Crypto Equities See Triple-Digit Gains in 2025 'Altcoin Season,' Alana Levin Report Reveals

Alana Levin, an investment partner at Variant Fund, has released her "Crypto Trends Report for 2025," outlining the industry's growth through three compounding S-curves: asset creation, asset accumulation, and asset utilization. The comprehensive report applies this framework across key thematic areas including macroeconomics, stablecoins, centralized exchanges, onchain activity, and frontier markets. Levin's analysis suggests a significant shift in the traditional "altcoin season," with institutional capital increasingly flowing into publicly traded crypto equities rather than directly into alternative digital tokens.

The report details that while Bitcoin and Ethereum have seen substantial gains in 2025, with Bitcoin surpassing $100,000 early in the year, several crypto-related stocks have delivered even more dramatic returns. For instance, Coinbase surged by 53%, Robinhood by 299%, Galaxy Digital by 100%, and Circle by an impressive 368%. This trend indicates that the "altcoin season" is currently unfolding on Wall Street, driven by institutional investors seeking regulated exposure to the crypto ecosystem.

Levin frames crypto's expansion as a progression through distinct phases, beginning with asset creation, which has seen the tokenization of value explode from Bitcoin's inception to millions of diverse tokens today. This is followed by asset accumulation, where the increasing number and value of assets drive demand for custody solutions, exchanges, and security. Finally, asset utilization focuses on putting these assets to work through innovations like stablecoin payments and decentralized finance protocols.

The report highlights the explosive growth of stablecoins across all three S-curves, with new issuance, accumulation venues, and utility cases expanding rapidly. Centralized exchanges are identified as clear beneficiaries of the accumulation phase, experiencing dramatic increases in trading volumes and revenue. Furthermore, onchain activity remains a hotbed for experimentation, showcasing permissionless innovation in asset issuance, liquidity provision, and productization, with decentralized exchanges and lending platforms maturing significantly.

Alana Levin's report underscores that 2025 marks a pivotal year for institutional adoption, catalyzed by regulatory clarity and the approval of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs). This environment has made crypto exposure more accessible and appealing to institutional players who often prefer the established frameworks of equity markets. The report concludes that while much has been built within the crypto space, vast opportunities remain, particularly in expanding asset utility and integrating emerging technologies like AI with blockchain.