Bitcoin Back Above $87K, XRP ETFs Go Live, DeFi Loses $3.1B

There are mornings in crypto that feel like déjà vu. The numbers change, the headlines rotate, yet the underlying story rhymes with cycles you have seen before.

This morning was different.

I was looking at my screen as Bitcoin reclaimed the $ 87,000 level after testing support closer to $ 80,000 overnight. At the same time, XRP was preparing for its first trading session as a spot ETF, and buried behind the price headlines was another number that matters far more for the future of this industry: $ 3.1 billion.

That is how much has already been lost to DeFi hacks in the first half of 2025 alone, surpassing the total losses recorded in 2024.

If you are a founder, a VC, or a fintech executive trying to build in this environment, your challenge is no longer to keep up with the news. Your challenge is to read through it and see the structural story forming underneath.

Today’s story is not about green candles. It is about who this market is quietly being rebuilt for.

The illusion of chaos: what 87K really tells us

On the surface, the last few weeks looked like classic speculative exhaustion. Bitcoin corrected more than thirty per cent from its highs, ETF flows turned negative, and “fragile” became the word of choice for analysts describing market conditions.

Yet when you zoom out of the intraday noise, you see something more interesting.

The recovery back above 87,000 dollars has not been driven by the same kind of leveraged frenzy that marked previous peaks. Funding rates, positioning data, and exchange balances all suggest a slow rotation. Retail is stepping back. Short-term momentum traders are being washed out. Long-term, balance sheet-driven buyers are quietly stepping in.

We are watching a transfer of ownership. Volatility is still here, but the hands that hold the volatility are changing.

That matters because price, in this phase, is less a measure of excitement and more a measure of how quickly the market is being handed over to institutions that think in multi-year cycles, not meme-driven weeks.

If you are building a crypto business today, your real counterparty is no longer the anonymous trader on the other side of a perpetual swap. It is the treasury committee that measures risk in basis points and regulatory footnotes.

XRP’s redemption arc and what it signals

Nowhere is this shift clearer than in XRP’s story.

Two years ago, XRP was still defined by a courtroom. The token sat under the shadow of an SEC lawsuit, and the dominant narrative was “if” not “when”. Founders watched the case as a proxy for what the SEC would tolerate. Investors watched it as a barometer of regulatory risk.

Today, XRP is launching spot ETFs into the same market that once treated it as a cautionary tale.

You do not move from enforcement action to a listed ETF in twenty-four months by accident. You get there because the story around you changes. Regulatory clarity improves. Market infrastructure matures. Demand for compliant exposure builds from asset managers who cannot ignore cross-border, real-time settlement forever.

Behind the ticker symbol sits an institutional strategy: ETFs as on ramps, stablecoins as payment rails, ISO 20022 alignment as the language that can speak to core banking systems and SWIFT messaging.

This is not about whether you personally are bullish or bearish on XRP. It is about accepting that the regulatory journey from “problem” to “product” is now part of the playbook for large-cap assets. If you are a founder or protocol team, your roadmap is no longer just about features. It is about how you move along that same credibility curve.

DeFi’s 3.1 billion dollar warning

While Bitcoin and XRP tell a story of institutionalisation, DeFi is delivering a different kind of message.

More than 3.1 billion dollars has already been lost to DeFi hacks in the first half of 2025, outpacing all of 2024. The pattern is depressingly familiar. Access control failures. Oracle manipulation. Poorly designed upgrade mechanisms. Composability without proper threat modelling.

In other words, the industry is still building complex financial primitives on top of foundations that would not pass a basic institutional risk review.

This is the real reputational drag on crypto in 2025. Not volatility. Not speculative excess. But an inability, in too many corners of DeFi, to accept that shipping fast is not a badge of honour if you are also shipping other people’s capital into attack surfaces they never signed up for.

At the same time, DeFi lending has quietly surged to around 41 billion dollars, with platforms like Aave, Maple and others attracting serious institutional interest. We have a paradox. Record growth in on-chain credit, coupled with a security profile that still looks like an open invitation to attackers.

For institutions, this is not a reason to abandon DeFi. It is a reason to be highly selective. It is why we are seeing capital flow into a handful of governance mature, audit-heavy, compliance-aware protocols, while the long tail continues to cycle through boom and breach.

As a CMO, if you are telling a DeFi story to institutional partners in 2025, security is your first slide, not your appendix.

Dirty money, clean rails, and the compliance moat

Then comes the 28 billion dollar shadow.

Recent investigative work into “dirty money” flows through major exchanges has given regulators all the ammunition they need to justify a new wave of oversight. On the surface, this looks catastrophic for an industry that once preached permissionless everything as a virtue.

In reality, it is doing something far more profound. It is forcing a sorting mechanism.

Platforms that invested early in proper KYC, transaction monitoring, and strong internal controls are beginning to enjoy what I call the compliance moat. They do not just survive new rules. They benefit from them because every incremental requirement raises the cost of entry for less prepared competitors.

Switzerland’s work on new license categories for stablecoin issuers and crypto institutions is not an isolated technocratic exercise. It is a signal that the next decade of digital finance will be built on properly supervised rails that still retain the benefits of programmability and speed.

For founders, the message is simple. Compliance is no longer a defensive cost centre. It is a strategic asset that can differentiate you in the eyes of banks, payment networks, asset managers, and regulators. If your pitch deck still treats regulation as a slide you rush through, you are not speaking the language that global capital wants to hear.

What does this all mean for the builders

Put all of this together, and a clear pattern emerges.

Bitcoin’s recovery above 87,000 dollars is not a meme comeback. It is the surface expression of a balance sheet reshuffle in favour of longer-horizon holders.

XRP’s ETF launch is not just another product listing. It is proof that assets can move from enforcement to endorsement when they align with institutional and regulatory expectations.

DeFi’s 3.1 billion dollar loss tally is not an unfortunate footnote. It is a bright red line between protocols that treat security and governance as first-class citizens and those that view them as optional.

The “dirty money” narrative is not the end of the story for exchanges and platforms. It is the beginning of a world where clean, well-supervised rails are the only ones large institutions will trust.

If you are leading a crypto, fintech, or Web3 business in this environment, your strategic question is no longer “will institutions come”. They are already here. Your question is whether you are building something that can sit on their balance sheet, plug into their infrastructure, and withstand their due diligence.

That requires a shift in mindset.

From chasing speculative cycles to designing products that solve real settlement, credit, savings, and payment problems.

From burning capital on noise-driven user acquisition to building trust-driven brands that can speak to regulators and retail with the same clarity.

From seeing compliance as a brake to treating it as a bridge into the broader financial system.

A closing thought for founders and investors

Every cycle in crypto has a defining question.

In 2017, it was “what can we tokenise?”. In 2021, it was “how high can it go?”.

In 2025, the real question is “who is this infrastructure being built for?”.

Bitcoin back above 87,000 dollars, XRP’s ETF debut, 3.1 billion dollars lost in DeFi hacks, and the scrutiny on illicit flows are not disconnected events. They are different chapters in the same story. The market is deciding, in real time, which projects belong in a regulated, institutional-grade financial stack, and which will be remembered as experiments that never left the lab.

If you want your project, your portfolio, or your company to sit on the right side of that line, now is the moment to recalibrate.

You have a once-in-a-decade opportunity to build for an audience that is finally ready to allocate serious capital to this space. The only question is whether your strategy, your product, and your narrative are ready for them.

If you want to stress test that strategy, reposition your messaging for institutional audiences, or design a go-to-market that speaks the language of both regulators and users, I am always open to a conversation.

By Joseph Zammit, Driving Growth for FinTech and Crypto Businesses