The cryptocurrency landscape is witnessing a notable shift as tokenized assets, particularly non-fungible tokens (NFTs), outpace decentralized finance (DeFi) in user engagement and capital inflows. July 2025 represented an inflection point in the regulation of digital assets. For the first time, NFTs eclipsed DeFi in daily unique wallets. As NFT activity continues to skyrocket, so does the innovation behind new tokenized asset offerings. These innovations are having a meteoric effect on the overall crypto market, fueling explosive growth and bringing billions in investment.
NFTs saw a peak of 3.85 million active users in July 2025, showing how popular these one-of-a-kind digital assets have become. Volume on NFT marketplaces hit $530 million in the same time frame. This expansion helped send DeFi applications to an all-time high of $270 billion in total value locked (TVL). The numbers illustrate the mutually beneficial connection between NFTs and DeFi, with booming NFT market activity driving expansion of DeFi applications.
The wider crypto market enjoyed a similar uptrend picture, bringing in $2.67 billion of funding in the month of July 2025. This is a 6% boost in funding from last month at this time. The capital infusion is further evidence of the growing confidence among blockchain investors in the nascent ecosystem and its promise for continued expansion.
Ethereum, the mainstay of today’s DeFi and NFT boom, has experienced a massive price surge. This time, institutional interest largely drove that surge. At the same time, Ethereum is cementing its position as a mainstream investment asset — record U.S. spot ETF inflows are a clear indication of this trend.
Niklas Kunkel, founder of Chronicle, suggested in a CoinDesk briefing in August 2025 that tokenized assets could eclipse DeFi in market importance. This common-sense thinking matches the data we’ve seen trends thus far. User activity is rapidly moving away from traditional DeFi towards tokenized assets, such as NFTs.
With the explosion of NFTs and the overall development of the crypto landscape, this is a healthy sign of a maturing ecosystem. Underpinning this boom is a new sense of confidence from investors about the blockchain space. They want to invest in cutting edge projects and platforms.
The emergence of tokenized assets, in turn, suggests a deepening diversification of use cases for the technology underpinning it all. DeFi has become an indispensable component of the crypto ecosystem. At the same time, NFTs and other tokenized assets are expanding the blockchain’s reach into creative, innovative, and dynamic new areas such as art, collectibles, and gaming.
