There is no doubt that despite all the positive fundamentals, 2025 will not end well for the crypto markets.
The crypto markets are currently down about 13% from the beginning of this year, and Bitcoin is down about 8%. The total market capitalization is now at its lowest level since April after falling below $3 trillion this week, but it’s not that bad, analysts and experts say.
“I understand this year is annoying, but remember that Bitcoin is up 468% in the two years leading up to this year,” observed Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas announced this on Thursday. He added that this was an annual return of 138%, which is eight times that of US equities.
“That’s so much more than normal,” he said before adding, “all that’s happened this year is you’ve given back a little bit of the excess.”
“It’s like your sundae now has 55 cherries instead of 60. Everything’s going well!”
It feels worse than a Covid crash
Futures trader ‘Toni’ responded, stating that the long-term gains and current pullback mean “the reversal is doing its job, not a bear market.”
“ETF inflows caused the spike, now we are back on BTC’s long-term growth curve. This is healthy consolidation.”
The comments came in response to analyst ‘Ash Crypto’, who said that the markets felt worse this year than the COVID crash, the FTX meltdown, the LUNA crash, the SEC and Gary Gensler lawsuit, the Celsius and BlockFi bankruptcies, and the 3AC collapse.
He listed several bullish fundamentals that have emerged this year, including pro-crypto policies in the US, record highs for stocks and commodities, institutional adoption and expansion of the global money supply.
“Market rallies don’t start when hopes are high, but when people are tired, frustrated and ready to give up.”
2025 has been brutal, “it has been head-on pain in every way, from tariffs to geopolitical tensions to policy chaos and everything in between.” said crypto investor Jesse Eckel.
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However, he also debunked the four-year cycle theory and stated that 2026 is structurally the opposite.
“They want an economic boom and they are throwing as much fuel on the fire as possible. It’s not even 2026 yet and we’ve already had three rate cuts, QT is over, balance sheet expansion is underway and rate cuts,” he said, before adding that it will be a five-year cycle.
Don’t panic and zoom out
If you look at the Bitcoin chart from a yearly perspective, you will see that it is still in a strong uptrend. BTC is still double the price it was trading at on this day two years ago and over 400% higher than it was in December 2022.
Still, near-term assets continue to weaken and were trading around $87,000 at the time of writing, down 31% from all-time highs but up 2.3% after the Bank of Japan raised rates on Friday morning.
✅Buy institutions #Bitcoin
✅Buy strategy #BTC
✅Liquidity on the way
✅Interest reduction
✅QE, FED prints $40 billion
✅M2 Money supply, stable
✅Global liquidity +10 weeks, higher
✅Global liquidity +/- random number, up
✅Bitcoin Top Signal Indicators, Up🔥Bitco drops by $46,000… pic.twitter.com/trFRiNejst
— Jason Pizzino 🌞 (@jasonpizzino) December 18, 2025
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#year #drag #BTC #cycle