History-making and record-breaking, 2024 undeniably earned the “Year of Crypto” title despite regulators’ misgivings and still-fresh memories of the FTX debacle. As the world embarks upon a promising 2025 for Bitcoin and altcoins, it’s worthwhile to reflect on how quickly the crypto-sphere changed in just 12 months’ time.
At the top of crypto makrets where Bitcoin resides, the introduction of a new type of investment vehicle indelibly altered the landscape of digital assets. Meanwhile, in a seemingly distant segment of the cryptocurrency realm, meme coins converted some skeptics and, at the very least, earned a place in the conversation. Together, these two phenomena shaped an unforgettable year in the still relatively new field of digitized and decentralized finance.
Meme Coins Get Some Respect
Bitcoin wasn’t the only cryptocurrency to make substantial gains in 2024. Dogecoin, the most famous meme coin, tripled in price that year and, as of February 13th per Binance, ranked as number eight in terms of popularity based on the relative market cap of $39.22B.
Meme coins like Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and Pepe Coin, may have started off as a joke or just as fun projects (hence the “meme” designation). Yet, it’s the sense of fun and community that brought meme coins to the public’s attention in 2024.
Moreover, while they’re not necessarily known for having real-world use cases, meme coins offered participants to make the world a better place in 2024 through charitable acts. To quote Brett ambassador Momin Saqib, “It has become a movement that transforms digital engagement into joy, purpose, and inclusivity, all while driving real-world impact through its inspiring charitable initiatives in water and education.”
By the end of the year, meme coins had ballooned into a $130 billion industry. Not everyone likes them, but the meme coin movement seems unstoppable at this point.
Reluctant Regulator Opens the Floodgates
In early 2025, there’s already talk of a potential Dogecoin exchange traded fund (ETF). At the beginning of 2024, however, there were no spot cryptocurrency ETFs in the U.S. at all – not even for Bitcoin, the best-known crypto of all.
That seems so far in the past, but it was really just over a year ago (January 10, 2024, to be exact) when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finally approved spot Bitcoin ETFs. One could practically hear the reluctance and loathing in Gary Gensler’s voice when his approval carried the warning, “[B]itcoin is primarily a speculative, volatile asset that’s also used for illicit activity including ransomware, money laundering, sanction evasion, and terrorist financing… [W]e did not approve or endorse bitcoin [today].”
Despite his overt distaste for cryptocurrency, Gensler’s SEC couldn’t stem the rising tide of the grassroots movement in decentralized digital assets. Thus, January’s green-light of spot Bitcoin ETFs kicked off a wave of popular crypto funds from financial notables including BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, and ARK Invest.
To call the launch of these new funds a success would be the understatement of the year. In their first day of trading, spot Bitcoin ETFs collectively amassed $4.6 billion in trading volume.
At the time, even as BlackRock and others jumped headfirst into the crypto fray, others weren’t quite as keen. A spokesperson from Vanguard remarked that the firm had no plans to launch its own cryptocurrency investment products, while Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, chief investment officer of Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs, commented, “When you think about it, where is there any value to something like Bitcoin?… We don’t think it is an asset class to invest in”
Yet, the Bitcoin bulls evidently got the last word and, perhaps, the last laugh. The first wave of spot Bitcoin ETFs last year, Reuters reports, “attracted a whopping $65 billion in 2024, helping to propel the price of bitcoin from $43,000 to more than $100,000.”
Sure, there were other notable events last year, such as the Bitcoin halving and the advent of spot cryptocurrency ETF options trading. Nonetheless, the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs and the rise of meme coins truly made 2024 the undisputed Year of Crypto.
Also Read: Navigating Crypto Regulations
