Bitcoins bull run in 2025 was expected to be historic, with some industry experts suggesting that the largest cryptocurrency would reach heights of $180,000-$200,000 by the end of the year.
It was historic. Just not as anyone thought.
It is true that bitcoin hit an all-time high earlier than most models expected, rising above $126,200 on October 6. But then, four days later, came a lightning crash that shook the market and revealed how fragile and unpredictable trading in digital assets can be.
Since then, bitcoin has fallen 30% from the October record and more than 50% below most 2025 forecasts. Far from shooting up, it is down 6% this year and spent most of the past two months between $83,000 and $96,000, according to TradingView prices.
October’s crash caught traders by surprise, wiping out months of leveraged bullishness in minutes. But it wasn’t a crash, according to Mati Greenspan, the founder of Quantum Economics, it was a rebalancing and a sign of cryptocurrency’s growing acceptance by institutions.
Bitcoin was repriced as a risky asset, not a revolution.
“The Oct. 10 flash crash was not a failure for bitcoin,” Greenspan said in an interview. “It was a liquidity event, triggered by macro stress, trade war fears and crowded positioning, that revealed how forward-loaded the cycle had become.”
The sudden change in behavior made forecasting nearly impossible, and made some of the space’s most recognizable analysts eat their words.
Read more: In 2025, bitcoin showed how spectacularly wrong price forecasts can be
When the year started, experts like Matt Hougan, Bitwise Asset Management’s Chief Investment Officer, Mike Novogratz, Galaxy Digital’s CEO, Geoffrey Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s Global Head of Digital Asset Research and others shared optimistic forecasts, but as it draws to a close and the dust settles, the reality is quite different.
‘Caution capital’
What happened? In short, bitcoin’s ideological roots were overtaken by its growing acceptance as an institutional asset. This shift changed how bitcoin was traded and evaluated by sophisticated investors from traditional markets.
“What went wrong in 2025 is that bitcoin quietly crossed a threshold. It stopped being a fringe, retail-driven asset and became part of the institutional macro complex,” Quantum Economics’ Greenspan told CoinDesk. “Once Wall Street arrived, bitcoin began to trade less on ideology and more on liquidity, positioning and politics.”
With Wall Street’s involvement, bitcoin became more closely tied to macroeconomic events that affect all asset classes. The cryptocurrency may still be a hedge against the Federal Reserve, but it is now more sensitive than ever to Fed policy.
“Markets came into 2025 expecting faster, deeper Fed easing — and that simply hasn’t happened,” said Jason Fernandes, co-founder at AdLunam. “BTC, like other risk assets, pays the price of prudent capital.”
In addition, October’s cascade of liquidations left both retail and institutional investors bruised.
“Derivatives-driven liquidations made for a choppy, unpredictable market where one batch triggered the next,” Fernandes said.”It’s no surprise that ETF inflows dried up.”
From January to October, US spot bitcoin ETFs attracted about $9.2 billion in net inflows, or about $230 million per week. But then the momentum turned sharply. From October to December, the numbers turned negative with over $1.3 billion in net outflows, including a $650 million withdrawal in just four days in late December.
Quantum Economics’ Greenspan pointed to a fundamental Catch-22: “Bitcoin is often framed as a hedge against the Federal Reserve, but in practice it still depends on Fed-driven liquidity.” Since 2022, the Fed has been steadily withdrawing liquidity from the system, and this liquidity ultimately flows into risk assets, including bitcoin.
“When that tide goes out, the upside becomes fragile,” he added.
Skewed expectations
This changed reality creates a conundrum for bitcoin and crypto as a whole. Mass adoption and price appreciation need Wall Street’s capital, but that capital is a double-edged sword.
“Most people assumed that institutional adoption would mean bitcoin to a million [dollars] faster than you can blink,” said Kevin Murcko, CEO of crypto exchange CoinMetro. “But now that it’s institutionalized, it’s treated like any other Wall Street asset.
“That means it responds to fundamental principles, not just faith,” he said. “We’re seeing prices react to everything from the Bank of Japan (BOJ) stopping cheap capital to policy uncertainty around the Fed itself. And institutions don’t like uncertainty.”
Then there are weekends.
“Bitcoin trades 24/7, but capital flows don’t; most large flows are Mon-Fri. So when the weekend hits and leverage is high, you get cascading liquidations.”
Silver lining
However, this does not mean that it is all doom and gloom. In fact, it is a positive shift towards higher prices, just slower than expected, according to the experts.
Bitwise’s Hougan said he believes the overall trend remains up: “It’s getting messy. But the macro direction is clear.
“The market is driven by the clash between strong, sustained positive forces and periodic, violent negatives.” He said he remained optimistic despite the recent washouts. “Institutional adoption, regulatory clarity, macro issues around fiat decay, and real-world use cases like stablecoins — these are slow-moving, positive forces. They take a decade to play out.”
Bitcoin, traditionally seen as the result of a four-year cycle tied to the regular 50% cuts in the creation of new tokens paid out to miners, is likely to create a new dynamic in 2026, he said.
“The old cycle drivers — halvings, interest rates and leverage — are significantly weaker,” he told CoinDesk earlier this month. Future growth will be driven by more mature, structural forces, such as institutional flows, regulatory clarity and global asset diversification. “That’s why we think bitcoin could hit new highs in 2026 — even outside the traditional halving cycle.”
Quantum Economics’ Greenspan perhaps summed up what’s happening with bitcoin and where it’s headed.
“This was not ‘peak bitcoin,'” he said. “That was the moment bitcoin officially started playing in Wall Street’s pond.”
