Crypto user acquisition costs surged in 2025 as venture capital funding collapsed 98% from 2021 peaks, according to new data analyzing $490,000 in advertising spend across 45 companies. Yet monthly active on-chain users reached record highs near 70 million, revealing a disconnect between industry funding and actual user growth that's forcing companies to adopt new survival metrics for 2026.
What Happened: User Acquisition Analysis
Addressable, a crypto advertising platform, released a Cost Per Wallet analysis covering 181 web banner campaigns, 95.4 million impressions and 22,400 unique wallet-bearing users acquired throughout 2025.
Asaf Nadler, co-founder and COO of Addressable.io, said the shift reflects a "revenue-first reality" where growth teams stopped optimizing for attention and started being judged on unit economics.
Cost Per Wallet measures the expense of acquiring a verified crypto user who already has a wallet installed, which research shows converts seven times higher than generic website visitors.
The data revealed stark geographic and brand-based pricing disparities.
Western Europe and North America saw costs rise two to three times higher than 2024 levels, though volatility decreased substantially. South-East Asia and Latin America experienced pricing resets as speculative budgets withdrew, creating more sustainable cost structures.
Strong brands paid 40% to 85% less than they did in 2024 despite tougher market conditions, while unknown startups routinely paid 51% to 118% more for identical user types.
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Why It Matters: Economic Survival
Audience intent drove pricing variations across user segments in 2025. Trader acquisition costs more than doubled for top-performing campaigns, from $14.40 to $31, reflecting concentrated demand for users who convert and retain. Developer audience costs normalized downward across all performance tiers, with top campaigns dropping from $77.10 to $20 as speculative interest exited the market.
The crypto user base now controls over $1.7 trillion in tokens, based on data showing approximately 71.8% of Bitcoin holdings remain with retail investors.
Traditional finance companies, gaming operators and luxury brands can now target crypto audiences directly through payment infrastructure from Stripe and PayPal, while banks including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and HSBC enable crypto balance usage in commerce.
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