2025 has taught a cruel lesson for the Bitcoin market structure. The year started with political momentum, moving into a summer of aggressive policy signals.
Still, it entered one of the sharpest boom-and-bust sequences in the property’s history.
By December, prices had reversed and assets remained flat throughout the year. But the flat chart masked the wild changes underneath.
Market capitalization $1.76 trillion
24 hour volume $18.68 billion
Best ever $126,173.18
While Wall Street banks finally reopened and ETFs siphoned off record capital, the network’s physical infrastructure faced a solvency crisis.
crypto slate has summarized below some of the key trends that will define the market in 2025.
Bitcoin preparation competition
President Trump has moved from campaign promises to implementation. On March 6th, the White House signed Executive Order 14233, officially establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR).
The order consolidates confiscated federal Bitcoin holdings into a dedicated U.S. Digital Asset Reserve, ending an era of sporadic auctions by U.S. Marshals. A week later, lawmakers introduced the Bitcoin Act of 2025 to codify this framework.
This law transformed the U.S. government from a net seller to a strategic holder and demonstrated to the world’s sovereigns that Bitcoin was recognized as a reserve asset.
States such as Texas and Pennsylvania have followed suit with similar initiatives. Internationally, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland have begun considering sovereign wealth accumulation.
In the corporate sector, the movement toward “Bitcoin government bonds” accelerated. According to Bitcoin Treasury data, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) and over 100 other publicly traded companies currently hold over 1 million BTC on their balance sheets.
Sam Callahan, director of strategy and research at Orange BTC, explained that these companies accepted BTC because it is “a better reserve asset than gold.”
According to him:
“Bitcoin is digital. Bitcoin is fully auditable in real time and can be transferred instantly. Bitcoin has an absolute fixed supply. The supply of gold will continue to expand forever due to continuous mining.”
Regulatory green light
Another major milestone that marks this year is the transition of the traditional financial regulatory environment to accommodate Bitcoin.
Over the past year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and sister financial institutions such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have made significant regulatory advances that entrench Bitcoin into the traditional financial system.
For context, the CFTC has approved Bitcoin as valid margin in regulated derivatives markets, and the US Federal Housing Authority has also recognized the top cryptocurrency as a mortgage-eligible asset in the US.
However, the most important change came from banking regulators, who fully embraced Bitcoin.
Earlier this month, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued Interpretive Letter 1188. The document clarified that national banks can carry out “risk-free principal” cryptocurrency transactions.
Previously, banks were hesitant to broker deals because they didn’t want to keep volatile assets on their balance sheets. “Risk-free principal” trading solves this. This allows banks to purchase assets from sellers and immediately resell them to buyers. Banks facilitate liquidity but do not hold market risk.
This letter, coupled with conditional charter approvals for companies like BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Ripple National Trust Bank, effectively integrated cryptocurrencies into the U.S. banking stack.
TradFi opens the gates
These regulatory milestones have caused banks that previously treated Bitcoin as a reputational risk to change their tune. In 2025, they started fighting for market share.
especially, crypto slate It was previously reported that 60% of the top 25 banks in the US are currently pursuing strategies to sell, protect, or advise on Bitcoin.
This marks the start of operations by major financial institutions such as PNC Bank, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan to enable Bitcoin trading and storage for interested customers.
Given this level of growth, Bitcoin analyst Joe Consorti argued that BTC has become “too big for Wall Street to ignore.”
Bitcoin ETF
Apart from banks’ adoption of Bitcoin, the Bitcoin exchange-traded fund market also delivered strong performance for industry participants this year.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has dominated the ETF world. IBIT has received more than $25 billion in inflows this year, ranking it sixth among all U.S. ETFs.
Importantly, investors used Bitcoin differently than gold. SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) saw inflows as gold prices hit record highs, but Bitcoin ETFs continued to see inflows even as BTC prices stagnated.
Eric Balchunas, ETF analyst at Bloomberg, said:
“IBIT is the only ETF on the 2025 Flow Leaderboard with negative annual returns…which is a very good sign long-term IMO. If you can get $25 billion in a bad year, imagine the flow potential in a good year.”
In fact, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management company, called Bitcoin one of this year’s “biggest investment themes.”
Considering this, market analysts explained that investors treated Bitcoin as a structural accumulation play rather than a momentum trade.
Meanwhile, in other positive developments in the ETF complex, the US SEC has approved the “in-kind” creation and redemption of spot ETFs. This technology change allows authorized participants (APs) to exchange their actual BTC for ETF shares, rather than first exchanging them for cash.
At the same time, the financial regulator also allowed IBIT options to begin operating. This completes the institutional derivatives stack, giving hedgers and basis traders the tools they need to manage risk.
Bitcoin price boom and crash
Unsurprisingly, BTC’s price movements followed its own volatile script. In early October, Bitcoin broke through resistance and hit a new all-time high of over $125,000.
Long-term holders sold while governments and ETFs bought. On-chain data revealed that wallets that held Bitcoin for more than 155 days contributed significantly to October’s rally.
This combination of distribution and macrodeleveraging brought the price back below $90,000, which represents a correction of more than 30%.
Meanwhile, global macroeconomic conditions complicated the situation.
The US economy has seen significant interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve this year, and some argue that these moves are positive for BTC’s price performance. However, at the same time, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) gradually raised interest rates, tightening global liquidity and curbing speculative carry trading.
Still, despite these market conditions, Bitcoin supporters believe the top cryptocurrency will shine. Pierre Rochard, CEO of Bitcoin Bond Company, said:
“Bitcoin can be understood as a global ‘repository’ of surplus capital. When interest rates are low, liquidity is plentiful, and there is a lack of real investments with high ROIC potential, savings move to Bitcoin. Because Bitcoin is a finite scarcity, global digital open source network with a fixed supply of 21 million units. ”
BTC miner and AI
While Wall Street consolidated Bitcoin, the miners securing the network faced crisis.
Following its peak in October, BTC’s hashrate has fallen from a peak of 1.3 zetahashes per second (zh/s) to a recent low of 852EH/S. The fof press time has recovered to 1.09zh/s.
Hashrate is the lifeblood of Bitcoin security and is used to increase the reliability of the network. The higher the hashrate, the harder it is for an attacker to rewrite the Bitcoin ledger.
As a result, when the price of BTC corrected below $90,000, older machines became a burden for Bitcoin miners.
This is because the total cost (including depreciation and amortization) to produce 1 BTC for the average publicly traded miner is nearly $137,800. Spot prices were trading at $47,000 off production costs, and profits evaporated.
To survive, miners have pivoted to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC). Seven of the top 10 companies currently report revenue from AI contracts.
Google has emerged as a major funder of this change. Rather than acquiring mining companies outright, Google provided credit support to help miners upgrade their infrastructure for AI workloads.
This transition marks a permanent change in the industry. Miners are evolving into hybrid energy computing centers to avoid Bitcoin’s volatility.
ghosts of the past
Despite the institutional advances and positive events of the past year, psychological fears remained.
- Mount Gox: The trustee extended the repayment deadline until October 2026. However, a sudden transfer of around 10,600 BTC from real estate wallets in November triggered an algorithmic sell-off, proving that “zombie supply” is still driving short-term sentiment.
- Quantum threat: Over the past year, the Bitcoin development community has accelerated discussions about how to protect the network from future quantum computing attacks. Although many argue that fears are still years away from becoming reality, concerns about the threat continue to dominate broader discussions across the industry.
judgment
2025 was a year of consolidation. “Plumbing” is no longer theoretical. ETFs currently function with in-kind efficiency, banks have regulatory trading permission, and the US government officially owns the assets. However, the mining company bankruptcy crisis and the decline in LTH have proven that structural adoption does not guarantee “upward only” price action. Bitcoin is now fully exposed to the ruthless efficiency of macro markets.