Fact check: Applying real-world data, Bitcoin won’t actually reach $100,000 in 2025

The day Bitcoin finally topped $100,000, many people did the same.

They screenshotted it.

They sent it to group chats, posted it with rocket emojis, pulled up old tweets from 2021, and erased the records of their victories that they had kept for years. It felt like an end, as if the market was returning to a promise it made long ago.

Then charts began to circulate that quietly took the wind out of the room.

This idea was further amplified by Alex Thorne, head of research at Galaxy, and others. For those emotionally invested in the numbers themselves, the conclusion was simple, but a bit cruel.

If you use 2020 dollars to adjust the price of Bitcoin for inflation, Bitcoin has actually never exceeded $100,000. Just below that, it actually exceeded around $99,848.

This is not a failure of Bitcoin, nor is it a “pitfall” for those who supported the milestone. This is a reminder that money changes under us, even if the sticker price remains the same.

And in this cycle, that difference is more important than people want to admit.

Numbers that moved while you were looking at them

If you ask most people what inflation means, they’ll probably tell you that prices will rise. That’s true, but it’s only half the story. The other half is that inflation changes the meaning of the dollar.

A 2020 $100 bill and a late 2025 $100 bill don’t buy the same basket of things, don’t carry the same weight, and don’t represent the same amount of work, rent, groceries, or time.

Bitcoin, at least in the way most headlines describe it, trades in dollars. Therefore, when Bitcoin reaches a large number, that number is tied to the dollar value at that moment, not the dollar value in your memory.

It sounds abstract until you actually do the math.

Using the US CPI for CPI-U, the average level in 2020 is around 258.8, and by late 2025 the index will be in the mid-320s. You can also view the 2020 annual average directly in the BLS annual CPI table. This gap shows that the dollar has lost a significant portion of its purchasing power since 2020.

Converting today’s nominal prices to 2020 dollars is multiplied by approximately 0.8, depending on whether you use the non-seasonally adjusted CPIAUCNS or the seasonally adjusted CPIAUCSL.

So $100,000 in late 2025 dollars would be closer to about $80,000 in 2020 dollars.

The milestones people were cheering were real and not the same ones the internet thinks they are.

If you want Bitcoin to be worth $100,000 with current 2020 purchasing power, the nominal price would need to be closer to $125,000.

This is troubling because Bitcoin’s cycle peak was around that area. Reuters has been tracking Bitcoin’s 2025 price graph for 2025, with a lot of coverage around the peak centered around the $125,000 range.

Applying this high value to a simple CPI deflator yields a value just shy of $100,000 in 2020 dollars. That’s why the “possible/unsuccessful” framing is the final result of a photograph, and it can vary slightly depending on the methodology.

The deeper point applies either way.

Tape measures changed and people continued to argue about length.

Why this is important now and why it will be even more important in the future

Inflation-adjusted Bitcoin charts are usually a fun geek exercise. This time it’s more like a reality check.

This cycle has been defined by the emergence of institutional investors through spot Bitcoin ETFs, waves of macro narratives that keep reversing every few weeks, and the market acting as if it is bound by expectations for an extended period of time.

Replacing the price of Bitcoin with the actual price forces the conversation into a place where institutions have always existed.

The real thing is coming back.

Pension funds don’t care if their assets rise by 20% in nominal terms, as long as inflation is high and risk-free interest rates are attractive. The finance desk does not receive compensation for atmosphere. If Bitcoin wants to mature into a true macro asset, it will ultimately need to be judged like all other assets. That is, what did it earn after inflation, and what did it earn compared to alternative assets.

This is the part retail traders rarely think about when celebrating round numbers. Because round numbers feel like progress.

And to be fair, progress is real here.

Bitcoin was declared dead at $16,000 before breaking through six digits again. It’s not small. But an inflation-adjusted lens changes the way we explain what happened.

It marks a massive nominal comeback for Bitcoin, and also indicates that the market has not moved beyond the old psychological frontier as the headlines suggest.

That’s not being bearish, just being honest.

The next chapter also begins, as the “real” version of $100,000 continues to rise each month.

Strange development, when Bitcoin peaked, CPI itself became blurry

There’s another reason this whole discussion is gaining attention, and it’s almost poetic.

This cycle has confused the inflation metrics.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the CPI had been suspended for a period of time during the 2025 appropriations expiration, and Reuters reported that the suspension forced the cancellation of the October CPI release, the first time this had happened.

So we have this moment where the market is trying to decide whether Bitcoin has indeed returned to historic levels in real terms, and the inflation data needed to settle the debate has gotten caught up in the real-world chaos.

Even when data is available, you still have choices. Seasonally adjusted CPIAUCSL, non-seasonally adjusted CPIAUCNS, annual average and specific month basis, headline CPI and other variants. None of these are wrong, but they give slightly different answers, especially when dealing with close margins like $99,848 and $100,000.

This is why it’s a mistake to write a story that treats inflation-adjusted claims as a clean dualism.

The story is bigger than that.

The story is that Bitcoin’s biggest milestones are no longer fixed points, but moving targets, and the macro context makes the difference meaningful.

Hangover after market peak shows people are already feeling it

The easiest way to tell if a milestone had lasting power is what happens to the market after the celebration.

In this case, Bitcoin has fallen sharply after its October high. By December, some market reports suggested Bitcoin was down about 30% from its peak, making the $100,000 era feel less like an instant stabilization.

The agency’s packaging staff told a similar story. U.S. Spot Bitcoin ETF AUM peaked at approximately $169.5 billion on October 6, and declined to approximately $120.7 billion by December 4, according to data compiled by cryptoprune. You can see details of cryptoprune’s AUM breakdown using public trackers and fund reports and cross-check it with chart hubs like The Block’s live ETF chart.

Much of this is more about price impacts than mass withdrawals, but the direction is still important.

This is where inflation-adjusted frames come in handy again.

The market approached the nominal price needed to match the 2020 real level of $100,000, but was unable to sustain it. Maybe it was a loss of leverage, maybe it was macro uncertainty, or maybe it was just fatigue after a big run.

Either way, the result is that after the market did the hard part of breaking into six digits, it struggled to turn emotional wins into stable new floors.

This creates a cycle where you feel like everything has changed, but at the same time you feel like something is left undone.

On-chain data shows the foundation is stronger than the mood

This is the part to keep it from becoming a downer story.

Beneath the surface, Bitcoin’s cost-based picture looks more solid than its price trend indicates.

This year, Bitcoin’s realization ceiling reached a record of approximately $1.125 trillion. This means more coins are sitting at a higher cost base than ever before. The realization cap is not a magic metric, but it captures something realistic about adoption and long-term holders. This suggests that the network is absorbing capital at higher levels over time.

This means that there are markets where there is still debate as to whether we have truly crossed a historic line in terms of real purchasing power, and there are markets where the underlying ‘average payment’ is rising and setting new records.

Both of these can be true.

This is one of the reasons why Bitcoin continues to survive these emotional whiplash cycles. Prices are volatile and their foundations are quietly thickening.

What happens next is more important than the next candle in three ways.

If we take the inflation-adjusted lens seriously, the question is no longer “Did Bitcoin hit $100,000?” but “What needs to happen for Bitcoin to reach a meaningful real high?”

There are three main ways this could play out over the next year, none of which depend on the atmosphere.

1) Disinflation and easing make nominal highs important again

If inflation cools as policymakers expect and the Fed becomes more confident in cutting rates, the nominal hurdle to the actual milestone will rise more slowly. In that world, a return to a previous nominal peak has more practical meaning. The market will be able to keep more of its profits.

If you want to factor this into official forecasts, the Fed’s economic forecast summary shows inflation expectations through 2028.

2) Inflation is persistent and has reached nominal highs that make the market feel empty.

If inflation is higher than expected or data uncertainty destabilizes the market, we could end up in a cycle where Bitcoin hits new nominal highs but remains unimpressive in terms of purchasing power.

It is also a world where rising real yields remain a headwind. If the real yield is attractive, holding a volatile asset has a high opportunity cost. Macro pressures can be tracked through indicators such as the 10-year TIPS real yield.

3) ETF demand will accelerate again and force a full-scale breakout.

Citi’s 2026 framework includes a base case around $143,000, a bull case above $189,000, and a bear case around $78,500, placing ETF flows and adoption near the center of the story. MarketWatch summarizes its predictions here, with Citi’s call at $143,000.

To take this structure seriously, you don’t have to treat these numbers as destiny.

A reacceleration in ETF demand could help markets overcome inflation-adjusted hurdles, even in a turbulent macro environment. What’s important to watch is not just the price, but whether the ETF’s assets and flows will shift to a new regime rather than bouncing back in the same momentum cycle.

The human part, this is the effect of inflation on every dream measured in dollars

People don’t get emotional about the CPI index. They get emotional about milestones.

My first home. 6-figure salary. This is your retirement number. Bitcoin price target.

Inflation is a silent force that makes you feel like you’re still behind even though you’ve reached your goal. This is because the goal moved while you were running towards it.

That’s what makes this chart sting. That’s not to say Bitcoin has failed, it’s to say that the world has changed.

Bitcoin is often sold as a hedge against that kind of change, a way to avoid the slow drain of fiat currency’s purchasing power. It’s fitting, then, in a darkly funny way, that the most famous fiat milestone in Bitcoin’s history is also the one in which inflation was quietly rewritten.

Needing another macro hook behind this, Reuters noted reports of a tough year for the dollar in the second half of 2025, including a significant annual decline due to softening policy expectations.

If you want to take it home clean, this is it.

Six figures was a big moment, and it still is, and the next real milestone is already higher than most people think. If Bitcoin wants to feel like it’s entering a new era, it’s going to have to pass a level that sounds a little absurd today, given that Bitcoin is Bitcoin and the dollar continues to shrink in real terms.

That’s what makes this story bigger than a diagram.

The next time Bitcoin reaches an approximate number, the first question worth asking is not whether that number is real, but what that number buys.