Crypto: The Next Cycle Could Spark Historic Adoption

What if the next crypto cycle was not only bullish but a historic turning point? At the WAIB Summit 2025, several experts stated that a single cycle could be enough to increase crypto users from 659 million in December 2024 to 5 billion users within ten years. A global adoption underway, driven not only by speculation but by the rise of concrete use cases, the maturity of blockchain technologies, and renewed interest from individuals as well as institutions.

One crypto growth cycle separates us from massive adoption

While the crypto market undergoes phases of violent correction, Thomas Prévot, head of operations France at Crypto.com, delivered a striking prediction at the WAIB Summit 2025 in Monaco : “We’re about one growth cycle away from full mainstream adoption. I’m not talking about 1 billion users. I’m talking about 5 billion users.”

He clarifies that this adoption would not be limited to dormant wallets or occasional speculators but would target daily crypto use, as “ubiquitous” as credit card use today. A scale change that could sustainably transform crypto’s place in the global economy.

For panelists, several concrete factors could catalyze this next milestone :

• Public speculation as short-term driver : “We’ve seen that in 2021, where the market more than quadrupled in a span of a few months due to retail speculation and investors” recalls Roy van Krimpen (OKX), referring to the 2021 bullish cycle;

• The role of market cycles: Prévot mentions mass adoption happening after the next bearish phase, at the start of a new bullish market, when media attention and interest peak;

• The rising power of established players: platforms like Crypto.com or OKX now have infrastructure and user bases far stronger than in 2021, mechanically increasing their capacity to absorb a new adoption wave;

• The psychological threshold effect : reaching the first billion users would be a major turning point, comparable to the arrival of the Internet in homes around the 2000s, according to several speakers.

The vision shared at the WAIB Summit is therefore clear : massive crypto adoption could be reached not in a distant future but as early as the next bullish cycle. However, this perspective mainly rests on the market’s ability to replicate or even surpass the speculative dynamics that marked the last bull run.

Daily use of blockchain, the key to the next level?

To cross the symbolic threshold of the second billion, and move towards five billion users, a profound change is needed. This time, it would no longer be about attracting users through yield promises but building real, daily use of blockchain technology.

“The second option would be through actual usage of blockchain technology,” said van Krimpen, referring to concrete cases such as payments, identification, or peer-to-peer value transfers. These changes entail a slower behavioral evolution, but also one that is more stable in the long term.

In this vein, Chintan Turakhia, director at Coinbase, emphasizes the need for solutions suited to beginners. Ergonomics, accessibility, and ease of use become pillars to transform crypto into a daily tool.

Only under these conditions can crypto emerge from its technophile niche to reach emerging markets, unbanked users, or simply citizens seeking alternatives.

This massive adoption scenario obviously comes with colossal challenges: network scalability, regulation, educational infrastructure, and institutional acceptance with bitcoin increasingly entering corporate strategies. However, it also paves the way for a redefinition of the global financial system. If the next wave of users is no longer motivated solely by profit but by utility, crypto could sustainably establish itself as a global technological standard.