The Year in Bitcoin 2025: Breaking Records as Governments, Wall Street Take Interest

In brief Financial institutions continued adopting Bitcoin in 2025. Bitcoin-buying firms emerged in all shapes and sizes. Controversy brewed over a change to Bitcoin’s codebase. From Wall Street to Washington, Bitcoin reached new heights in 2025. Although the cryptocurrency’s price is on track to limp into the new year, its record-setting climb coincided with new support from the White House, Bitcoin-buying firms, and issuers of exchange-traded funds that track the asset. Meanwhile, the asset’s community confronted questions over privacy and Bitcoin’s permissionless ethos. When Bitcoin topped $126,000 in October for the first time ever, it had come from much further than just its starting point of $94,000 in January. Bitcoin tumbled as low as $76,000 in April as U.S. President Donald Trump ratcheted up his global trade war. Still, in some ways, a choppy market solidified Bitcoin’s footprint relative to other digital assets. As of Dec. 15, Bitcoin’s value accounted for 57.6% of the $3 trillion crypto market, up from 48% at the start of this year, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko . Along the way, investors looked to Bitcoin’s performance in years past for potential clues, but the notion of a so-called altcoin season -or the belief that Bitcoin’s price moves in four-year cycles -proved challenging to map onto a maturing asset. What’s more, Bitcoin’s reputation as “digital gold” was tested by the resurgence of the precious metal itself. The reserve Less than 100 days after Trump was sworn in as president, White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks declared that the politician, who had styled himself as a supporter of digital assets when campaigning for office, had just delivered on a key campaign promise. Trump signed an executive order directing the government to establish a strategic reserve for Bitcoin. At the time, Sacks estimated that the U.S. owned 200,000 Bitcoin, a sum worth $18.1 billion at the time. In years past, the U.S. government had moved to sell Bitcoin seized in connection to criminal cases, but Sacks described that as a thing of the past. Moving forward, he said government-owned Bitcoin would be housed in the equivalent of modern-day Fort Knox. Although Trump’s embrace of digital assets was punctuated by a speech at a Bitcoin conference in 2024, the administration’s rollout of the initiative was muddied by Trump social media messages about a broader digital asset stockpile , which was slated to hold a variety of seized altcoins that could be sold with approval. Before the executive order was signed, several countries contemplated similar maneuvers, including Brazil and Russia, creating a sense of anticipation that countries themselves could emerge as new buyers of the digital asset, treating it in a similar fashion to oil and gold. Still, the White House made it clear that it would only bolster its Bitcoin holdings using budget-neutral strategies. And despite a flurry of bills introduced across several states, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Texas were among the few that approved similar measures. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) proposed legislation in March that...

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