The cryptocurrency market was bullish in 2024. Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency by market cap, added over 140% to its value last year, outperforming other major assets, including Gold (26%) and S&P 500 (23%). 

Last year’s rally saw Bitcoin break past the $100k mark for the first time in its history. This article will explore Bitcoin’s price performance so far this year and how far it can go. 

Bitcoin Hit a New All-time High on Jan. 20

New year, same Bitcoin. The leading cryptocurrency by market cap continued where it left off in 2024. The Bitcoin price surged to a new all-time high on January 20th after hitting the $109,114 mark. 

The market has been volatile since then, with BTC slipping below $98k on Monday, January 27th. However, it has since recovered and now trades above $102k per coin. If the bullish momentum resumes, Bitcoin could set a new all-time high in the coming weeks or months. 

How High Can Bitcoin Go?

Bitcoin has already set a new all-time high in 2025, but many analysts believe it could go higher in the coming months. The predictions differ, ranging from $150,000 to $250,000.

However, some macroeconomic factors could determine how high Bitcoin’s price could go in 2025. Here are the factors.

inflation/ Interest rate

The inflation and interest rates in the United States usually play a huge role in the Bitcoin price outlook. A low inflation rate will see the Federal Reserve decrease interest rates to stimulate the economy and try to raise inflation levels to their target range. The lower the interest rates, the higher the price of assets like Bitcoin and Gold. 

The Federal Reserve is expected to cut interest rates twice in 2025, which could be bullish for Bitcoin and other major assets.

Retail and Institutional Adoption

2024 saw significant liquidity from institutional investors into Bitcoin and the trend could continue this year. Michael Saylors’ MicroStrategy leads the way and has already spent billions of dollars this year in adding bitcoins to its holdings.

Thanks to the launch of Bitcoin ETFs last year, more players are also getting into Bitcoin. BlackRock’s ETF, now the fastest-growing in history, has simplified access for institutional investors. The growing participation indicates Bitcoin’s appeal to retail and institutional players. 

A Possible U.S. Strategic Reserve

There are talks of a possible digital assets strategic reserve in the United States. Donald Trump’s activeness in the crypto space in recent months has amplified this prediction.

If the United States launches a digital assets reserve with Bitcoin at the helm, BTC’s price could surpass the $200k average prediction in 2025. 

Top Analysts Forecasts

Bitcoin has gone mainstream, so several leading analysts in the global financial markets are focusing on it. Some of these analysts shared their predictions for the Bitcoin price in 2025. 

Markus Thielen, head of research at Matrixport, is bullish on BTC’s price prediction, setting it at $160,000 before the end of the year. He told CNBC that,

“This outlook is supported by sustained demand for Bitcoin ETFs, favorable macroeconomic trends, and an expanding global liquidity pool. Bitcoin’s growing base of dip buyers and robust institutional support is expected to mitigate severe corrections.”

Alex Thorn, head of research at crypto-focused asset manager Galaxy Digital, is also bullish, predicting BTC’s price to hit $185k in 2025. He said,

“A combination of institutional, corporate, and nation-state adoption will propel Bitcoin to new heights in 2025. Throughout its existence, Bitcoin has appreciated faster than all other asset classes, particularly the S&P 500 and gold, and that trend will continue in 2025. Bitcoin will also reach 20% of Gold’s market cap.”

Finally, Geoffrey Kendrick of Standard Chartered expects institutional flows into Bitcoin to continue, predicting Bitcoin’s price could hit $200,000 in 2025. He stated that,

“Even a small allocation of the USD 40tn in US retirement funds would significantly boost BTC prices. We would turn even more bullish if BTC saw more rapid uptake by US retirement funds, global sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), or a potential US strategic reserve fund.”

Bitcoin has already hit a new all-time high in 2025. Do you see it going higher or do you predict a market correction in the coming months?

Shortly before assuming the presidency, Donald Trump launched his own meme coin on Solana. Melania Trump followed suit a day later. Solana faced major congestion issues as millions of users flooded the network to trade the tokens.

In a conversation with BeInCrypto, Chris Chung, CEO of Solana swap platform Titan, said that the bottlenecks stemmed from decentralized applications (dApps) instead of the blockchain itself. The event proved that Solana was ready for mainstream adoption. 

TRUMP and MELANIA Break the Crypto Market

Only 48 hours away from taking over the United States presidency, Donald Trump announced the launch of a TRUMP meme coin on his official X and Truth Social accounts.

Within a day of the meme coin’s launch on the Solana network, TRUMP reached a market capitalization of over $14.5 billion and a trading volume of more than $26 billion. 

Taking note of the success of her husband’s meme coin, Melania Trump launched her own MELANIA coin a day before Trump’s inauguration. 

Shortly after launch, the MELANIA’s market cap exceeded $5 billion. This rapid and sharp spike caused the TRUMP token to drop by $7.5 billion within ten minutes.

It also shook performance across the Solana network. 

Users Report Congestion on Solana Amid Increased Traffic

Given the unexpected launch of these presidential tokens, the Solana ecosystem saw a surge in transaction levels as users scrambled to engage in trading. Soon enough, reports of congestion and failed transactions surged across various platforms.

“During the TRUMP launch, the entire Solana ecosystem handled it flawlessly. There‬‭ were no issues with the block production nor network congestion then, partly due to‬‭ the meme coin launching at night in North America and uncertainty whether it was‬‭ real or not. As liquidity was disbursed throughout the network, there were instances‬‭ of price discrepancies as new pools were added. The issues came when MELANIA launched. With the precedent of TRUMP,‬‭ extremely large numbers of traders started either rotating into the new token or‬‭ moved to sell TRUMP with record-breaking volumes,” Chung told BeInCrypto. 

Though the unexpected traffic certainly tested Solana’s infrastructure, Chung emphasized that the bottlenecks could be traced back to the decentralized applications (dApps) handling the transaction volumes. 

On the day of the MELANIA coin launch, Phantom, a leading wallet provider on Solana, took to social media to inform the public that it was experiencing a strain on its infrastructure. 

“We’re currently experiencing a massive surge of 8,000,000+ requests per minute. While we work to stabilize our platform, transactions may have trouble going through on the first try,” the X post read. 

Meanwhile, Jito Labs, a key infrastructure provider for the Solana network, reported that its Block Engine API was experiencing “severe degradation” due to the overwhelming volume of transactions. 

Most validators on the Solana network use services like Jito Labs, designed to help transactions execute faster. Amid the MELANIA launch, the provider’s degraded performance caused priority fees to go up for the base chain.

“This in itself is the intended mechanism in order to prioritize‭ higher value transactions; however, some applications experienced issues as their‬‭ max gas fee was no longer high enough for their users’ transactions to land. In‬‭ addition, the heightened traffic also caused some critical APIs to go down as their‬‭ services were overwhelmed, which led to some disruptions in the market,” Chung explained. 

The increased market demand also hindered the effectiveness of arbitrage bots, which typically help keep prices at bay. 

Arbitrage Bots Fail to Stabilize Prices

Arbitrage bots are automated trading programs that play a crucial role in maintaining price stability across cryptocurrency markets. 

These bots help ensure prices remain aligned and efficient by identifying and exploiting price discrepancies between exchanges. However, these programs struggled to do their jobs during the increased congestion period following the MELANIA coin launch. 

“‬‭During the market disruption and congestion, many arbitrage bots were not able to‬‭ land their own transactions which caused vast discrepancies in prices on certain‬‭ pools. In particular, we saw some of Titan’s users be able to find pools that allowed‬‭ them to buy SOL for $150 while the market price was $250. This resulted in many‬‭ more transactions being submitted to try to take advantage of these arbitrage‬‭ opportunities, thus causing even more congestion,” Chung said.

In response to the increased trading volumes, the Solana blockchain suffered.

The Solana Network Shows Resilience

The significant surge in trading volume on the Solana network, which reached a record high of $10 billion in 24 hours, inevitably placed considerable strain on the ecosystem. 

While this high volume of activity resulted in some performance challenges, Chung highlighted that the Solana blockchain remained operational throughout the period. 

The event demonstrated the network’s resilience by continuing to process transactions and maintain network stability despite the reduced performance of Solana-based dApps. 

“‬‭In fact, the launches were well handled by the blockchain itself. The priority fee‬‭ mechanism worked as intended, and it was mainly dApps that were having trouble‬‭ keeping up. It just shows that now is the time for applications and ecosystem‬‭ participants to upgrade and evolve to be able to handle the future amount of traffic‬‭ that everyone believes is possible,” Chung said.

Solana has a history of network outages caused by sudden surges in transaction volume, such as those caused by meme coin launches or high trading activity. In 2022, the network experienced up to 14 outages.

However, as the network took proactive steps to increase scalability, these outages became less frequent. The last time Solana experienced a network shutdown was in February 2024. 

For Chung, the fact that Solana did not experience an outage after the TRUMP and MELANIA coin launches is indicative that the network is ready for mass adoption.

“With the learnings from the weekend, I believe that Solana is extremely well‬‭ positioned for a massive increase in user activity as the blockchain itself kept‬‭ processing transactions under load and increased priority fees as expected,” Chung said. 

However, dApps must prepare themselves for when this becomes a reality.

Decentralized Applications Struggle to Keep Pace

For Chung, the main reason Solana users experienced so many issues in trading the presidential meme coins was the inability of dApps to facilitate transactions.

“Many dApps had issues where they had set the max gas fee to a certain pre-set‬‭ number, so when the gas fees went above this ceiling, the users on these dApps had‬‭ issues landing transactions as their gas fees were now too low. This then caused‬‭ users to spam the network even more in an attempt to land a transaction on-chain,” he explained.

While on-chain dApps face fewer obstacles that hinder their ability to handle high transaction volumes, those that rely on external servers face scalability issues.

“dApps, such as aggregators, that rely on their own servers for‬‭ their products have to ensure that they can handle the projected increase in volume‬‭ and volatility. This means that extra capacity to handle far more requests and‬‭ upgrades to dynamically scale depending on user demand will be important going‬‭ forward, because Solana is likely to see more and more trading activity as it gains‬‭ mainstream appeal,” Chung added. 

Though the launch of the TRUMP and MELANIA coins was unprecedented, as cryptocurrency adoption continues to rise, such events will likely reappear. As a response, decentralized applications that facilitate network transactions must be prepared accordingly. 

Strengthening dApp Infrastructure for Future Growth

To avoid repeating similar scenarios in the future, dApps need to revisit their core infrastructure and ensure that it can effectively sustain intense traffic. 

“DApps have to plan for their operations to work in worst-case scenarios where‬‭ multiple components can fail in the pipeline. This means operating with the‬‭ assumption that the only way to send transactions would be through priority fees and‬‭ to have reliable backups for critical infrastructure. Although this may mean an‬‭ increase in expenditure, it is imperative that applications be able to function 24/7 for‬‭ their users as the blockchain does not stop. In addition, rigorous mechanisms to‬‭ protect their users have to be enabled if congestion leads to a distortion of‬‭ information,” Chung said. 

These service providers will also need to consider that, as Solana adoption continues to grow, the traffic experienced last week will likely be greater in future scenarios.

“Many dApps had set‬‭ artificial limits assuming that these would not be breached and external services‬‭ would keep functioning, but meme coin frenzy showed us a glimpse of‬‭ what mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies would look like. To truly build‬‭ applications where billions can be onboarded, critical infrastructure has to have the‬‭ ability to keep running,” Chung added.

In the meantime, the Solana network has already laid out the next steps it will take to handle increasingly larger transactions. 

Firedancer: A Key Innovation for Solana’s Future Growth

Jump Crypto, a Web3 infrastructure developer, has built a new third-party validator client software for the Solana blockchain for the past two years.

Developed independently from the original Solana Lab’s validator client, Firedancer offers enhanced network resilience by minimizing the risk of widespread outages. By sharing virtually no code, issues within one client will not impact the other. Additionally, Firedancer aims to improve Solana’s transaction processing capabilities significantly. 

While Firedancer currently only operates on the Solana testnet, it is expected to launch on the mainnet sometime this year. 

“The most eagerly anticipated upgrade of Solana would be the Firedancer client that‬‭ is set to be released with massive improvements to the amount of transactions per‬‭ second that the network will be able to handle. It promises to process up to 1 million‬‭ transactions a second – far more than traditional payment networks. Visa, for‬‭ example, handles just 65,000 TPS at peak capacity. This is just the next step to‬‭ making Solana ready for mass adoption,” Chung emphasized.

The launch of the TRUMP and MELANIA coins on the Solana blockchain highlights the growing appeal of the Solana ecosystem within the cryptocurrency market. 

Developments like Firedancer will further equip Solana to handle similar events in the future, raising its potential as a preferred platform for individuals and entities looking to engage with cryptocurrencies. 

Meanwhile, dApps must ensure they are ready before that moment arrives. 

Digital Currency Group (DCG) has launched Fortitude Mining, a wholly-owned subsidiary focused on venture mining opportunities across various digital assets. 

The new venture will build on Foundry, DCG’s mining division, which has been active for five years. Foundry is the world’s largest Bitcoin mining pool.

DCG’s Fortitude Mining to Build on Foundry’s Legacy

According to an announcement, Fortitude Mining aims to mine Bitcoin and other high-growth digital assets in emerging ecosystems with strong return potential. DCG is basically spinning off the self-mining unit of its Foundry subsidiary into a separate business.

Andrea Childs, former Senior Vice President of Operations & Marketing at Foundry, has been appointed CEO of Fortitude Mining. Mike Colyer, who founded Foundry in 2019, will continue as CEO of the parent company. 

Fortitude Mining’s primary goal is to generate returns by leveraging its mining expertise and substantial industry relationships.

DCG’s Founder and CEO, Barry Silbert, noted that Fortitude Mining’s spin-off allows the venture to explore greater growth opportunities, including capital raising, investments, and talent acquisition. 

“Originally part of FoundryServices, FortitudeCrypto is pioneering venture mining- a unique model providing diversified exposure to crypto and engages early in fast-growing Proof of Work ecosystems beyond just Bitcoin,” Silbert noted on X.

Since its launch, Foundry has grown significantly, becoming the world’s leading Bitcoin mining pool since January 2022. This strong foundation positions Fortitude Mining for future success.

“The launch of Fortitude Mining as a standalone DCG subsidiary is a pivotal next step in allowing the business to continue to capitalize on the lucrative self-mining market,” said Foundry CEO Mike Colyer.

In 2024, Fortitude Mining invested heavily in new mining machines, ensuring the fleet remains efficient. The company plans to reinvest cash flows into further acquisitions and infrastructure in 2025. This focus on reinvestment supports Fortitude Mining’s long-term growth strategy and vertical integration.

Foundry will continue to operate its Bitcoin mining pool and other services. It remains focused on its core business while benefiting from Fortitude Mining’s independence. 

The latest developments come after it was reported in December that Foundry laid off 60% of its workforce. The layoffs targeted the company’s non-core functions, including its entire hardware team.

Moreover, in 2023, the bankrupt crypto lender Gensis sued DCG, its parent company, over unpaid loans.