MicroStrategy has done it again. The company, led by Bitcoin maximalist Michael Saylor, just dropped $101 million on another 1,070 Bitcoins.
The average cost was $94,004 per Bitcoin. MicroStrategy’s total stash is now up to 447,470 Bitcoins as of press time. These coins, acquired for a mind-blowing $27.97 billion, have an average cost of $62,503 each.
The company has also brought in exponential returns. In Q4 2024, MicroStrategy managed a Bitcoin yield of 48%. For the entire year, it was 74.3%.
Bitcoin is on fire, and everyone in the market knows it. Prices are less than $200 away from the $100,000 mark.
JULISHA MEDIA CRYPO Analysts say it’s just a matter of time before it shatters that barrier and keeps climbing.
Over the past week, Bitcoin has jumped 5.66%, its biggest weekly surge since late November.
Donald Trump’s election victory, with his inauguration just days away, has got the bulls excited. Trump is planning many crypto-friendly policies. New legislation could soon hit the scene during his first 100 days.
Saylor expects Bitcoin’s price to double to $200,000 during the second quarter of the year. James Butterfill from CoinShares also sees Bitcoin shooting for the stars, predicting a range of $150,000 to $250,000 by the end of 2025. Why? Institutional adoption. As Bitcoin edges closer to gold’s market share, Butterfill thinks the price will skyrocket.
Meanwhile, Alex Thorn of Galaxy Digital is predicting that Bitcoin will hit $185,000 by year’s end. Wei Yang, chief economist at Bit Mining, is a bit more cautious but still equally bullish. He’s pegging Bitcoin’s range at $180,000 to $190,000, though he warns about potential corrections.
Sid Powell, CEO of Maple Finance, is aiming even higher. He believes Bitcoin will hit $250,000 by December, citing parallels with gold ETFs and the rising popularity of Bitcoin ETFs. Matrixport’s team sees a more modest—but still massive—target of $160,000.
Bitcoin began the year with strong momentum, reaching the $99,765 mark and gaining over 6% in price appreciation.
The upsurge in price has renewed investor optimism, but selling pressure continued to cap the price below the psychological $100,000 level until today, as BTC just broke just reclaimed $100k.
Investors view this level as pivotal in BTC’s price action, expecting a potential push toward the ATH.
A breakout above the $100k level is crucial as it will ignite a decisive upward trend that could set the stage for new all-time highs.
The last day of 2024 saw Bitcoin retest the $92K range, which was a key demand level. Once the year began, BTC respected the support level and soared higher.
Meanwhile, Ripple’s XRP has flipped Tether’s USDT stablecoin to claim its spot as the third-largest crypto coin by market cap. The coin now only trails behind Bitcoin and Ethereum.
According to on-chain data from CoinGecko, XRP’s market cap surged to $137.68 billion on January 6, surpassing USDT, which has endured a $1.6 billion decline in market cap since December 30. This coincides with the rollout of the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.
At press time, USDT’s market cap stands at $137.15 billion. As much as Ripple’s native coin has taken third place, it has lost 2.24% market share in the last month.
At the time of publication, XRP trades at $2.38, up 15% in the last 7 days, according to CoinGecko. Over the past year, the token has risen nearly 320%.
This flip may not last as the market’s volatility tends to fluctuate in both directions over the long haul. At the moment, USDT is struggling with significant fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).
XRP has gained the most since Trump took office. However, the coin remains 29.9% lower than its $3.40 all-time high, which it achieved seven years ago.
Before Donald Trump won a second term in the White House, XRP was trading around 50-60 cents. The next big catalyst for XRP and other cryptos could be DJT’s first days in office, starting on January 20.
On the other hand, Ripple unlocked another 500 million XRP tokens from its escrow account as a part of Ripple’s monthly schedule to manage the token supply.
There was a cryptic message referencing Trump’s upcoming inauguration embedded in Ripple’s latest transaction.
This is not the first time that XRP has flipped USDT. On December 1, XRP surpassed both Solana and USDT in market capitalization rankings.
The anticipation surrounding a spot XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) has further propelled XRP’s momentum. On December 2, WisdomTree filed for a spot XRP ETF with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), becoming the fourth company to do so, alongside Bitwise, Canary Capital, and 21Shares.
Bitwise and 21Shares were part of the earliest to file for spot Bitcoin ETFs back in January 2024.
XRP’s significant price movement comes about as Ripple Labs introduces Ripple USD (RLUSD), a stablecoin backed by the US dollar, on December 17. The stablecoin is scheduled to be integrated into Ripple Payments in early 2025, aiming to enhance cross-border transactions for enterprise clients.
Elsewhere, Filecoin soared as high as 12% in the last 24 hours over South Korea’s top crypto exchange, Bithumb, major announcement. The move has sparked market enthusiasm with FIL futures open interest also jumping 20%.
On January 6, Bithumb in a post revealed the listing of Filecoin in the KRW market. The exchange set an initial reference price of 8,680 KRW and announced guidelines for safe trading, including limits on buying and extreme selling orders.
The announcement boosted FIL’s price to $6.23, hitting a 12% 24-hour surge. FIL price is now up by 21% in the last 7 days despite recording a slump of 23% over the past 30 days. FIL is trading at an average price of $6.04, at press time. Its 24-hour trading volume spiked by 180% to stand at $524 million.
Finally, Ethereum network’s stablecoin netflows this week increased from last week’s outflows of over $63 million to the current $1.1 billion inflows. However, Solana’s inflows over the past seven days are still over $200 million lower than what it experienced the week before.
Lookonchain data revealed that Solana recorded over $424 million in USDC and USDT inflows in the previous week.
The on-chain data analytics platform also noted a general increase in stablecoin inflows on other chains, including TON, Avalanche, and Polygon. TON recorded about $22 million in inflows.
Avalanche, Hyperliquid, Polygon, Base, Noble, BNB Chain, SUI, and Near Protocol recorded over $83 million, $54 million, $43 million, $30 million, $16 million, $9 million, $3.6 million, and $3.3 million in inflows, respectively.
Arbitrum and Optimism experienced the most significant outflows over the past seven days. Arbitrum shed over $2 billion in stablecoins, while Optimism shed over $14 million. Aptos also had a significant outflow over the past seven days, recording over $3 million in stablecoin value.
More data from Tie Terminal also revealed an increase in stablecoin value on Ethereum Layer 2 chains in December, hitting over $13.5 billion. Solana and Ethereum further recorded over $1 billion each in stablecoin inflows in December. For Solana, the inflows in December amounted to over 12% in value growth on the chain.
A U.S. bank Citibank report has attributed the recent growth to the incoming U.S. president Donald Trump’s win in the November elections. Citibank further revealed that USDT, USD Coin, and DAI had recorded over $25 billion in growth since Trump’s win.
JULISHA MEDIA analysis suggests that the growth mirrors the crypto community’s hope that President-elect Trump will benefit the crypto market.