Bitcoin (BTC) hit its strongest price in US dollars in 2025 on Friday and hit a new high against the British pound as excitement for a new era of crypto-friendly US government mounts ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration next week.
BTC topped $105,000 during the US session, rising 5.2% over the past 24 hours and leading the broad market crypto benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index higher. Of the CoinDesk 20 constituents, only NEAR and Litecoin’s LTC kept pace with bitcoin’s gains, while solana (SOL) and Ethereum’s ether (ETH) lagged with 3% gains. XRP was down 4%, pulling back from its all-time highs after a massive market-leading rally earlier this week.
Crypto-related stocks are also moving higher. MicroStrategy ( MSTR ), the largest corporate BTC holder, rose 7% on the day, while exchange giant Coinbase ( COIN ) gained 4.5%. MARA Holdings led gains among major bitcoin miners, up 13%.
That’s quite a turnaround from earlier this week, when a broad market sell-off saw bitcoin fall below $90.0000, with fears of a deeper pullback. However, BTC has since rallied 17% first as investor anxiety over Wednesday’s US CPI inflation report passed and then as focus turned to speculation about Donald Trump’s potential crypto actions after his inauguration on January 20.
By overcoming last week’s local high of $102,000, BTC also broke out of its multi-week downtrend with lower highs to target its December record price, said Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy.
“Now $108,000 is close to target resistance,” he said in an X post. “Many reasons to be bullish.”
Strong bitcoin ETF flows
Spot bitcoin ETFs collectively saw $1.381 billion in net inflows in the past two days, reversing a four-day streak of outflows, according to Farside Investors data. Ether spot ETFs attracted $166 million in inflows, their strongest day in more than a month.
With markets closed on Monday, today is the last trading session in traditional markets before Trump’s inauguration.
BlackRock’s Ishares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) posted nearly $1 billion in trading volume in just over the first hour of the session, posting the fourth-largest volume among all US ETFs and outperforming Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF (VOO) with nearly ten times assets under management according to Barchart data.
All eyes on Trump
The main upcoming catalyst will be Trump’s inauguration ceremony on Monday, and crypto investors expect a sea change from the new president. Trump promised on the campaign trail to position the United States as a leader in the crypto space, including creating a national repository of bitcoin, in stark contrast to previous years of regulatory crackdowns and enforcement.
Bloomberg reported Thursday that Trump is planning an executive order to elevate digital assets to a “national priority” and create an advisory council of industry members for policy recommendations.
The odds of the US establishing a bitcoin reserve rose sharply in recent days, with Polymarket traders placing a 38% probability of Trump making it happen in the first 100 days of his presidency.
“As we close out the final week of the Biden presidency, the technical picture remains very constructive for BTC,” John Glover, chief investment officer at crypto lender Ledn, said in an email.
“The only thing that could cause a major corrective move down is if Trump fails to act on his plans to loosen regulatory policies around digital assets and start building BTC treasury holdings,” he added. “Recent headlines indicate he is serious about making this a priority in his first 100 days,”
Glover’s analysis using wave theory projects that bitcoin will hit $128,000 in the coming months following its preliminary 5-wave pattern, completing its larger wave 3 in its uptrend. According to wave theory, market trends unfold in five waves, three of which represent the primary trend and the others constitute retracements.
Breaking above the record high of $108,000 is key, Glover said, and there is still a slight possibility of revisiting the recent lows of $90,000. However, this scenario is becoming increasingly unlikely, he added.
