When people think of a cryptocurrency — a non-fiat digital currency that, for good or ill, cannot be traced — they almost always think of Bitcoin. It’s inarguably the most popular.
It’s also the priciest.
The cost per coin is up to $84,000. Though it is worth (no pun intended) noting that people can own “parts” of coins.
Some people argue that crypto is a high-tech scam, since there’s no way to regulate how much it’s worth, and the market can fluctuate wildly. It’s also susceptible to security breaches, where it can simply evaporate, with one of the most famous cases being the collapse of Mt. Gox. In another high-profile case, Sam Bankman-Fried (a bit of an ironic name), the founder of FTX, was convicted of fraud and stealing roughly $8 billion from users.
Cryptocurrencies also carry an environmental price. The United Nations released a report in 2023 detailing further impacts that mining crypto can have on energy, land, and water use.
POTUS signs crypto executive order
Nonetheless, Bitcoin has no shortage of supporters. Among them is President Donald Trump, who just recently signed an executive order to create a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve that will treat bitcoin as a reserve asset.”
Specifically:
- “The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve will be capitalized with bitcoin owned by the Department of Treasury that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings. Other agencies will evaluate their legal authority to transfer any bitcoin owned by those agencies to the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
- “The United States will not sell bitcoin deposited into this Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, which will be maintained as a store of reserve assets.
- “The Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce are authorized to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, provided that those strategies impose no incremental costs on American taxpayers.”
The order also creates a “U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile” that extends beyond Bitcoin.
That, of course, begs the question: Exactly how much will Bitcoin be worth in 2025? How many billions could it be worth to investors and the U.S.
When it entered the public realm in 2013, the cost of a Bitcoin was roughly $100, according to coinbase. Now it’s $84,000. So, yeah, you’re looking at an 84,000% increase. If you’d gotten in on the bottom floor, that’s a heck of an investment.
Now, prediction market platforms like Kalshi are trying to determine just how high the price of Bitcoin will get this year.
Bitcoin predictions this year
Here’s the breakdown right now:
- $125,000 or above: 36%
- $150,000 or above: 24%
- $160,000 or above: 22%
- $200,000 or above: 11%
- $180,000 or above: 10%
- $250,000 or above: 7%
- $300,000 or above: 3%
- $500,000 or above: 2%
As we noted above, it’s a highly volatile market capable of both tremendous gains and tremendous losses. Either way, it’s certainly something to watch.
