5 Charts Showing the Change of Crypto in 2024

The recovery of the crypto market after 2023 paved the way for a positive 2024, with Bitcoin hitting new historical highs and many on-chain indicators continuing to improve.

From the fact that spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US have a remarkable first year, record stablecoin supply, the resurgence of DeFi, the rise and fall of SocialFi, to the explosion of predictions on the Polymarket regarding the US election.

Here are 5 charts showing how the crypto industry has changed in 2024, compiled by The Block.

Bitcoin Spot ETF Completes First Year of Trading

On Jan. 11, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved proposals for 11 Bitcoin spot ETFs in an accelerated form.

ETFs including Ark Invest/21Shares, Bitwise, BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Grayscale, Invesco, Valkyrie (now part of CoinShares), VanEck, and WisdomTree began trading the very next day.

In addition, Hashdex launched a spot Bitcoin ETF in March, and Grayscale launched a Bitcoin mini-fund ETF in July.

These funds have made the most successful ETF debuts in history in many ways, competing with large and long-standing ETFs such as the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) and the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) Nasdaq-100 Index.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs have attracted more than $35 billion in net capital inflows, with total assets under management (AUM) reaching about $103 billion, thanks to a sharp rise in Bitcoin price from $42,000 on Jan. 1, 2024 to nearly $100,000.

BlackRock's IBIT spot Bitcoin ETF dominates most indices, with more than $37 billion in net capital inflows and recording just 10 days of negative trading throughout the year. Along with the rise in the price of Bitcoin, the IBIT fund reached $52 billion in AUM, which accounts for about 70% of the trading market share of Bitcoin ETFs.

However, spot Ethereum ETFs in the US, launched in July, failed to achieve similar results, bringing in only about $2.6 billion in net capital inflows.

Stablecoin Supply Hits Record High

The supply of stablecoins on blockchains and issuers has recovered strongly, reaching a record high of more than $200 billion by 2024. The figure surpassed the previous peak in April 2022 before the market went into a downward trend due to the collapse of companies and ecosystems such as Terra, Celsius and FTX.

With more than $5.1 trillion in global transactions in the first half of the year alone, stablecoins continue to hold their position as the world's largest trading volume crypto asset. That's nearly as much as Visa's $6,500 billion in the same period. In Q3 2024, stablecoins generated an additional $3.100 billion in trading volume.

Many large corporations such as PayPal have launched their own stablecoins, while Ripple, Revolut and Robinhood are also making efforts to enter the field.

The technology is being discussed at the highest levels of government, as the stablecoin has become the world's 18th largest holder of US government bonds, ranked alongside sovereign nations.

Recently, Stripe confirmed Acquires API stablecoin Bridgefor $1.1 billion and became the largest transaction in crypto history. Bernstein analysts say Stripe's acquisition confirms the development and applicability of stablecoins as a legitimate use case for public blockchain.

Tether continues to dominate the USD anchor stablecoin market, accounting for approximately $140 billion, or 66% of total supply. Circle's USDC came in second with more than $43 billion (20%), while Ethena's USDE came in third with about $6 billion (3%).

In terms of blockchain support, Ethereum leads in USDT supply, followed by Tron. Ethereum also leads the way in terms of USDC supply, with Solana, Arbitrum and Base ranking second, third and fourth, respectively.

Solana leads DeFi revival

Transaction fees in the DeFi sector saw a strong resurgence in late 2024, peaking at over $53 million per day and $881 million per month in November 2024, continuing to rise to $55 million per day and a record $893 million in December.

The Solana ecosystem was the biggest beneficiary of the surge, with trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) passing the $100 billion mark in November, double the $55 billion figure on the Ethereum mainnet.

SOL prices also hit a new historic high above $263 for the first time since 2021.

Solana platforms such as Raydium, Jito and Pump.fun recorded record-high monthly fees of $211 million, $199 million and $93 million respectively in November, amid a spike in the number of active addresses on the blockchain.

At the same time, Uniswap on Ethereum hit the network's largest DeFi fee, with $97 million in November and rising to more than $152 million in December.

Eden Au, Research Director at The Block, attributed this surge in activity to the memenoin craze, combined with Solana's low transaction fees and user-friendliness. Au also predicts that the network will continue to attract retail users in the coming years.

The Rise and Fall of SocialFi

SocialFi is a term that combines “social” and “finance”, integrating blockchain technology into social networks to reward users for posting high-quality content and give them greater control over personal data.

F platformriend.tech, powered by Paradigm, once surpassed Ethereum in daily revenue in 2023. However, the platform could not sustain its boom in 2024 when the number of transactions fell sharply.

Friend.tech works on Base, the Layer 2 chain developed by Coinbase, and uses a “key” to represent the tokenized versions of a user's profile, linked to their X account.

Owning a user's “key” on friend.tech gives access to that person's content and the ability to message them directly.

The platform enjoyed a brief period of growth in May before the token price fell 20 percent after co-founder Racer hinted at leaving Base. The number of transactions almost completely disappeared after this incident.

Eventually, the development team abandoned the project and announced it would relinquish control of the smart contract in September. Although the platform can continue to function, this makes it impossible to deploy new features without forking the protocol to create another version.

Meanwhile, the decentralized social networking protocol Farcaster, co-founded by former Coinbase executives Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, had a more successful year.

The platform peaked at 75,000 daily active users in May, thanks to features like Frames that turn posts into interactive mini-apps, attracting many of the big names in the Ethereum community.

However, Farcaster also saw a drop in activity, with a fall of around 70 per cent from its May 2024 peak to the end of the year.

Polymarkets boom ahead of US election

Polymarkt, the decentralized prediction platform based on Polygon, has had one of the most successful years in the crypto industry.

Bets using USDC on the platform surged ahead of the US presidential election in November, attracting many international traders to participate in betting on the winner.

In theory, US residents are restricted from using Polymarket but can bypass geoblocks using a VPN.

After gradually gaining attention throughout 2024, Polymarket's monthly trading volume reached $5 billion in October and November alone. This is the moment when the race between Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris comes to a head.

Among the many markets that predict U.S. elections, including results in battleground states and which party will control Congress, the presidential race is the most popular, accounting for more than $3 billion in trading volume just as of Election Day.

The number of traders active on the platform has also skyrocketed, peaking at more than 300,000 in November and continuing to rise to more than 346,000 in December.

Polymarket's open interest reached a record high of $569 million on Nov. 6, with the market predicting the outcome of the presidential election alone totaling $287 million. After the election, activity slowed and open interest fell to about $200-300 million.