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On Thursday, the price of Bitcoin minted yet another fresh record high, dragging along with it the second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum.
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The BTC price hit fresh records of US$123.5K per coin, while Ether climbed to $4.76K per ‘token.’ For the latter, this was a return to 2021 highs that both assets enjoyed while, according to widely accepted analysis, hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Americans were at home, locked down, and investing their stimulus checks.
So what’s going on, now, halfway through 2025?
In the wake of Trump tariff announcements, gold’s apparently unstoppable run, and a litany of pro-crypto policies from the U.S., it looks like those forces are all coming together to create risk-on sentiment in crypto markets broadly.
It’s a crypto world, now. Thank America
Looking at the global market, there’s clear evidence that cryptocurrency’s mainstream-ification isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. Case in point: Kazakhstan, of all places, recently launched that jurisdiction’s first Bitcoin ETF.
But looking back to the U.S., that’s where the real crypto capital is right now. Trump has allowed crypto to form part of 401K retirement plans (the US version of superannuation); Wall Street has long been adopting the alternative asset class as a plaything of its own, and there’s no shortage of crypto ETFs now, all over the world. Even Kazakhstan.
There are other explanations – and in a way, they’re all correct.
US debt a factor?
For its part, investment and market analysis outfit Kobeissi, who are often quite preoccupied with the US debt burden, blame, of course, the US debt burden for why Bitcoin is rising.
In their view, an impending (read: probably eventual) US Treasury collapse due to the debt burden is why investors are rushing into Bitcoin. And that, to be fair, is almost definitely true. Surely it’s forming a part of investment calculus for many market participants.
And that speaks to a truer, broader point – for all intents and purposes, Bitcoin has survived the test of time (it’s been around for 16 years now,) and it’s perhaps unsurprising that a ‘digital gold’ emerged at the same time the household computer hit saturation.
In my view, so long as uncertainty remains and the US gov’t continue to promulgate pro-crypto policies, we can probably expect Bitcoin to keep running – though, maybe not at the pace we’ve seen it clock in recent years.
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And as long as Bitcoin rises, like the gold-silver relationship, Ethereum is more than likely to follow.
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