2025’s wildest Bitcoin predictions collapse into a heap
At the start of 2025, forecasts for Bitcoin’s price bordered on euphoric. But the biggest fans of the controversial asset were left with egg all over their faces.
Bitcoin’s turbulent end to 2025 has exposed just how dramatically wrong many of the year’s boldest price forecasts turned out to be.
After months of institutional optimism and sky-high projections, the world’s largest cryptocurrency is closing the year in negative territory while traditional markets surge ahead.
Bitcoin is currently trading at approximately US$92,300 (A$136,000), sitting far below even the most conservative forecasts made at the beginning of the year.
Instead of delivering the explosive rally many anticipated, Bitcoin has posted a minus one per cent performance in 2025.
It puts it far below many traditional assets that, for all their obvious flaws, have remained somewhat prosperous.
The American S & P 500 rose 16.3 per cent, while the Nasdaq climbed 21.7 per cent. Interestingly, gold also surged roughly 60 per cent as investors scurried to safe havens in droves.
Who got it wrong?
At the start of 2025, forecasts for Bitcoin’s price bordered on euphoric.
Banking giant JPMorgan suggested Bitcoin could reach US$170,000 (A$250,000) by year-end, while VanEck raised that expectation slightly higher to US$180,000 (A$265,000).
Standard Chartered went further, projecting Bitcoin would soar to US$250,000 (A$370,000), a level echoed by market strategist Tom Lee.
Author and investor Robert Kiyosaki predicted Bitcoin would climb to US$350,000 (A$515,000), while venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya and crypto advocate Anthony Pompliano both floated targets of US$500,000 (A$735,000).
BlackRock entered the discussion with a far more aggressive outlook of US$700,000 (A$1.03 million) and MicroStrategy chairman Michael Saylor suggested Bitcoin would eventually hit US$1,000,000 (A$1.47 million).
The most extreme forecast came from Cathie Wood, who argued Bitcoin could reach US$2,000,000 (A$2.95 million).
Instead, with Bitcoin trading near US$92,300 (A$136,000), the gap between prediction and reality has become impossible to ignore.
As critics have noted, a target of US$0 would have ended the year closer to the mark than nearly all of these forecasts.
As Bitcoin failed to gain momentum, even some of its strongest institutional supporters began backing away from their original projections.
Standard Chartered, for example, later cut its year-end outlook to US$100,000 (A$147,000), citing slower institutional inflows and weaker-than-expected demand from corporate buyers. Even that revised target now sits only marginally above Bitcoin’s current trading range.
Several forces combined to derail Bitcoin’s expected breakout year.
Higher-for-longer interest rates and macroeconomic uncertainty pushed investors away from risk-heavy assets, while Bitcoin increasingly traded in lockstep with broader tech sentiment rather than behaving as an independent hedge.
At the same time, gold’s outsized rally undercut the narrative that Bitcoin would dominate as the preferred store of value in uncertain economic conditions.
The gold rush
For the perpetual crypto skeptics, it’s a gleeful period indeed.
Economic traditionalists, particularly those with heavy investment in the banking sector, have spent years trashing Bitcoin and the entourage of its wacky spin-offs.
The pro-crypto crowd is predictably shrugging-off the latest crash-and-burn, urging their peers to capitalise on low prices and “buy the dip”.
But as the die-hards rally, there’s another interesting trend emerging.
A silly little thing called gold.
For years, a growing distrust of traditional economic systems has pushed investors toward assets outside government control.
The scepticism intensified after the global financial crisis, creating fertile ground for new forms of money.
In Bitcoin’s early days, it was celebrated as a radical alternative, a decentralised currency free from central banks, political agendas, or Wall Street.
Just like gold, no single authority could print it, freeze it, or manipulate it. At least not as easily as the fiat currency we currently operate under. That promise helped Bitcoin explode in popularity as the “internet’s gold”.
But in 2025, it’s a much different story.
As institutional money poured in, Bitcoin became mainstream and therefore far more sensitive to the same economic forces and liquidity cycles it was created to escape. Gold, on the other hand, has always been a steady rock to anchor to in the storm.
Fans of both assets have argued for years about which one truly protects wealth. But the market action in 2025 suggests the relationship is far from straightforward.
Bitcoin has dropped nearly 25 per cent this month, hitting a low near $123,165 last Friday before recovering to around $131,580.
Across the wider crypto universe, about $1.836 trillion in value has evaporated in just six weeks, according to CoinGecko. This downturn has been driven largely by spot selling, including big ETF redemptions, dormant wallets waking up and unloading coins, and a loss of interest from momentum traders, Bloomberg reports.
Naturally, those with the most to lose in the recent crash are the most optimistic about the future.
Despite detractors and “investment experts” saying it’s an unwise long-term asset, gold became a standout performer of 2025.
The ancient asset proved those sentiments wrong with one of its most dramatic rallies in modern history, outpacing nearly every major asset class as global uncertainty over geopolitics, international conflict and tariffs surges.
Gold forecasts for the year ahead vary widely, with optimistic analysts seeing potential for it to climb toward the $6,120 to $6,885 range, while those taking a more cautious view warn that a stabilising global environment could pull prices back toward $5,355.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, will remain as it has always been — a highly volatile asset that is almost impossible to forecast short-term.
Originally published as 2025’s wildest Bitcoin predictions collapse into a heap
