MSCI Blockchain Economy Index to Rise 37% in 2025, While Crypto Lagging

The MSCI Blockchain Economy Index has achieved a remarkably strong year in 2025. The index rose 37 percent, its best performance since 2023, clearly outpacing both the broader stock market and the crypto market.

That contrast is sharp. While the total crypto market shrank from approximately $3.5 trillion to $3 trillion by 2025, listed companies with exposure to blockchain and crypto infrastructure managed to benefit from capital flows towards technology and AI.

Win shares, lose tokens

The MSCI index consists largely of technology and infrastructure companies, which explains much of the outperformance. Heavyweights such as NVIDIA, IREN and Robinhood lifted the index. Robinhood was even an outlier with a share price increase of approximately 200 percent in 2025.

The index also benefited from a structural shift: former mining companies repositioning themselves as data center and AI infrastructure players. The MSCI Blockchain Economy Index managed to catch up with dominant trends in the technology sector, while direct crypto investments were losing ground.

For comparison:

• The MSCI World Index rose by approximately 21.9 percent in 2025.

• The S&P Crypto Large-Cap Index fell 14.5 percent.

• The broader S&P Digital Asset Index even lost more than 16 percent.

Financial component lags behind

About 39 percent of the MSCI Blockchain Economy Index consists of financial stocks. There the picture was mixed. Visa and Mastercard ended the year essentially flat, PayPal lost about 30 percent, while Coinbase closed about 9 percent lower.

Still, the index as a whole continued to rise as tech and AI-related components more than offset weakness in financial crypto stocks.

What does this say about Bitcoin?

This is a telling signal for Bitcoin. In 2025, blockchain as infrastructure was embraced by the market, but direct exposure to coins and tokens was avoided. Investors preferred regulated shares with liquidity, profit models and exposure to AI, rather than the volatility of the crypto market itself.

However, that does not mean that the story is negative for Bitcoin in the longer term. On the contrary: this divergence indicates that capital first positions itself around the “safe” layers of the ecosystem. Historically, immediate interest in Bitcoin often comes later, when confidence returns and liquidity moves towards riskier segments again.

The performance of the MSCI Blockchain Economy Index shows that blockchain as a technology is alive and well. The fact that Bitcoin did not benefit from this in 2025 mainly says something about timing and risk appetite, and not about the disappearance of the underlying adoption trend.

In other words: the infrastructure was ahead, the assets lagged behind. And it is precisely that tension that could become relevant for Bitcoin towards 2026.