Fidelity researchers say 2025 will be the dawn of a new era for digital assets.
In its outlook for digital assets and Bitcoin, Fidelity Digital Assets called 2025 a “pivotal” year, when they should begin to have a broader impact across industries and economies.
Citing research by economist Carlota Perez, Fidelity researchers said technological revolutions – like railroads or the internet, for example — typically disrupt multiple industries and fields and overhaul entire economies.
“Bitcoin and digital assets could fit this theory,” Fidelity Digital Assets researcher and report author Chris Kuiper wrote. “We are potentially past what Perez describes as an early speculative period accompanied by financial boom and busts and are now possibly entering the phase of further adoption.”
The Fidelity paper said we are at the early stages of mass diffusion and adoption with digital assets in a process that will evolve over decades.
“2025 has the potential to be the year that is looked back on as the pivotal time where the “chasm was crossed” as digital assets begin to take root and embed themselves into multiple fields and industries,” Kuiper wrote. “For example, in the past year, we have already seen discussions around nation-state adoption and increased corporate balance sheet adoption.”
So, while Bitcoin boomed in 2024, it is still in the early days of this new era of sustainable adoption, diffusion, and integration, Kuiper said.
Drivers of adoption and diffusion
As we enter this new era for Bitcoin and digital assets, what are the key drivers for broader adoption and diffusion?
As Kuiper mentioned, corporate balance sheet adoption has grown with companies like MicroStrategy, Tesla, Marathon Digital, Block, Coinbase, and Hut 8, to name a few, owning Bitcoin as part of their corporate treasuries. Microsoft considered adding Bitcoin to its balance sheet, but shareholders voted it down in December.
However, this trend is expected to continue. Among others, Amazon is also considering adding Bitcoin to its treasury and may put it up for shareholder vote this year.
Also, the launch of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETPs have made these assets more accessible. And is it likely we’ll see more spot cryptocurrency ETFs in 2025, as well as more investments from pensions and institutional investors.
But the other key area of adoption in 2025 is nation-state and government adoption. Several countries own Bitcoin, including the US, UK, and China, as Fidelity’s Matt Hogan wrote in the report. But most larger nations own it through government seizures and have restrictions on counting it as part of their treasury.
“We expect 2025 to be the year this changes for both acceptance and adoption,” Hogan wrote. “This is to say, we anticipate more nation-states, central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and government treasuries will look to establish strategic positions in bitcoin. Perhaps these establishments will take notice of the playbook employed by Bhutan and El Salvador, and the substantial returns they have been able to glean from such positions in a relatively short amount of time.”
Hogan noted that in the U.S., there has been strong interest in the new administration and Congress in more favorable policy for digital assets.
“While President-elect Donald Trump and Senator Cynthia Lummis have both been vocal about their support of and plans for establishing a strategic bitcoin reserve in the U.S., it remains to be seen if they follow through with this ambition in 2025,” he added.
But if legislation proposed by Lummis is adopted to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve, it could lead other nations to follow suit, Hogan added.
“Dawn of a new era”
Ultimately, the paper concludes that it is not too late to invest in digital assets after the huge 2024 surge — just the opposite.
“In fact, we believe we may be entering the dawn of a new era for digital assets, one poised to span multiple years—if not decades,” the paper concludes. “This era could see digital assets permeating various sectors—industries, technologies, fields, balance sheets, and even nation-states. The pivotal question for investors now is not whether to participate, but how actively they will engage with this transformation.”
