The Bitcoin (BTC) price again reached an all-time high in 2025, as values exceeded over 115,970.58 USD on September 14, 2025. Price hikes in early 2025 were connected to the approval of Bitcoin ETFs in the United States, while previous hikes in 2021 were due to events involving Tesla and Coinbase, respectively. Tesla's announcement in March 2021 that it had acquired 1.5 billion U.S. dollars' worth of the digital coin, for example, as well as the IPO of the U.S.'s biggest crypto exchange, fueled mass interest. The market was noticeably different by the end of 2022, however, after another crypto exchange, FTX, filed for bankruptcy.Is the world running out of Bitcoin?Unlike fiat currency like the U.S. dollar - as the Federal Reserve can simply decide to print more banknotes - Bitcoin's supply is finite: BTC has a maximum supply embedded in its design, of which roughly 89 percent had been reached in April 2021. It is believed that Bitcoin will run out by 2040, despite more powerful mining equipment. This is because mining becomes exponentially more difficult and power-hungry every four years, a part of Bitcoin's original design. Because of this, a Bitcoin mining transaction could equal the energy consumption of a small country in 2021.Bitcoin's price outlook: a potential bubble?Cryptocurrencies have few metrics available that allow for forecasting, if only because it is rumored that only a few cryptocurrency holders own a large portion of the available supply. These large holders - referred to as 'whales'-are' said to make up two percent of anonymous ownership accounts, while owning roughly 92 percent of BTC. On top of this, most people who use cryptocurrency-related services worldwide are retail clients rather than institutional investors. This means outlooks on whether Bitcoin prices will fall or grow are difficult to measure, as movements from one large whale are already having a significant impact on this market.

In March 2024 Bitcoin BTC reached a new all-time high with prices exceeding 73000 USD marking a milestone for the cryptocurrency market This surge was due to the approval of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds ETFs in the United States allowing investors to access Bitcoin without directly holding it This development increased Bitcoin’s credibility and brought fresh demand from institutional investors echoing previous price surges in 2021 when Tesla announced its 15 billion investment in Bitcoin and Coinbase was listed on the Nasdaq By the end of 2022 Bitcoin prices dropped sharply to 15000 USD following the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its bankruptcy which caused a loss of confidence in the market By August 2024 Bitcoin rebounded to approximately 64178 USD but remained volatile due to inflation and interest rate hikes Unlike fiat currency like the US dollar Bitcoin’s supply is finite with 21 million coins as its maximum supply By September 2024 over 92 percent of Bitcoin had been mined Bitcoin’s value is tied to its scarcity and its mining process is regulated through halving events which cut the reward for mining every four years making it harder and more energy-intensive to mine The next halving event in 2024 will reduce the reward to 3125 BTC from its current 625 BTC The final Bitcoin is expected to be mined around 2140 The energy required to mine Bitcoin has led to criticisms about its environmental impact with estimates in 2021 suggesting that one Bitcoin transaction used as much energy as Argentina Bitcoin’s future price is difficult to predict due to the influence of large holders known as whales who own about 92 percent of all Bitcoin These whales can cause dramatic market swings by making large trades and many retail investors still dominate the market While institutional interest has grown it remains a small fraction compared to retail Bitcoin is vulnerable to external factors like regulatory changes and economic crises leading some to believe it is in a speculative bubble However others argue that Bitcoin is still in its early stages of adoption and will grow further as more institutions and governments recognize its potential as a hedge against inflation and a store of value 2024 has also seen the rise of Bitcoin Layer 2 technologies like the Lightning Network which improve scalability by enabling faster and cheaper transactions These innovations are crucial for Bitcoin’s wider adoption especially for day-to-day use and cross-border remittances At the same time central bank digital currencies CBDCs are gaining traction as several governments including China and the European Union have accelerated the development of their own state-controlled digital currencies while Bitcoin remains decentralized offering financial sovereignty for those who prefer independence from government control The rise of CBDCs is expected to increase interest in Bitcoin as a hedge against these centralized currencies Bitcoin’s journey in 2024 highlights its growing institutional acceptance alongside its inherent market volatility While the approval of Bitcoin ETFs has significantly boosted interest the market remains sensitive to events like exchange collapses and regulatory decisions With the limited supply of Bitcoin and improvements in its transaction efficiency it is expected to remain a key player in the financial world for years to come Whether Bitcoin is currently in a speculative bubble or on a sustainable path to greater adoption will ultimately be revealed over time.

By 2025, the Bitcoin market cap had grown to over ***** billion USD as the cryptocurrency kept growing. Market capitalization is calculated by multiplying the total number of Bitcoins in circulation by the Bitcoin price. The Bitcoin market capitalization increased from approximately *** billion U.S. dollars in 2013 to several times this amount since its surge in popularity. Dominance The Bitcoin market cap takes up a significant portion of the overall cryptocurrency market cap. This is referred to as "dominance". Within the crypto world, this so-called "dominance" ratio is one of the oldest and most investigated metrics available. It measures the coin's market cap relative to the overall crypto market — effectively showing how strong Bitcoin compared to all the other cryptocurrencies that are not BTC, called "altcoins". The Bitcoin dominance was above ** percent. Maximum supply and scarcity Bitcoin is unusual from other cryptocurrencies in that its maximum supply is getting closer. By 2025, well over ** million out of all 21 million possible Bitcoin had been created. Bitcoin's supply is expected to reach its maximum around the year 2140, likely making mining more energy-intensive.

Close day prices of cryptocurrencies between Jan 2019 and Jan 2021: BTC/USD, ETH/USD, DAI/BTC, XRP/BTC, IOT/BTC

In this work, i will be analyzing the Bitcoin growth trends from January 2012 to March 2021 in comparison with year indicators where Bitcoin usages/patronage, volumes and prices were high and low across the world.

Despite a growing Bitcoin price and increasing global interest in cryptocurrencies, U.S. Bitcoin trading in early 2021 was lower than it was during June 2020. This conclusion reveals itself after investigating Bitcoin trading volume against domestic currencies used for the transaction of the virtual currency. In the first weeks of January 2021, less U.S. dollars were spent on buying Bitcoin than in several weeks in 2020. For some this might be surprising, as the United States ranks as the world's leading country in terms of Bitcoin trading in 2020.

It should nevertheless be noted that the source believes the domestic currencies are mainly used by the domestic population: it assumes U.S residents are the only ones who make transactions with U.S. dollars. Whether this assumption is right or not, cannot be verified here (although the international appeal of the U.S. dollar on foreign exchange markets should not be ruled out).

Price swings of Bitcoin increased substantially in November 2022, recording a 10-day volatility of more than *** percent. Measured in a metric called volatility, the percentage shown here reflect how much the price of BTC in U.S. dollars changed historically over a preceding 7-day window. Changes can be either up or down, with a higher volatility reflecting that an asset is more risky, as price movements are less easy to predict and can swing in any direction. The volatility metric referred to here is called "realized volatility", otherwise known as "historic volatility" and describes these price swings over a given period of time - and consequently is not looking into the future. Despite the rise of several cryptocurrencies since 2021, Bitcoin still had the highest market share ("dominance") of all cryptocurrencies in 2022.

Context

Bitcoin(₿) is a cryptocurrency invented in 2008 by an unknown person or group of people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto. The currency began use in 2009 when its implementation was released as open-source software.

Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency, without a central bank or single administrator, that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries. Transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain. Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. They can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services.

On 30 November 2020, bitcoin hit a new all-time high of $19,860 topping the previous high from December 2017. On 19 January 2021 Elon Musk placed #Bitcoin in his Twitter profile tweeting “In retrospect, it was inevitable”, which caused the price to briefly rise about $5000 in an hour to $37,299.

Content

The tweets have #Bitcoin and #btc hashtag. Collection star started on 6/2/2021, with an initial 1 lakh tweets, and will continue on a daily basis.

Information regarding the data

The data totally consists of 1 lakh+ records with 13 columns. The description of the features is given below | No |Columns | Descriptions | | -- | -- | -- | | 1 | user_name | The name of the user, as they’ve defined it. | | 2 | user_location | The user-defined location for this account’s profile. | | 3 | user_description | The user-defined UTF-8 string describing their account. | | 4 | user_created | Time and date, when the account was created. | | 5 | user_followers | The number of followers an account currently has. | | 6 | user_friends | The number of friends a account currently has. | | 7 | user_favourites | The number of favorites a account currently has | | 8 | user_verified | When true, indicates that the user has a verified account | | 9 | date | UTC time and date when the Tweet was created | | 10 | text | The actual UTF-8 text of the Tweet | | 11 | hashtags | All the other hashtags posted in the tweet along with #Bitcoin & #btc | | 12 | source | Utility used to post the Tweet, Tweets from the Twitter website have a source value - web | | 13 | is_retweet | Indicates whether this Tweet has been Retweeted by the authenticating user. |

Inspiration

The tweets were extracted using tweepy, Refer to this notebook for the complete extraction process https://www.kaggle.com/kaushiksuresh147/twitter-data-extraction-for-ipl2020

You can use this data to dive into the subjects that use this hashtag, look to the geographical distribution, evaluate sentiments, looks to trends.

Cryptocurrency historical datasets from January 2012 (if available) to October 2021 were obtained and integrated from various sources and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) including Yahoo Finance, Cryptodownload, CoinMarketCap, various Kaggle datasets, and multiple APIs. While these datasets used various formats of time (e.g., minutes, hours, days), in order to integrate the datasets days format was used for in this research study. The integrated cryptocurrency historical datasets for 80 cryptocurrencies including but not limited to Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), Cardano (ADA), Tether (USDT), Ripple (XRP), Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT), USD Coin (USDC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Tron (TRX), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), EOS (EOS), Cosmos (ATOM), Stellar (XLM), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Uniswap (UNI), Terra (LUNA), SHIBA INU (SHIB), and 60 more cryptocurrencies were uploaded in this online Mendeley data repository. Although the primary attribute of including the mentioned cryptocurrencies was the Market Capitalization, a subject matter expert i.e., a professional trader has also guided the initial selection of the cryptocurrencies by analyzing various indicators such as Relative Strength Index (RSI), Moving Average Convergence/Divergence (MACD), MYC Signals, Bollinger Bands, Fibonacci Retracement, Stochastic Oscillator and Ichimoku Cloud. The primary features of this dataset that were used as the decision-making criteria of the CLUS-MCDA II approach are Timestamps, Open, High, Low, Closed, Volume (Currency), % Change (7 days and 24 hours), Market Cap and Weighted Price values. The available excel and CSV files in this data set are just part of the integrated data and other databases, datasets and API References that was used in this study are as follows: [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/ [2] https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/ [3] https://cryptodatadownload.com/ [4] https://kaggle.com/philmohun/cryptocurrency-financial-data [5] https://kaggle.com/deepshah16/meme-cryptocurrency-historical-data [6] https://kaggle.com/sudalairajkumar/cryptocurrencypricehistory [7] https://min-api.cryptocompare.com/data/price?fsym=BTC&tsyms=USD [8] https://min-api.cryptocompare.com/ [9] https://p.nomics.com/cryptocurrency-bitcoin-api [10] https://www.coinapi.io/ [11] https://www.coingecko.com/en/api [12] https://cryptowat.ch/ [13] https://www.alphavantage.co/

This dataset is part of the CLUS-MCDA (Cluster analysis for improving Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis) and CLUS-MCDAII Project: https://aimaghsoodi.github.io/CLUSMCDA-R-Package/ https://github.com/Aimaghsoodi/CLUS-MCDA-II https://github.com/azadkavian/CLUS-MCDA

Context

Bitcoin is the longest running and most well known cryptocurrency, first released as open source in 2009 by the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin serves as a decentralized medium of digital exchange, with transactions verified and recorded in a public distributed ledger (the blockchain) without the need for a trusted record keeping authority or central intermediary. Transaction blocks contain a SHA-256 cryptographic hash of previous transaction blocks, and are thus "chained" together, serving as an immutable record of all transactions that have ever occurred. As with any currency/commodity on the market, bitcoin trading and financial instruments soon followed public adoption of bitcoin and continue to grow. Included here is historical bitcoin market data at 1-min intervals for select bitcoin exchanges where trading and speculation take place. Happy (data) mining!

Content

bitstampUSD_1-min_data_2012-01-01_to_2017-05-31.csv - 13% of all BTC Volume (05/01/2017 through 05/31/2017)

coinbaseUSD_1-min_data_2014-12-01_to_2017-05-31.csv - 15% of all BTC Volume (05/01/2017 through 05/31/2017)

CSV files for select bitcoin exchanges for the time period of Jan 2012 to May 2017, with minute to minute updates of OHLC (Open, High, Low, Close), Volume in BTC and indicated currency, and weighted bitcoin price. Timestamps are in Unix time. Timestamps without any trades or activity have their data fields populated with NaNs. If a timestamp is missing, or if there are jumps, this may be because the exchange (or its API) was down, the exchange (or its API) did not exist, or some other unforseen technical error in data reporting or gathering. All effort has been made to deduplicate entries and verify the contents are correct and complete to the best of my ability, but obviously trust at your own risk.

Acknowledgements and Inspiration

Bitcoincharts, the data source. The various exchange APIs, for making it difficult or unintuitive enough to get OHLC and volume data at 1-min intervals that I set out on this data scraping project. Satoshi Nakamoto and the novel core concept of the blockchain, as well as its first execution via the bitcoin protocol. I'd also like to thank viewers like you! Can't wait to see what code or insights you all have to share.

I am a lowly Ph.D. student who did this for fun in my meager spare time. If you find this data interesting and you can spare a coffee to fuel my science, send it my way and I'd be immensely grateful!

1kmWmcQa8qN9ZrdGfdkw8EHKBgugKBRcF

Bitcoin dominance steadily declined in April 2024 to below ** percent, amid rumors of central banks halting or potentially lowering interest rates in the future. Within the crypto world, this so-called "dominance" ratio is one of the oldest and most investigated metrics available. It measures the coin's market cap relative to the overall crypto market — effectively showing how strong Bitcoin compared to all the other cryptocurrencies that are not BTC, called "altcoins". Why dominance matters is because market caps of any crypto can change relatively quickly, either due to sudden price changes or a change of recorded trading volume. Essentially, the figure somewhat resembles a trading sentiment, revealing whether Bitcoin investors are responding to certain events or whether Bitcoin is losing out on functions offered by, for example, stablecoins or NFT tokens. "Dominance" criticism: Ethereum and stablecoin The interpretation of the Bitcoin metric is not without its criticism. When first conceived, Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to be created and had a substantial market share within all cryptocurrencies? The overall share of stablecoins, such as Tether, as well as Ethereum increasingly start to resemble that of Bitcoin, however. Some analysts argue against this comparison. For one, they point towards the large influence of trading activity between Bitcoin and Ethereum in the dominance metric. Second, they argue that stablecoins can be traded in for Bitcoin and Ethereum, essentially showing how much investors are willing to engage with "regular" cryptocurrency. A rally around Bitcoin in late 2023? By December 2023, the Bitcoin price reached roughly 41,000 U.S. dollars — the first time in 20 months such a value was reached. A weaker U.S. dollar, speculation on decreasing interest rates, and a potential Bitcoin ETF approval are believed to be at the heart of this price increase. Whether this will hold in 2024 is unclear: The monthly interest rate from the U.S. Fed is speculated to decrease in 2024, despite a vow of "higher for longer". In December 2023, the thought of decreasing interest rates and the potential of a Bitcoin ETF fuelled market sentiment towards riskier assets.

Interest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in 2020 was seemingly higher in Africa and Latin America than some of the world's developed economies. This shows after analyzing Bitcoin trading volume against domestic currencies used for the transaction of the digital coin. In 2020, roughly *** million U.S. dollars worth of Russian rubles were used to buy Bitcoin on an exchange, against *** million U.S. dollars worth of Nigerian naira. The source assumes the currencies are mainly used by the domestic population - e.g., transactions made with British pounds are likely done by UK residents -, and makes the same assumption for the United States, despite the international appeal of the U.S. dollar on foreign exchange markets. Africa and Latin America lead the way Although the source does not mention all countries in Africa and Latin America, the few entries these regions do have in the list stand out. Bitcoin trading volume in Nigeria, for instance, was twice as high as that of the eurozone in 2020. Colombia's market size was twice that of Canada. Whether this interest is for actual payment use on a day-to-day basis or as a tool for investment is not really clear. Data from Statista's Global Consumer Survey on payment methods in Egypt reveals that * percent of Egyptians either owned or used Bitcoin, but does not specify the exact use or purpose of the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin: the "Renaissance" Believed by some to fade into obscurity after hitting the news in 2017 and price declines that followed afterward, the world's most well-known cryptocurrency witnessed a "rebirth" at the end of 2020: Within five days in January 2021, the price of Bitcoin soared from ****** U.S. dollars to ****** U.S. dollars. Bitcoin's market cap - calculated by multiplying the total number of Bitcoins in circulation against its price - grew as well, more than doubling in early January 2021 against November 2020.

Context

Data collected from Binance Futures API at 10s intervals 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Content

A text file containing the mark price in each row. The earliest time point is around Jan 11th 2020. latest: The last time point is 2021-01-07 1:52 a.m UTC (unix time: 1609984372).

This dataset provides evidence supporting the hypothesis that institutional shorting, ETF outflows, whale wallet movements, and media sentiment drive Bitcoin’s volatility and price manipulation. Central to this dataset is the Decker Sentiment-Short Interest Model (DSSIM)—an original equation developed by Nicolin Decker to quantify the relationship between market sentiment and institutional short interest. By combining sentiment scores from Natural Language Processing (NLP) and short positioning data, DSSIM offers a flexible framework for analyzing volatility in Bitcoin and other assets.

The dataset spans January 2021 to December 2024, capturing daily market activity and key price events. Each file aligns with DSSIM’s variables, enabling replication and further analysis of the findings in the doctoral-level thesis The Economic Bomb: A Strategic Financial Warfare Tactic.

Key Components: BTC_Price_Data.csv: Daily BTC/USD closing prices from Binance, Coinbase, and Bitstamp, serving as the baseline for volatility and return calculations.

ETF_Holdings_Over_Time_Thesis.csv: Daily BTC holdings of ETFs (Grayscale, BlackRock, and Fidelity), illustrating cumulative outflows and their liquidity impact.

ETF_Outflows_Price_Impact_Data.csv: Correlates ETF outflows with BTC volatility, highlighting timing and magnitude.

Institutional_Shorting_Data.csv: Daily BTC short positions from Binance, BitMEX, Bybit, and OKX, serving as input for DSSIM’s short interest variable.

Whale_Wallet_Movements.csv: Tracks large BTC wallet movements, revealing sell-offs preceding price crashes and influencing DSSIM’s residual noise component.

Market_Liquidity_Data.csv: Daily BTC trading volume, order book depth, and liquidity ratios, validating DSSIM’s predictive capabilities.

Media_Sentiment_Scores.csv: Daily sentiment from Twitter, Reddit, Google News, and YouTube, forming DSSIM’s sentiment variable.

Monte_Carlo_Simulation_Results.csv: Simulates 1,000 BTC price paths to assess potential volatility under market stress.

VAR_Model_Data.csv: Analyzes ETF outflows’ delayed impact on BTC returns using vector autoregression.

Volatility_Clustering_Data.csv: Tracks daily BTC returns and 30-day rolling volatility, confirming persistent volatility after institutional actions.

GARCH_Model_Data.csv: Models BTC volatility using GARCH, validating volatility clustering during market shocks.

The dataset includes adjustments for major market events, such as the May 2021 Flash Crash, June 2022 Liquidation Crisis, and March 2023 Banking Crisis, ensuring realistic volatility patterns aligned with DSSIM’s modeling of sentiment shifts and institutional shorting.

Researchers can use DSSIM’s structure and data to explore similar dynamics in other cryptocurrencies, equities, commodities, and forex markets, advancing financial analysis and predictive modeling.

Access the full dataset: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pnwqBTMF_QSJoC5QcNAPSQpVtOST2n8c?usp=drive_link

Figshare Dataset DescriptionTitle: The Economic Bomb Dataset: Bitcoin Volatility, Institutional Shorting, and ETF Outflows (2021–2024)Description:This dataset supports the research presented in The Economic Bomb: A Strategic Financial Warfare Tactic, which examines Bitcoin's volatility, institutional shorting, and the impact of ETF outflows on market behavior. Covering the period from January 2021 to December 2024, the dataset includes raw financial data, processed analytical outputs, and visualizations that illustrate volatility patterns, delayed market reactions, and potential price manipulation.The dataset is divided into the following components:Raw Data: Daily BTC price movements, ETF holdings and outflows, whale wallet transactions, and institutional shorting positions from Binance, Coinbase, Glassnode, and other sources.Processed Data: Calculated BTC returns, volatility measures, and sentiment scores from social media platforms such as Twitter, Reddit, Google News, and YouTube.Simulations: Monte Carlo simulations, Decker Sentiment-Short Interest Model (DSSIM), GARCH model forecasts, and VAR model analyses that quantify volatility clustering and delayed market responses.Visual Aids: Correlation matrices, heatmaps, and line charts that visualize key patterns, including volatility spikes following ETF outflows and whale wallet movements.This dataset is designed to support research into cryptocurrency volatility, institutional influence, and market manipulation. It is suitable for use in academic studies, financial modeling, and data-driven investment strategies. Detailed captions and preprocessing information are provided to ensure transparency and reproducibility.Keywords: Bitcoin Volatility, Institutional Shorting, ETF Outflows, Whale Wallet Movements, Cryptocurrency Market Manipulation, Monte Carlo Simulation, GARCH Model, VAR Model, Financial Data VisualizationLicense: CC BY 4.0 (Attribution required)DOI: 10.17632/xn9ws8x6j7.2Citation:Decker, Nicolin (2025), The Economic Bomb: A Strategic Financial Warfare Tactic, Mendeley Data, V2, DOI: 10.17632/xn9ws8x6j7.2, Available at SSRN: Link to SSRNContact: Nicolin Decker, Independent Researcher, Email: nicolindecker144@gmail.com

Ethereum's price history suggests that that crypto was worth more in 2025 than during late 2021, although nowhere near the highest price recorded. Much like Bitcoin (BTC), the price of ETH went up in 2021 but for different reasons altogether: Ethereum, for instance, hit the news when a digital art piece was sold as the world's most expensive NFT for over 38,000 ETH - or 69.3 million U.S. dollars. Unlike Bitcoin, of which the price growth was fueled by the IPO of the U.S.'s biggest crypto trader, Coinbase, the rally on Ethereum came from technological developments that caused much excitement among traders. First, the so-called 'Berlin update' rolled out on the Ethereum network in April 2021, an update that would eventually lead to the Ethereum Merge in 2022 and reduced ETH gas prices - or reduced transaction fees. The collapse of FTX in late 2022, however, changed much for the cryptocurrency. As of August 27, 2025, Ethereum was worth 4,602.37 U.S. dollars - significantly less than the 4,400 U.S. dollars by the end of 2021.Ethereum's future and the DeFi industryPrice developments on Ethereum are difficult to predict but cannot be seen without the world of DeFi, or decentralized finance. This industry used technology to remove intermediaries between parties in a financial transaction. One example includes crypto wallets such as Coinbase Wallet that grew in popularity recently, with other examples including smart contractor Uniswap, Maker (responsible for stablecoin DAI), moneylender Dharma and market protocol Compound. Ethereum's future developments are tied with this industry: Unlike Bitcoin and Ripple, Ethereum is technically not a currency but an open-source software platform for blockchain applications, with Ether being the cryptocurrency that is used inside the Ethereum network. Essentially, Ethereum facilitates DeFi, meaning that if DeFi does well, so does Ethereum.NFTs: the most well-known application of EthereumNFTs or non-fungible tokens, grew nearly tenfold between 2018 and 2020, as can be seen in the market cap of NFTs worldwide. These digital blockchain assets can essentially function as a unique code connected to a digital file, allowing to distinguish the original file from any potential copies. This application is especially prominent in crypto art, although there are other applications: gaming, sports, and collectibles are other segments where NFT sales occur.

Bitcoin's circulating supply has grown steadily since its inception in 2009, reaching over **** million coins by late July 2025. This gradual increase reflects the cryptocurrency's design, which put a limit of ** million on the total number of bitcoins that can ever exist. This impacts the Bitcoin price somewhat, as its scarcity can lead to volatility on the market. Maximum supply and scarcity Bitcoin is unusual from other cryptocurrencies in that its maximum supply is getting closer. By July 2025, more than ** percent of all possible Bitcoin had been created. That said, Bitcoin's circulating supply is expected to reach its maximum around the year 2140. Meanwhile, mining becomes exponentially more difficult and energy-intensive. Institutional investors In 2025, countries like the United States openly started discussing the possibility of buying bitcoins to hold in reserve. By the time of writing, it was unclear whether this would happen. Nevertheless, institutional investors displayed more interest in the cryptocurrency than before. Certain companies owned several thousands of Bitcoin tokens in 2025, for example. This and the limited number of Bitcoin may further fuel price volatility.

The price of the cryptocurrency based on the famous internet meme broke its price decline in early November 2022, as people started buying the coin after FTX's collapse. This rally only lasted for a few days, however, as a Dogecoin was worth roughly 0.29 U.S. dollars on September 14, 2025. This is a different development than in 2021, when the crypto became very popular in a short amount of time. Between January 28 and January 29, 2021, Dogecoin's value grew by around 216 percent to 0.023535 U.S. dollars after comments from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The digital coin quickly grew to become the most talked-about cryptocurrency available, not necessarily for its price - the prices of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), and several other virtual currencies were much higher than those of DOGE - but for its growth.

It is estimated that the cumulative market cap of cryptocurrencies increased in early 2023 after the downfall in November 2022 due to FTX. That value declined in the summer of 2023, however, as international uncertainty grew over a potential recession. Bitcoin's market cap comprised the majority of the overall market capitalization. What is market cap? Market capitalization is a financial measure typically used for publicly traded firms, computed by multiplying the share price by the number of outstanding shares. However, cryptocurrency analysts calculate it as the price of the virtual currencies times the number of coins in the market. This gives cryptocurrency investors an idea of the overall market size, and watching the evolution of the measure tells how much money is flowing in or out of each cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency as an investment The price of Bitcoin has been erratic, and most other cryptocurrencies follow its larger price swings. This volatility attracts investors who hope to buy when the price is low and sell at its peak, turning a profit. However, this does little for price stability. As such, few firms accept payment in cryptocurrencies. As of June 25, 2025, the cumulative market cap of cryptocurrencies reached a value of ******.

The market cap of Cardano (ADA) nearly doubled in **** days in February 2021, amidst a growing buying activity from investors during this time. Cardano stood out due to its close relation to Ethereum, as well as a detailed transaction history in its ledger - potentially making this digital coin more secure than others. Compared to both the Bitcoin market capitalization, as well as the Ethereum market cap, Cardano was not as popular.