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Bitcoin Bull Market 2025: 3 Reasons Why It Won’t Be Like 2017 And 2021

In a recent tweet, Luke Mikic, a renowned podcaster and YouTuber, highlighted the distinct differences between the upcoming 2025 Bitcoin bull market and its predecessors in 2017 and 2021. Drawing from his insights and the data available, here’s a deep dive into the three reasons that set the 2025 bull market apart:

1. The Hash Rate Race: Nation States Enter the Fray

“The Bitcoin hash rate is going absolutely parabolic, smashing through 400TH/s & another ATH!” Mikic exclaimed. Indeed, the Bitcoin network hash rate recently achieved a record-breaking 414 EH/s, marking an 80% surge over the last 12 months. This growth is particularly astonishing given the energy challenges in Texas and the escalating global electricity costs.

Mikic points out, “This is the 1st bear market where the hash rate is hitting new ATHs… Is this time different?” The answer seems to be a resounding yes. Nation states are now publicly (and maybe privately) mining Bitcoin.

El Salvador and Bhutan were the pioneers, and recently, Oman joined the league. Oman’s strategic move to mine Bitcoin aims to diversify its economy from oil dependence and bolster renewable energy initiatives, including flare gas mitigation. Remarkably, it is yet unknown if not more countries are already mining BTC in stealth mode without official announcement.

2. Supply Suffocation

Historically, bear markets have seen an influx of Bitcoin on exchanges. However, the current scenario paints a different picture. Mikic notes, “In every prior Bitcoin bear market we’ve seen an increase in the number of coins on exchanges. 2015 – Increase of 800K coins, 2018- Increase of 900K coins, 2022- DECREASE of 1 million since March 2020.”

According to data from Santiment, a mere 5.8% of Bitcoin is now on exchanges, the lowest since December 17, 2017. Furthermore, Bitcoin’s Exchange Depositing Transactions (SMA 7-day) plummeted to a 5-year low, reaching 30,798 BTC per day, a figure reminiscent of December 11, 2016. On-chain analyst Axel Adler Jr.’s takeaway? “People do not want to sell BTC. The supply deficit will continue to stimulate growth.”

3. The Great Wall Street Accumulation

The BlackRock Bitcoin spot ETF application stands as a watershed moment in Bitcoin’s journey towards mainstream adoption. Mikic emphasizes, “The Blackrock Bitcoin ETF application will be remembered as a pivotal moment for Bitcoin’s future mainstream adoption. TRILLIONS of capital has now been given the green light to invest in Bitcoin.”

As the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock’s entry could bestow unparalleled legitimacy upon the Bitcoin market. BlackRock will probably advertise Bitcoin and its new product in a big way, bringing new retail and institutional investors into BTC.

Looking at the current price stagnation in Bitcoin, it should be noted that there are no new inflows at the moment, as evidenced by the decreasing amount of stablecoins in the ecosystem. In the midst of the longest of all bear markets, there is simply no reason for retailers to get back in at the moment. However, an event like the approval of a Bitcoin spot ETF can change this abruptly and be the trigger for a Bitcoin bull run (even before halving).

In conclusion, the 2025 Bitcoin bull market is poised to be unlike any other. With nation states joining the mining race, a palpable supply shock, and Wall Street giants like BlackRock showing interest, Mikic’s final words resonate strongly: “Takeaway: NOBODY is bullish enough.”

At press time, BTC traded at $26,058.

Bitcoin price

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Crypto Analyst Says Bitcoin Could Reach $180,000 Next Cycle If This Happens

Since the Bitcoin bull market began, one discussion that has never left the crypto community is when the next bull rally will commence and if it would follow the previously established trend around the halving events. To this end, a crypto analyst, Lark Davis, has taken to X (formerly Twitter) to share his forecast around the next bull market.

What Could Happen If History Repeats Itself

All of the previous Bitcoin bull markets have always begun after the BTC halving event which cuts block rewards in half. However, this time around, there have been dissenting views regarding the digital asset’s tendency to follow this established trend once more due to deviations in various Bitcoin metrics. But Davis has shared a possible scenario for BTC if the bull market begins after the rally once more.

In the chart shared by the analyst on X, he points out a long period of accumulation. This is when investors fill up their bags with BTC as it is possibly the lowest that the price of the digital asset would get during the bear market.

Bitcoin bull market

Next comes the Bitcoin halving event, at which time, the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the market start to pick up steam. This is when the bull market starts to take shape, leading to the next part of the trend which is when prices explode.

In Davis’ post, he shows that the price of the digital asset could rise as high as $180,000 during this time. If the cryptocurrency does touch this price mark, it would mean that the price of BTC would almost triple from its current all-time high of $69,000.

How This Can Happen For Bitcoin

As clarified by the analyst in his X post, for any of this to happen, it would mean that BTC would have to completely follow the trends of the previous bull cycles. This would mean the bottom could likely be reached in early 2024, but it would also be the same year for the start of the bull run.

Even if Bitcoin does follow this trend though, it would not always be ‘up-only’ for the market. It would mean that the bull market would top out sometime in 2025 and then there would likely be a market crash that sends BTC spiraling in the following year. As Davis points out, the digital asset could tumble 70% to reach $50,000 again.

However, even with the obvious bear market that would follow this trend, it is still an incredibly bullish scenario for Bitcoin and the crypto market at large. The bull market would last around one year, following historical data, providing ample opportunity for investors to make the most of the market.

The next Bitcoin halving is expected to take place in April 2024, and if history is anything to go by, this is around when the bull market should be expected to start back up.

Bitcoin (BTC) price chart from Tradingview.com

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Will This Political Deal In The US Save Bitcoin and Crypto?

Politicians in the United States will likely strike a deal and raise the government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling for two more years. Amid this debate, the price of Bitcoin is firm but lower, tracking below the psychological $30,000 level as bulls recover after posting sharp losses mid-this week.

The Debt Ceiling Debate

There are reports that there will be more discretionary spending on the military and veterans with the reduction of other sectors.

Moreover, there are unconfirmed reports that the Biden administration will likely not fund the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to boost collection, as laid out earlier.

Instead, the immediate focus will be to hire more auditors and target wealthy citizens.

There are concerns that the Treasury Department and the United States government will default on their obligation as soon as the first half of June 2023.

Even though highly unlikely, as the Treasury Department has said it will liquidate $119 billion of debt on that day, the market is watching how discussions pan out.

Bitcoin is firming up after losses on May 24.

Bitcoin Price On May 26| Source: BTCUSDT On Binance, TradingView

As a deal is reportedly struck and consensus reached, politicians would once again lift the debt ceiling, sending mixed signals to the economy.

Unlike in previous years when top cryptocurrencies were decoupled from the mainstream economy, things have changed as Bitcoin’s prominence rises.

Will Bitcoin Benefit?

BTC prices will likely rally if there is an instance of default brought about by politicians disagreeing on the way forward.

On the reverse side, a deal that addresses concerns brought by the negotiating parties could signal confidence in the economy despite more debt on the table.

This averts a crisis and keeps operations running, removing uncertainty and stabilizing the economy.

In that case, the USD could strengthen, possibly reversing gains by Bitcoin bulls in the last two trading days.

Still, the crypto community remains bullish on Bitcoin considering macroeconomic events and next year’s halving.

After months of steady interest rate hikes, the United States Federal Reserve could slow down rate increments in the next meeting in mid-June. Their action could support the commodities and securities markets.

At the same time, the expected supply shock following the halving of Bitcoin miner rewards could make BTC scarcer, driving prices even higher.

Miners are special nodes tasked with confirming transactions and decentralizing the network.

If past price action can be used to predict future formations, BTC’s prospects look positive. Before the rally of 2020 to 2021, BTC prices bottomed up in 2018 and rose in 2019 before the halving event 2020.

The same pattern may be repeated through to 2024 when Bitcoin halving occurs.

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Bitcoin Whales Break A Pattern Held Throughout Halving Cycles: Glassnode

On-chain data from Glassnode shows the Bitcoin whales have recently broken a pattern that was previously held through the halving cycles.

Bitcoin Whale Growth Had Previously Been Diminishing With Each Cycle

According to data from the on-chain analytics firm Glassnode, the current cycle is displaying an interesting deviation from the rule followed during the last few cycles.

Here, the cycles or the “epochs” for the cryptocurrency have been defined using the halving events. “Halvings” are periodic blockchain events that permanently cut in half the block rewards that the miners receive for solving blocks.

These events occur every time 210,000 blocks have been mined on the network, or approximately every four years. The reason they are generally selected as the start and end points for BTC cycles is that they carry profound impact on the economics of the market as the production rate of the asset is cut in half following them. This increase in the scarcity of the asset is a narrative so strong that bull runs have always followed the halving events.

The next halving is supposed to take place sometime in the first half of next year. Currently, miners receive 6.25 BTC for every block that they mine, so following this next event, they will only receive 3.125 BTC in their rewards.

Now, there have been many patterns that have held throughout the Bitcoin cycles, but one such trend looks to be breaking down with the latest epoch, as the below chart highlights.

Bitcoin Whales Growth Since Halving

The metric of interest here is the percentage growth that the number of whales have registered during each of the epochs. The analytics firm has defined “whales” as entities that are holding at least 1,000 BTC in their wallets.

Note that entities here don’t just refer to individual wallets, but also “a cluster of addresses that are controlled by the same network entity,” which are “estimated through advanced heuristics and Glassnode’s proprietary clustering algorithms.”

From the chart, it’s apparent that the number of whales went up by 436% in the first cycle, while they only went up by 139% in the second one. The third one saw even less growth at about 91%.

This would indicate that with each of these Bitcoin cycles, while the BTC whales had continued to increase in number, their percentage growth had been diminishing.

The current cycle, however, seems to have turned out different from these past cycles so far, as the growth in the number of whales has actually been stronger than the previous epoch this time.

Whales have grown by 98% since the start of the cycle, but it’s worth noting that there are still around 344 days to go before the next halving event. It now remains to be seen whether the indicator resumes the trend from the last epochs before the end of the current one, or if the cycle will truly end with the pattern being broken.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $27,000, down 2% in the last week.

Bitcoin Price Chart

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Bitcoin Block 788695: The Day Transaction Fees Took The Crown

Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and trading volume, sets another record with Block 788695 as transactions on its blockchain network spiral out of control.

Recently, there has been an alarming rise in user transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain, leading to network traffic and congestion. This has increased miner profitability significantly as transaction fees skyrocket to control the situation.

In an interesting development witnessed by the crypto community yesterday, miners were seen to have profited highly as transaction fees contained in Block 788695 surpassed the block subsidy. This will be the second occurrence for the Bitcoin network where transaction fees contained in a block are greater than the block subsidy.

Related Reading: BRC-20 Token Standard A Hotspot For New Memecoins As PEPE Soars

Bitcoin Block 788695 Sets Another Record

According to Bitcoin mining data reports from Mempool, transaction fees contained in Block 788695 were seen to be greater than the Block subsidy. The reports show that 6.7 BTC in transaction fees were contained in Block 788695, greater than the 6.25 BTC block subsidy.

 

Bitcoin

The last time this occurred was in 2017 when transaction fees contained in Block 500546 were reported to have surpassed the block subsidy. This phenomenon occurs primarily when the Bitcoin blockchain network receives exceedingly high network activity from user transactions.

Miners are seen to profit highly from these congested blocks, which contain high user transactions compared to regular blocks. They create blocks by collecting transactions from the Mempool and adding them to a block, and once the blocks are filled, it goes through complex mathematical computations. The miner who solves the math problem is rewarded with transaction fees and the block subsidy.

Related Reading: Why Is Bitcoin Down Today? Crypto Market Takes Another Hit

The block subsidy refers to the amount of new Bitcoin created or minted in each block. For each block successfully created, the miner is allowed to mint a fixed amount of new Bitcoin, which is based on the ‘current issuance rate decided by the Bitcoin protocol.’

The Bitcoin block subsidy amount is determined by an algorithm in its source code and starts at 50 BTC per block, which is split in half every four years. The split process of the block subsidy, otherwise known as BTC halving, has trickled down to 6.25 from it 50 BTC where it started and is expected to be split further in 2024.

Why Are BTC Transaction Fees On The Rise?

The jump in BTC transaction fees can be attributed to recent user activities on its blockchain network. For one, the introduction of the BRC-20 token standard on the Bitcoin network for seamlessly minting fungible tokens has gained increased popularity in the blockchain and crypto community.

The recent hype of tokens, including meme coins minted using the BRC-20 standard, has led to increased FOMO of users carrying out multiple token purchases and transactions on the Bitcoin network.

Bitcoin