Author: Deep Tide TechFlow
It's the end of the year again, and it's foreseeable that major institutions' 2026 crypto predictions and outlooks will be released in the coming month.
However, before looking at new predictions, it might be worthwhile to review what these institutions said last year; after all, anyone can make predictions, but being accurate is the real skill.
Looking back at the end of 2024, market sentiment was high, BTC had just broken through 100,000 USD, and everyone's predictions were generally optimistic:
For instance, BTC was projected to hit 200,000, the market cap of stablecoins was expected to double, AI agents were set to ignite on-chain activities, and crypto unicorns were clustering for IPOs... Now, a year has passed, have those predictions come true?
We have sifted through various prediction reports from last year to select a few representative institutions and individuals to review one by one and see who had a higher prediction accuracy.
1. VanEck: accuracy rate 10%, only correctly predicted the establishment of a strategic reserve for Bitcoin
VanEck gave 10 predictions for the end of 2024, with the only one hitting being the strategic reserve of Bitcoin.
The other 9 are all empty, and most are not small deviations, but rather order of magnitude errors, such as predicting that crypto would peak in Q1 with Bitcoin reaching $180k and hitting new highs by the end of the year; in reality, the timing and price targets are completely opposite.
Secondly, the market scale predictions are overly optimistic. The predicted funding inflow for tokenized securities is $50 billion, while the actual amount is about $30-35 billion; DeFi TVL predicted at $200 billion, while the actual amount is approximately $120-130 billion; NFT trading volume predicted at $30 billion, while the actual estimate is $5-6.5 billion.
Overall, VanEck's judgment on policy direction is quite accurate, but there is a systematic overestimation of the on-chain economic scale.
2. Bitwise: accuracy rate 50%, correct on the general direction but wrong on price predictions
Bitwise made 10 predictions, hitting 5, mainly concentrated in the regulatory and institutional adoption fields; price and scale predictions are also systematically overestimated.
Policies and institutional adoption were fully hit. Coinbase and MicroStrategy entering the U.S. stock index became reality; the first year of crypto IPOs was fulfilled, with multiple crypto companies going public; the number of countries holding BTC increased from 9 to nearly 30.
All price targets have missed: the predicted prices for BTC, ETH, and SOL are far higher than the actual performances of these tokens this year. Coinbase's stock price of $250 is 65% away from the $700 target. The estimated tokenization of RWA is $50 billion, which obviously also belongs to the category of overestimation.
Overall, Bitwise has a keen sense of policy and accurately grasps the rhythm of regulatory shifts and institutional adoption.
3. Coinbase: accuracy rate nearly 100%, only stating direction without mentioning price
Coinbase's predictions are divided into two categories: 'macro' and 'disruptive', mostly directional judgments rather than precise numbers, belonging to trend foresight.
Some core verifiable predictions are as follows:
Other predictions were generally correct in direction but difficult to quantify:
You can find that this company's predictions clearly avoid specific price targets, focusing on policy turning points and industry trends. As a result, all core prediction directions are hit.
The regulatory shift has been fully validated: the prediction of the 'most pro-crypto Congress in history' bringing benefits and more asset ETFs being approved; the reality is indeed so.
The general direction for stablecoins and DeFi is correct: the prediction of explosive growth in stablecoins and their expansion into commercial payments indeed saw Mastercard announce support for USDC/PYUSD/USDG in June this year, Coinbase's payment platform integrating with Shopify, and Stripe launching USDC subscription payments;
Predicting the revival of DeFi, the reality is that DeFi TVL reached $120 billion, close to a three-year high since May 2022.
This strategy of 'only stating the direction and not the point' may lack topic appeal, but in hindsight, it is the most robust and less likely to be contradicted.
4. Galaxy Research: accuracy rate 26%, almost all data-related predictions were wrong
Galaxy's researchers gave a total of 23 predictions, which is the most quantified and has the most entries among all institutions.
Looking back, the policy prediction team performed excellently (100% hit rate), while price and market scale predictions were almost all wrong. Especially the prediction that DOGE would break $1 is now clearly overly optimistic.
In addition, Galaxy's predictions regarding ecosystem development are quite good. For instance, the prediction that most mining companies would transition to AI and high-performance computing is indeed a significant trend in this year's AI boom.
When there are many predictions and the granularity is fine, even professional research institutions may not have everything go as expected; the market did not move as everyone anticipated.
5. Hashkey: accuracy rate 70%, overly optimistic about price predictions
Overall, HashKey's predictions are quite accurate regarding the progress of regulatory compliance (ETFs, stablecoin legislation) and changes in the ecosystem structure (DEX rise, L2 differentiation), but they remain overly optimistic about price cycles.
Interestingly, this prediction also reflects the sentiments of the crypto community at that time.
When HashKey Group released its top ten market predictions for 2025, nearly 50,000 community users began voting from the sixteen hot predictions summarized by HashKey researchers, analysts, and traders;
Results show that 50% of voters are optimistic about the prediction that "Bitcoin will break $300,000, Ethereum will exceed $8,000, and the total market value of crypto will reach $10 trillion."
And the prediction with the highest voting probability, looking at the end of this year, is the least likely to be realized.
6. Delphi Digital: accuracy rate 40%, consumer-level DeFi predictions are the highlights
Delphi Digital's predictions regarding technological infrastructure and consumer applications are relatively accurate; the original wording of the prediction for consumer applications is:
"2025 will be an important development node for consumer-level DeFi, with more and more crypto users fully embracing on-chain financial services."
This year we have indeed seen the emergence of various U cards and tokenized U.S. stocks; in addition, traditional financial applications like Robinhood are gradually embracing on-chain.
7. Messari: accuracy rate 55%, did not involve specific price points
Although Messari is a data analysis platform, its predictions lean towards 'trend direction' rather than 'specific numbers', and looking back, its judgments on major trends are relatively accurate.
8. Framework co-founder: accuracy rate 25%, giving more confidence to the projects invested in
Next, we have selected some representative personal predictions from last year to see how they turned out.
First is the prediction from Framework co-founder Vance Spencer, from which we selected the part regarding crypto for整理.
Clearly, Vance has given relatively high prediction expectations for his investments in projects like Glow, Daylight, Berachain, which represent the energy and public chain fields.
In addition, some quantitative targets are too aggressive, such as a daily average inflow of $1 billion into ETH ETFs.
9. Blockworks co-founder: accuracy rate 48%, most predictions made
Blockworks co-founder Mippo (X: @MikeIppolito_) is the one with the most predictions among the institutions and individuals we reviewed, and his prediction accuracy is quite good, hitting almost half.
Among the highlights is the completely accurate prediction about the rise of Robinhood, while also accurately identifying investment opportunities in Layer 1, such as Hyperliquid and SUI, both of which have had impressive performances this year.
10. Alliance DAO Wang Qiao & Imran: accuracy rate 50%, overly optimistic about BTC price
The two founders of Alliance DAO, WangQiao and Imran, have also made predictions regarding the developments in 2025 during a podcast chat.
We have summarized the views related to crypto as follows:
It can be seen that the two founders were overly optimistic about BTC's performance; even with the lowest prediction value of 150K, this year's highest price of BTC is still some distance away.
However, the judgment regarding the prediction market is very accurate, and it can be said that this key trend was seen a year in advance.
Summary
After reviewing last year's predictions, several patterns clearly emerged:
The number of predictions is negatively correlated with the accuracy rate; the more you say, the more you get wrong.
Trying to predict specific price points and numbers has generally led to disappointment.
Predictions about policies are very reliable, with improvements in the regulatory environment and the U.S. becoming friendlier to crypto, almost all institutions and individuals predicted correctly.
Finally, I believe that the value of these institutions' predictions each year lies not in 'telling you what to buy', but in 'telling you what the industry is thinking'. We can take these predictions as industry sentiment indicators; if you want to use them as investment guides, the results may be quite disastrous.
At the same time, maintain a good habit: be skeptical of any predictions with specific numbers, regardless of who they come from—KOLs, institutions, or industry leaders.
This does not mean we should criticize these industry elites, but rather that incorrect predictions can also have value.
It will tell you what the market once believed, and no one can predict the future.