Crypto-native media had a rough 2025. Monthly traffic fell by a little over 33% across the year, sliding from nearly 106 million visits in January to just under 71 million in December.
At first glance, this looks like a market that ran out of steam.
But maybe, we’ve just grown used to interpreting signals from sources we can find within the first few clicks online.
A new Outset Data Pulse report, built on Outset Media Index (OMI) traffic data across 349 outlets and compared against on-chain signals, points to something much more interesting.
It shows that while the media attention moved in one direction, stablecoin activity was going the other way, and looking a lot stronger.
Where Did The Readers Go?
This might be unusual, but mainstream financial and tech publications that also cover digital assets saw their audiences grow almost 60% over the same stretch, and pulled in over 585 million visits by December 2025. That’s more than six times the size of the entire crypto-native media sector.
That transition from crypto-native to mainstream outlets has been flagged by the same analysts across multiple regions, and in most of them, dedicated crypto outlets keep ceding to generalist papers.
They rank better, syndicate wider, and hold onto readers more effectively.
Stablecoins Quietly Absorbed More Capital
Despite what the media traffic numbers have suggested, the market grew steadily through Q1 and Q2, without a single month of contraction.
Furthermore, after a mid-year hit in August, things started to move up, and fast. By December, global stablecoin supply had climbed to nearly 308 billion, 42% up from where it was in January.
That means that supply remained in the system, while more of it poured in. This signal points to sustained demand rather than short-term inflows.
For context, it took years for stablecoin supply to reach 100 billion. Adding roughly another 90 billion in a single year shows how quickly that part of the market expanded.
That kind of expansion doesn’t happen in a quiet market. Stablecoins are what most of DeFi runs on, from trading and lending to cross-border payments. When this much new capital flows in and stays, it’s not just short-term money chasing a trend anymore.
The Inflow Didn’t Stay Idle For Long
USDT is the closest thing crypto has to a universal wire, and the data around it is the clearest indicator of how the assets circulate. The majority of payments and settlements across chains run through it.
Unlike the overall stablecoin supply, which grew at a steady pace all year, its transfer activity was a lot “messier”.
After a slightly alarming Q1, May flipped a switch, and around October, the amount of value going through USDT had more than doubled from the start of the year. Over the course of 2025, close to 19 trillion USDT moved through the system, suggesting that stablecoin activity was not just growing in size, but also in actual usage.
That acceleration also lined up with the strongest stretch of stablecoin supply growth in the third quarter.
Traders Follow Liquidity
In that kind of environment, trading volume wasn’t going to stay flat for too long.
Following a similar pattern to USDT, DEX spot volume had a slow start to the year, but once momentum kicked in around May, it didn’t really stop. By October, once again, monthly volume had nearly doubled compared to January, hitting the highest level of the year.
Full-year DEX trading came in at 1.76 trillion, with the heaviest months lining up exactly when liquidity and transfers were also running hot.
More liquidity, more transfers, more trading. Each layer fed the next, the same way it always does on-chain, throughout a year when the media covering this space was losing ground.
The Market Outgrew Its Narrators
So, does reader activity actually reflect what’s happening in the market? Based on the current distance between what’s being built on blockchain and what’s being covered in the press, not exactly.
Moreover, the report found no consistent pattern of media traffic leading market activity, nor the other way around.
That’s a strange perspective for an industry that is supposed to “live off” hype cycles, but that narrative feels outdated. What this really shows is that media traffic no longer reflects on-chain activity all that well.
