Bitcoin (BTC) hit its strongest dollar-denominated price in 2025 on Friday and hit a new high against the British pound as excitement grows for a new era of crypto-friendly US government ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration next week.
BTC topped $105,000 during the US session, jumping 5.2% in the past 24 hours and leading the broader crypto benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index higher. Of the CoinDesk 20 constituents, only NEAR and Litecoin’s LTC kept pace with bitcoin’s gains, while Salt (SOL) and Ethereum’s Ether (ETH) lagged behind with 3% gains. XRP fell 4%, retreating from its all-time highs after a massive market-leading rally earlier this week.
Optimism at the end of the week
Crypto-related stocks are also rising. MicroStrategy ( MSTR ), the largest corporate holder of BTC, rose 7% on the day, while exchange giant Coinbase ( COIN ) advanced 4.5%. MARA Holdings led the rise among major bitcoin miners, up 13%.
That’s quite a turnaround from earlier in the week, when a broad market sell-off sent bitcoin below $90,000 amid growing fears of a deeper pullback. Since then, however, BTC has surged 17% first as investor concerns over Wednesday’s US CPI inflation report faded and then as focus turned to speculation about Donald Trump’s potential crypto actions following his inauguration on January 20.
Breaking past last week’s local high of $102,000, BTC also broke out of its multi-week downtrend of lower highs to target its all-time high in December, said Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy.
“Now $108,000 is a short-term target resistance,” he said in an X post. “Lots of reasons to be optimistic.”
Spot bitcoin ETFs saw a combined $1.381 billion in net inflows over the past two days, reversing a four-day streak of outflows, according to data from Farside Investors. 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, SEEbiz reports.
BlackRock’s Ishares Bitcoin Trust ETF ( IBIT ) recorded trading volume of nearly $1 billion in just over the first hour of the session, posting the fourth-highest volume among all U.S. ETFs and outperforming Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF ( VOO ) by nearly tenfold assets under management, according to Barchart data.
All eyes on Trump
The most important upcoming catalyst will be Trump’s inauguration ceremony on Monday, and crypto investors are expecting big changes from the new president. During the campaign, Trump promised to position the US as a leader in the crypto space, including the creation of a national bitcoin supply, in stark contrast to the regulatory stifling and enforcement of previous years.
Bloomberg reported Thursday that Trump plans an executive order to elevate digital assets to a “national priority” and create an advisory council of industry members to make policy recommendations.
The prospect of the US establishing a bitcoin reserve has risen sharply in recent days, with traders at Polymarket estimating a 38% chance that Trump will do so within the first 100 days of his presidency.
