The Trends That Dominated the Bitcoin Market in 2025

In this 2025, the Bitcoin market has been dominated at different times by various trends. 

Among all, however, there is one in particular that has been the true protagonist of the year, especially since many of the other trends have concerned the crypto market in general rather than specifically Bitcoin. 

Instead, the dominant trend specifically concerned BTC, and only to a much lesser extent other cryptocurrencies. This is the so-called institutional adoption, or rather the treasury trend. 

Institutional Adoption of Bitcoin

Institutional adoption of Bitcoin does not refer to adoption by public institutions. Instead, it refers to the adoption of BTC by so-called institutional investors.

The term “institutional investors” refers to all investors who allocate substantial financial resources on behalf of others, thus making investments in a systematic and professional manner.

These are professional investors who do not invest for themselves, as ordinary citizens (known as retail investors) do, but on behalf of their clients, and therefore with their clients’ resources and not necessarily with their own funds. 

For example, the now-famous BlackRock Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) falls into this category, which over time has raised more than 62 billion dollars from its investors and has purchased over 770,000 BTC. 

Instead, private individuals who invest their own funds on their own behalf are simply called retail, regardless of the amounts invested, even though in the vast majority of cases (but not all) these are medium-small amounts. 

In particular, institutional investors are those who are required to operate according to strict ethical and regulatory standards, ensuring transparency and acting in the best interest of their clients. 

Indeed, the institutional adoption of Bitcoin among major institutional investors is a phenomenon that only emerged on a large scale last year, with the debut of major ETFs on the stock exchange, and has solidified this year. 

In particular, 2025 marked a massive entry of institutional investors into the Bitcoin market, which might have even succeeded in reducing BTC price volatility by 40% compared to 2021. 

The main consequence of this has been the transformation of Bitcoin into a fairly “mature” asset, suitable even for many diversified portfolios.

The Treasuries

Among the main institutional investors are those companies that have become true BTC treasuries, meaning they buy Bitcoin simply to hold them in their portfolio in the hope that this will increase their value. 

The most famous is Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), which has come to hold more than 660,000 BTC. Although this is less than IBIT, they are in the same magnitude. 

Several other companies have also started purchasing BTC solely to hold them in their portfolios, and although Strategy began five years ago, 2025 was the year of the Bitcoin treasury boom. 

As of today, there are over 1.3 million BTC in the wallets of dozens of private companies worldwide, which is not much less than the 1.6 million BTC held by ETFs.  

It is noteworthy that even the United States of America has established its own Bitcoin treasury, called a strategic reserve, into which more than 300,000 BTC seized over the years by the Department of Justice have been accumulated. 

Regulatory Developments

Another significant trend, which has affected the crypto market as a whole, is related to developments in public regulation. 

In fact, during 2025, especially thanks to the new Trump administration in the USA, regulation has shifted from an obstacle to a springboard, to the extent that the USA has enacted the specific GENIUS Act, which created a framework for stablecoins, and the CLARITY Act classifies BTC as a commodity, exempting it from SEC Rule 204A-1 and reducing overlap with the CFTC.

In reality, this trend is primarily linked to stablecoins, and only secondarily to cryptocurrencies, but it is of such historical importance that it cannot be ignored even in the specific case of Bitcoin. 

To be honest, this also had a downside, namely the estimated 13% increase in compliance costs, but what matters for the purpose of this analysis is that 2025 was the year of legislative breakthrough.

Technological Innovation

A minor yet significant trend has been related to technological innovation. 

To be honest, the trend of technological innovation has dominated financial markets and has also had significant impacts on crypto markets, but it has had lesser impacts on Bitcoin. 

The fact is that on a technical level, Bitcoin changes very little, even though above the slowly evolving layer-1, there is a whole development of layer-2 or higher protocols that continues to progress. 

In 2025, there have indeed been developments that have enhanced the utility of Bitcoin, even though none of these directly concern the core protocol. These are additional solutions that can still have a significant impact. 

The Correlation with Equities

A trend that has significantly impacted the price movement of BTC is its correlation with the stock market performance, particularly the U.S. market. 

In reality, technically it is simply the emergence of a correlation with the trend of other risk-on assets that had already appeared in the past, but this year it has become much more solidified. 

If until a few years ago it was a fairly common opinion that the price trend of Bitcoin could follow different logics compared to those of the stock market, in this 2025 it has instead become quite evident that its risk-on nature makes it inevitably very similar from this point of view to other risk-on assets, and profoundly different from risk-off assets like gold. 

And thus, institutional investors themselves have begun to view Bitcoin not merely as “digital gold,” but more importantly as a high-yield diversification component, comparable to an asymmetric “call” on the digital future.

Therefore, the price of Bitcoin appears increasingly tied not only to the internal dynamics of supply and demand in the crypto markets but also, and more importantly, to fiscal, monetary, and geopolitical policies in the USA and globally.

The New Cycle

One of the most discussed trends, especially in the latter part of the year, has been related to the narrative of the so-called “long cycle” or the cycle variation. 

Bitcoin has a cycle of about 4 years (3 years and 10 months, to be precise) linked to the halving. 

To date, there have been four halvings (2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024), each followed by a bullrun the following year (2013, 2017, 2021, and 2025). 

The fact, however, is that not only has this year’s bullrun been different, because it was much more limited, but there was also a lack of a true large speculative bubble, as in the previous three cases. 

This difference has been interpreted by many as the end of the classic 4-year cycle, or a monumental change, whereas it could simply be an anomaly. 

Satoshi and the US Dollar

Initially, Satoshi Nakamoto intended for there to be exactly one halving every four years, specifically in January. In fact, he mined the first Bitcoin block on January 3, 2009, with the expectation that subsequent halvings would occur in January 2013, January 2017, January 2021, January 2025, and so on. 

Instead, BTC mining progressed faster than expected, reducing the average time between halvings to 3 years and 10 months. As a result, the first halving was not in January 2013 but in November 2012, the second in July 2016, the third in May 2020, and the fourth in April 2024. 

It is likely that not only was Satoshi’s choice of 4 years not random, but it was also no coincidence that he mined the first block right at the beginning of January 2009. 

The curious thing is that the Bitcoin protocol was published by Nakamoto on October 31, 2008, but he waited more than two months to mine the first block. 

Another curious fact is that in January 2009, the new US president (Barack Obama) took office, having been elected in November of the previous year, and that US presidential elections are always held every four years, in November, with the new president officially taking office in January of the following year. In fact, in January 2013, Obama’s second term began, in January 2017, Trump’s first term, in January 2020, Biden’s term, and in January 2025, Trump’s second term. 

These curiosities might have an explanation if one hypothesizes that Satoshi Nakamoto was aware of the US Dollar cycle and aimed to link Bitcoin’s price trend to that cycle. After all, he created it precisely to provide a tool for defense against the loss of purchasing power of fiat currencies, among which the dollar is the main one globally, and the technique used to achieve this was precisely the halving. 

Indeed, over the following years, and especially after 2017 and even more so after 2020, the trend of Bitcoin’s price in dollars (BTCUSD) began to correlate with the USCPI/DXY ratio, which is the Consumer Price Index in the USA (USCPI) and the Dollar Index (DXY). 

It should be noted that USCPI almost always increases, while DXY often follows a four-year cycle linked to presidential elections, rising in the election year and falling the following year. 

Modified Cycle or Not?

Well, the Dollar Index cycle has not changed, so much so that during 2025 it is exhibiting a trend extremely similar to that of 2017. In 2021, however, it was emerging from the largest QE in history, which had temporarily altered its cycle. 

Therefore, the cycle that should underpin the price trend of Bitcoin, namely the trend of the USCPI/DXY ratio, has not changed, but the price trend of Bitcoin in these last months of 2025 is markedly different compared to that of 2017. 

The issue is that two massive anomalies have formed on BTCUSD, both in October 2017 and October 2025, making the trends of these two months incomparable.

In fact, in October 2017, while the DXY was slightly rising, BTCUSD should have decreased, yet in a completely anomalous manner, a colossal speculative bubble inflated, which then burst a couple of months later. This anomaly did not occur this year, but in reality, it is quite normal for anomalies not to repeat. 

Additionally, in October 2025, the USA experienced the longest government shutdown in history, which had a significant negative impact on BTDUSD, especially in November. This is also an anomaly, as it has never happened before because previous shutdowns have lasted much less time since Bitcoin has existed. 

At this point, the two Bitcoin cycles (the one that culminated in 2017 and the one that culminated in 2025) are not comparable, whereas the cycle underlying the BTCUSD trend is not only comparable but is also essentially the same.