The year 2025 taught Bitcoin a lesson about how the market really works. The year started on a wave of political optimism and then smoothly transitioned into summer with aggressive signals from regulators.
As a result, the market surged into one of the sharpest cycles of growth and collapse in the history of the asset.
By December, the price had made a full circle and returned almost to its initial values. Formally, bitcoin closed the year unchanged. But this flat graph concealed a painful transformation.
While Wall Street banks finally opened their doors, and ETFs were attracting record volumes of capital, the physical infrastructure of the network faced a solvency crisis.
The race for bitcoin reserves
In 2025, President Donald Trump moved from campaign promises to concrete actions. On March 6, the White House signed Executive Order 14233, officially launching the strategic bitcoin reserve of the USA.
The document consolidated state-seized bitcoins into a separate storage of US digital assets. Thus, the era of fragmented sales previously conducted by the Marshals Service was closed. Just a week later, lawmakers introduced the BITCOIN Act of 2025 to enshrine this model at the legislative level.
As a result, the US government ceased to be a seller and became a strategic holder of bitcoin. This was a direct signal to other countries that BTC is now regarded as a recognized reserve asset.
Following the federal initiative, similar steps were taken by individual states, including Texas and Pennsylvania. At the international level, countries like France, Germany, Czech Republic, and Poland began to closely examine the idea of sovereign accumulation.
In the corporate sector, the trend towards 'bitcoin treasuries' accelerated sharply. Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, and more than 100 other public companies now hold over 1 million BTC on their balance sheets.
Sam Callahan, Director of Strategy and Research at Oranje BTC, explained why these companies have bet on bitcoin. According to him, BTC is a stronger reserve asset than gold. In his opinion:
"Bitcoin is digital. It can be verified in real-time, and transfers take seconds. Bitcoin has a strictly fixed supply. Gold supplies will grow endlessly due to constant mining."
Regulatory green light
Another important event of 2025 was how regulators in traditional finance stopped fighting bitcoin and began to adjust the rules to it.
Over the year, the SEC and other agencies, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, took several steps that made bitcoin part of the 'official' financial framework.
The CFTC allowed bitcoin to be used as collateral in regulated derivatives markets. At the same time, federal housing agencies in the USA began to consider crypto assets when assessing mortgage applications.
But the main breakthrough occurred with banking regulators. At the beginning of the month, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued Interpretative Letter 1188. National banks were allowed to conduct cryptocurrency transactions in a format where the bank helps the parties conduct the exchange and does not take on pricing risk.
Previously, banks were hesitant to get involved in such operations since any asset could end up on the balance sheet and add unnecessary volatility. Here, the problem is eliminated. The bank takes the asset from the seller and immediately transfers it to the buyer. There is liquidity, and there is no risk of holding a position.
And together with conditional licenses for BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Ripple National Trust Bank, this effectively secured crypto as part of the banking infrastructure in the USA.
TradFi opens the gates
Amid these regulatory shifts, banks that previously viewed bitcoin as a reputational risk drastically changed their position. In 2025, they moved from cautious observation to competition for market share.
Large American banks began actively building strategies related to the sale, storage, and consulting on bitcoin for their clients. This was a clear sign that traditional finance no longer wanted to stay on the sidelines.
Players like PNC Bank, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and others opened access to trading and custodial storage of bitcoin for interested clients.
Given the scale of this turnaround, bitcoin analyst Joe Consorti noted that BTC has become too large an asset for Wall Street to continue ignoring it.
Bitcoin ETF
At the same time as banks revised their attitudes towards bitcoin, the market for exchange-traded funds showed one of the strongest performances of the year.
The absolute leader was the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust fund with the ticker IBIT. Over the year, the fund attracted over $25 billion in net inflows and ranked sixth among all ETFs in the USA.
It is fundamentally important that investors used bitcoin differently than gold. While the SPDR Gold Shares fund received inflows against the backdrop of historical highs in gold prices, inflows to bitcoin ETFs remained even when the price of BTC was stagnant.
ETF analyst at Bloomberg agency Eric Balchunas noted that the situation with IBIT looks telling.
According to him:
"IBIT turned out to be the only fund in the inflows ranking for 2025 with negative returns. In the long run, this is a very strong signal. If the fund managed to attract $25 billion in a weak year, one can imagine the potential for inflows in a favorable period."
It is no coincidence that BlackRock itself referred to bitcoin as one of the key investment themes of the year. Against this backdrop, analysts concluded that investors view BTC not as a short-term bet on momentum, but as an asset for structural accumulation.
An additional positive factor was the changes within the ETF infrastructure. The SEC approved a natural exchange mechanism for spot bitcoin ETFs. This allowed authorized participants to exchange real BTC directly for fund shares, without intermediate conversion to cash.
At the same time, the regulator allowed the launch of options on IBIT. This gave hedgers and arbitrage traders tools for risk management and effectively completed the formation of institutional derivative infrastructure around bitcoin.
The rise and fall of bitcoin price
It is not surprising that the price dynamics of BTC developed according to its volatile scenario. At the beginning of October, bitcoin broke resistance and updated its historical maximum, rising above $125,000.
While government entities and ETFs were ramping up purchases, long-term holders began to take profits. On-chain data showed that wallets holding bitcoin for 155 days or more contributed the most to the October growth.
This distribution, intensified by an overall reduction in leverage on a macro level, quickly brought the price back below $90,000. As a result, the market saw a correction of more than 30%.
Additionally, the situation was complicated by global macroeconomic factors.
The US economy faced a noticeable decline in interest rates from the Fed throughout the year. Some market participants considered these steps positive for the price of BTC. However, at the same time, the Bank of Japan began to cautiously raise rates, leading to tightening global liquidity and pressure on speculative carry trade strategies.
Despite such conditions, bitcoin supporters remain confident in its potential. Pierre Rochard, CEO of Bitcoin Bond Company, stated:
"Bitcoin can be viewed as a global reserve of savings for excess capital. When interest rates are low, liquidity is abundant, and there are not enough real investments with high expected returns, capital flows into bitcoin. It is a supply-limited asset, a global digital network with open source and a fixed supply of 21 million coins."
BTC miners and AI
While Wall Street actively integrated bitcoin, miners, who secure the network, faced a severe crisis.
After the October peak, the hashrate of BTC collapsed from a maximum of 1.3 zettahash per second to 852 EH/s. At the time of publication, it had partially recovered to 1.09 zh/s.
Hashrate is the foundation of bitcoin security and a key element of trust in the network. The higher this indicator, the harder it is to attack the blockchain and rewrite its history.
But against the backdrop of the price correction below $90,000, old equipment became a burden for miners.
The reason is simple. The total cost of mining 1 BTC, taking into account depreciation, is around $137.8 thousand for the average public miner. With the spot price being about $47 thousand lower than these values, the margin has practically disappeared.
To survive, miners have started to shift towards artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Seven out of the ten largest mining companies are already reporting income from AI contracts.
Google became the key financial partner in this turnaround. Instead of directly buying mining companies, the corporation provided credit support, helping them modernize their infrastructure for AI loads.
This shift indicates long-term changes in the industry. Miners are gradually transforming into hybrid energy-computing centers to reduce dependence on bitcoin volatility.
Ghosts of the past
Despite institutional progress and positive events of the year, psychological fears did not go away.
Mt. Gox
The fund manager extended the deadline for payments to affected creditors until October 2026. However, the sudden transfer of about 10,600 BTC from the fund's wallets in November triggered an algorithmic sell-off. This showed that old bitcoin supplies still influence short-term market sentiment.
Quantum threat
Over the past year, bitcoin developers noticeably intensified discussions on protecting the network from future attacks using quantum computing. Although many consider these risks remote, the topic remains one of the most alarming in the industry.
Verdict
The year 2025 became a year of integration. The financial infrastructure around bitcoin ceased to be a theory. ETFs operate with a full-fledged model, banks received regulatory approval for trading, and the US government officially holds BTC on its balance sheet.
However, the solvency crisis among miners and sales from long-term holders showed that structural adoption does not guarantee a constant rise in price. Bitcoin is now fully integrated into the logic of global macro markets and depends on their dynamics.
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