Bitcoin has entered a period of extreme uncertainty following the euphoria of Donald Trump’s resounding US Presidential election victory. After a scaled-back plan for a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve missed the mark with market sentiment, what’s next for the world’s most famous cryptocurrency?
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. All indications pointed to a Bitcoin bull run throughout the first half of 2025. Buoyed by what should be a post-halving event rally alongside the high-profile approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs by the SEC in early 2024, many speculative crypto enthusiasts expected BTC to be performing far better today.
The return of Trump to the White House represented the first time a pro-crypto President had taken office, and his campaign pledge of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve was a catalyst for widespread optimism.
Between election day on November 5, 2024, and Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025, Bitcoin had rallied an astonishing 58.22%, underlining the confidence that investors had in the incoming President and his plans for crypto.
Since the inauguration, BTC has fallen by more than 20%. With external factors like Wall Street volatility amid trade tariff uncertainty pushing crypto markets lower, the Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index, which monitors the market sentiment towards the cryptocurrency,
What’s changed? It appears that optimism was simply too high for the changes investors anticipated.
‘Fort Knox’ Falls Flat
One key source of investor confidence in BTC stemmed from the expectation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve being established by the President. On March 7, an
The executive order focused on establishing a cryptocurrency reserve comprising of the 198,000 BTC the American government had seized through law enforcement confiscations, worth an estimated $17 billion.
Trump’s crypto tsar David Sacks also confirmed that
Because the reserve would be built using seized assets,
The issue with the executive order is that it falls short of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve’s terms as initially laid out in the Bitcoin Act.
“Under the so-called Bitcoin Act, the US must accumulate 1 million bitcoins within 20 years, with the goal of owning roughly 5% of the total supply,” explained Maxim Manturov, head of investment research at Freedom24. “Coupled with huge demand from ETF funds, this could create a strong supply-demand imbalance, against this backdrop there are various expectations for the price of BTC”.
Because the total supply of Bitcoin is capped at 21 million coins, investors expected that the US topping up their reserve of BTC to 1 million would significantly increase the asset’s scarcity and drive its value higher.
It now appears that this won’t be the case. It also appears evident that Trump’s unpredictability is creating disruptive swings in sentiment towards the cryptocurrency market as a whole.
The End of Bitcoin’s Cycles?
2025 was supposed to be the year where the cryptocurrency bull market resumed regardless of who was in office. Bitcoin’s cyclical nature, which is powered by its halving events every four years, has historically driven the entire market higher as the coin’s scarcity ramps up overnight.
Bitcoin halving events occur because a
Every halving event since Bitcoin’s launch in 2009 has culminated in a bull market and fresh all-time high that’s considerably stronger than previous post-halving highs. Although January 2025 saw BTC trading at a fresh high of $108,786, expectations among investors were for the coin to climb higher this year.
Tellingly, Bitcoin’s fall from its most recent all-time high came in the wake of the launch of $MELANIA, an official meme token for incoming First Lady, Melania Trump. With
Having launched $TRUMP as a meme coin just three days earlier, the meme tokens contributed to a loss of investor confidence that still hasn’t recovered, judging by Bitcoin’s consistent losses in the wake of the event.
Trump’s outspoken approach to the Presidency has created more volatility not only in the cryptocurrency markets but also on Wall Street. The announcements and delays to tariffs and unprecedented new policies have carried a significant impact on sentiment-driven markets, and considering that there are few investment options that are more influenced by sentiment than crypto, these disruptions to Bitcoin’s historical cycles may bring an end to the last predictable trend within the ecosystem.
What’s Next for BTC?
Bitcoin, and the wider cryptocurrency market have correlated strongly with Wall Street in recent months. This is perhaps a logical result of aligning both markets with the launch of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs. However, it also means that Trump and Wall Street’s influence on the crypto market is going to weigh heavily on Bitcoin.
At this stage, it’s important to reiterate that Trump is the most crypto-positive President we’ve seen enter the White House yet, and there’s plenty of room for his pro-growth stance to pay off for Bitcoin.
However, in a landscape where Bitcoin’s cycles have a weakening influence, 2025 may shape up to be a challenging year for a cryptocurrency market that had so much expectation pinned upon it moving into the new year.
