Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, including Ripple’s XRP, have suddenly shot higher, with the bitcoin price now again within touching distance of $100,000 after suddenly crashing back this week.
The bitcoin price has rocketed this year, pushed on by the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president—fueling a huge $15 trillion bitcoin price bet.
Now, as Elon Musk quietly confirms a bitcoin and crypto market game-changer, bitcoin bulls are ramping up their 2025 price predictions after Donald Trump’s election triggered a regulatory “green light.”
“U.S. institutional investors will deepen their exposure to crypto assets and the rest of the world will play catch up,” Ed Hindi, chief investment officer at Switzerland-based crypto hedge fund Tyr Capital, said in emailed comments—putting his bitcoin price prediction for 2025 at $250,000.
“Trump’s win is a massive regulatory green light that will broaden both participation and position sizes in bitcoin, ethereum and blue chip decentralized finance (DeFi) altcoins.”
Trump, who has leaned into bitcoin and crypto this year, promising to create a bitcoin strategic reserve and loosen regulations that crypto companies have complained are stifling the technology, is weighing whether to replace outgoing chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Gary Gensler with a pro-crypto regulator.
Ripple’s XRP has surged 13% this week as traders bet Trump’s pick for SEC chair will mean an end to Ripple’s drawn-out legal battles, with the XRP price soaring almost 200% since the U.S. election at the beginning of November.
11/30 update: Ripple’s XRP has surged again after a leak reported by Fox Business revealed a top crypto regulator in New York is poised to green light a new stablecoin issued by XRP developer Ripple.
The price of Ripple’s XRP has jumped a further 20% over the last 24 hours, adding to huge gains of around 200% since October and catapulting XRP up the crypto market rankings, making it the fifth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization at $108 billion. Bitcoin, for comparison, has a market cap of just under $2 trillion.
Ripple’s XRP had languished through the last bitcoin price and crypto market bull run, failing to make major gains as a result of a long-running legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Anonymous sources told Fox Business that the New York Department of Financial Services is close to approving the so-called RLUSD dollar-pegged stablecoin and Ripple is targeting a launch date of December 4.
If approved, Ripple will be permitted to offer RLUSD to the public, making it a U.S. regulatory compliant alternative to Tether’s $130 billion USDT stablecoin, which currently dominates the stablecoin market.
The runaway success of Tether’s USDT, which makes the British Virgin Islands-based company behind it billions of dollars every quarter, has sparked a digital gold rush as rivals try to grab a piece of the market, with internet payments giant PayPal among companies rushing their own stablecoins to market.
“The price of bitcoin recovered from $91,000 on Wednesday as pro-financial technology former SEC commissioner Paul Atkins has been eyed as the new SEC chair under the second Trump administration,” Yuya Hasegawa, bitcoin and crypto market analyst at Tokyo-based Bitbank, said in emailed comments, adding the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday could be a catalyst for the bitcoin price to climb over the closely-watched $100,000 per bitcoin level.
“In the crypto market, there also is a market anomaly surrounding Thanksgiving. During a bull market, bitcoin tends to suffer losses around Thanksgiving, but the price restarts rallying after a week or two. This ‘Thanksgiving anomaly’ was observed during the bull run of 2016 and 2020, the years when bitcoin’s halving happened. Bitcoin went through its fourth halving this April, so a lot of market participants may be believing that a dip around Thanksgiving could be a huge opportunity.”
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