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 would direct the U.S. government to purchase more than $100 billion worth of Bitcoin. When federal authorities later said in October that they had seized $14 billion in Bitcoin from the alleged head of a global scam network, she also described it as an opportunity.
“Turning criminal proceeds into assets that strengthen America’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve shows how sound policy can turn wrongdoing into lasting national value,” she said.
New faces
Whether they previously cultivated cannabis or manufactured medical devices, a panoply of Bitcoin-buying firms emerged this year to capitalize on one of Wall Street’s latest trends.
At the beginning of December, there were 71 publicly traded companies that held Bitcoin on their balance sheets in the U.S., according to Bitcoin Treasuries. Collectively, they held more than 961,000 Bitcoin, nearly three times the amount of all governments.
Many Bitcoin-buying firms modeled themselves on treasury pioneer Strategy, issuing equity and taking on debt to pad their holdings like the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin. However, many of the companies’ stock prices surged before plummeting just as fast.
For example, Kindly MD, which trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker NAKA, was down 99% (as of December 15) from a high of $34.77 in May, according to Yahoo Finance. In September, CEO David Bailey encouraged short-term investors to exit, citing the potential for volatility. Now it’s facing delisting due to its cratered share price.
When Bitcoin-buying firms were in vogue, analysts identified them as a source of demand that could buoy the asset’s price. As the hype faded, experts raised concerns that some fledgling firms could eventually be forced to sell their holdings, or even become takeover targets.
Strategy itself faced challenges as a key premium faded, which had allowed the firm to grow its Bitcoin holding by issuing common stock. Over the course of the year, the firm introduced several types of preferred shares offering dividend payments as a new source of funding.
As Strategy’s shares slipped into the final month of the year, the company established a so-called fiat reserve for the purpose of paying dividends. It also introduced new conditions under which the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin would trim its holdings.
Code and law
In 2025, Bitcoin became a focal point for privacy advocates and innovators.
The prosecution of Samourai Wallet co-founders William Lonergan Hill and Keonne Rodiguez in New York was a prime example, with advocacy groups arguing that the duo’s money laundering case could have an outsized impact on developers’ ability to freely write code.
Hill and Rodriguez pleaded guilty to conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitter business in July, after prosecutors agreed to drop money-laundering charges. Rodriguez received a five-year sentence, while Hill was sentenced to three years of supervised release. In December, President Trump told Decrypt that he would “look at” a potential pardon for Rodriguez.
Samourai Wallet once offered a coin-mixing service that allowed users to obfuscate the origin and destination of transactions. Privacy advocates argue that coin mixers have a legitimate role to play in everyday lives, but European nations are also targeting the technology.
As the government clashed with developers focused on privacy, another debate burst into the public over proposed changes to Bitcoin’s codebase involving JPEGs and so-called spam.
For years, developers have tried to extend Bitcoin’s utility beyond a pure focus on transactions, and in September, a controversial software update removed a potential barrier. With the introduction of Bitcoin Core v30, a feature known as OP_RETURN had limits raised in a way that allowed transactions to carry much larger amounts of non-payment data.
Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr argued that the upgrade enabled the misuse of Bitcoin’s network with more “spam,” while Blockstream CEO Adam Back was among those that warned filtering transactions could leave the network vulnerable to censorship.
Still, allegations surfaced that the change in Core v30 was tied to specific projects that would benefit from the update. Dashjr, who is the lead maintainer of an alternative to Core called Bitcoin Knots, said filters could stop Bitcoin from hosting child sexual abuse material.
As of Dec. 15, Core accounted for 78% of nodes on the network, according to BitRef. Meanwhile, Knots represented 21% of computers helping maintain Bitcoin.
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