stablecoins operating outside the United States began to return most of their interest income to users. Although Circle and Tether are unlikely to follow this trend immediately, interest-bearing stablecoins have become the fastest growing category in the stablecoin market.
By 2030, stablecoins could grow significantly, from 0.17% of global M2 supply to 0.9%
The current supply of stablecoins is $203 billion, accounting for 0.17% of the global M2 supply. It is expected that by 2030, its supply may grow to $1.4 trillion, accounting for 0.9% . If so, stablecoins will become the 13th largest currency in circulation in the world, ranking after the Spanish currency and before the Dutch currency.
Blockchain Expansion: Dramatically Reducing Costs and Opening Up New Use Cases at the Application Layer
Smart Contract Map Navigation
As the digital asset space grows increasingly complex, smart contracts are driving innovation in a growing number of industries. From user-centric games and SocialFi applications, to advanced financial instruments such as derivatives and structured products, to decentralized infrastructure networks that power wireless connectivity and energy storage, the ecosystem is rapidly evolving to meet diverse and dynamic needs.
In pursuit of lower fees and higher efficiency, applications are either deployed on the high-throughput first-layer blockchain Solana or on Ethereum’s second-layer scaling solution.
Ethereum EIP 4844 upgrade reduces transaction fees by 10 times
Ethereum's EIP 4844 upgrade is one of its most important technical upgrades to date, enabling faster and cheaper transactions on the second layer network, reducing transaction costs by 10 times and stimulating the use of related applications. The EIP 4844 upgrade is an important milestone in the Ethereum roadmap, and is expected to increase the number of transactions per second (TPS) by 250 to 1,250 times from the current approximately 400 transactions per second to 100,000-500,000 transactions. So far, more than 200 second-layer projects have been launched, and more are in the pipeline.
Declining transaction costs drive Layer 2 development
The sharp drop in transaction costs has led to a significant increase in the activity of Layer 2, attracting a large number of users to transfer from the Ethereum mainnet. Among the daily active addresses conducting transactions in the Ethereum ecosystem, Layer 2 accounts for 85%. In 2024, Layer 2 activity has increased the number of daily transactions on Ethereum by 400%, from 3 million to 15 million.
Base becomes fastest growing Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain
Within a year of its launch, Base surpassed all other Ethereum Layer 2 solutions in terms of growth rate and market share. In 2024, Base accounted for 46% of Ethereum Layer 2 active users and 63% of fees generated. Its total locked value reached $15 billion, with more than 300 applications deployed, making an important contribution to Coinbase's cash flow.
Although many transactions have migrated to Layer 2, Ethereum Mainnet still dominates for high-value storage and settlement
Institutions, high-value users, and large cryptocurrency holders primarily settle transactions on the Ethereum mainnet, which has unparalleled unit economics, measured by total value locked (TVL) and decentralized exchange (DEX) per-user transaction volume.
As DeFi surges to all-time highs, DEXs challenge centralized exchanges in both spot and derivatives trading
When Binance reached a settlement of more than $4 billion with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2024 and its CEO resigned, some of the market share of centralized exchanges (CEXs) was taken away by decentralized exchanges (DEXs) From January to the peak, the spot and derivative trading volume of decentralized finance (DeFi) almost doubled, and the market share increased from 8% and 3% to 14% and 8% respectively, reaching an all-time high. During this period, Binance's market share among centralized exchanges fell from 62% to 35%.
Smart contract-driven exchanges are 5 to 10 times more efficient than their centralized counterparts
Decentralized exchanges like Uniswap, Aerodrome, and Raydium leverage the efficiency of small and agile teams to develop and maintain core protocol infrastructure. They have a huge efficiency advantage over centralized exchanges, with only one-tenth the number of employees. Binance has the largest number of employees in the centralized exchange field, with about 9,000 employees.
Liquid staking and re-staking protocols are the go-to solution for staking and re-staking ETH
Liquid staking and re-staking have become the preferred methods of generating yield on Ethereum. Due to their interest-bearing properties, liquidity, and accessibility, they now account for 40% of Ethereum staked. The demand for re-staking staked Ethereum to increase yield has given rise to re-staking platforms, which currently hold approximately 5.5 million Ethereum, or 17% of staked Ethereum.
Led by Polymarket, the market is predicted to become a breakthrough consumer application in 2024
In 2024, Polymarket had more than 3 million users and a monthly trading volume of $1.2 billion, with elections and political events driving 70% of its business. After a brief pullback after the election, its daily unique users have recovered to 50,000, and trading volume has also rebounded as sports events have become the most important category.
Solana has higher throughput than Ethereum due to its high-performance design and strategic trade-offs
Thanks to the second layer network and EIP 4844 upgrade, Ethereum's throughput has more than doubled to about 200 transactions per second (TPS). Despite this, Solana still performs better, with an average throughput of about 800 TPS. Solana's success is based on a series of trade-offs, including more expensive hardware requirements and parallel transaction processing. Solana's new Firedancer client may increase its throughput to hundreds of thousands of TPS.
Solana gains market share across multiple metrics thanks to retail adoption
After falling to a bear market low of $8 in 2023, Solana has made a significant comeback relative to other first-layer networks. Its daily active users, revenue, number of transactions, and total value locked (TVL) have reached all-time highs or increased by an order of magnitude. Solana is the only first-layer network that competes with Ethereum and Bitcoin on metrics such as daily active addresses and revenue.
Solana and Base Lead in Developer Adoption and Attention
Solana leads with 7,625 developers among the 39,139 new crypto developers in 2024, surpassing the Ethereum mainnet. Base has a total of 4,287 developers, ranking sixth in the overall ranking, surpassing Arbitrum and Starknet to become Ethereum's leading second-layer solution.
