Bitcoin, one year after Trump’s second inauguration

President Trump’s second presidency was heralded as a boon for crypto in general and for bitcoin specifically. Enthusiasm in the space was massive, with many expecting bitcoin to go “to the moon,” as he had promised.

So, as we hit the one-year mark of Trump’s second term, we took a look at how that promise turned out.

On Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025, bitcoin hit a new intraday high of $109,114. On January 20, 2026, it is hovering around $90,500, a 17% decrease, as fears of new tariffs on European countries related to his push for Greenland rocked the crypto market, triggering a sell-off that led to $780 million in crypto liquidations.

The overall crypto market cap stood at $3.36 trillion on Inauguration Day; today it’s fallen to $3.14 trillion. Bitcoin did hit an all-time high of $126,080 on October 6, but could not hold those gains. One group that has undoubtedly gained from crypto over the past year is the Trump family: a Bloomberg report estimates a variety of digital assets added $1.4 billion to the Trump family’s wealth over the past year.

2025 was a “buy the rumor, sell the news” year

Rohan Hirani, cofounder of BitcoinQuant, told Sherwood News that the last 12 months have been a paradox.

“If you look at the headlines, 2025 was the most bullish year in history; if you look at the chart, it was a disaster,” he said.

Hirani said that everyone anticipated 2025 to be the “monster year” of the four-year cycle. Instead, bitcoin finished the year down ~6%, leaving sentiment “in the gutter” with the Fear & Greed Index dipping below 20 multiple times.

“To me, bitcoin right now feels like a beach ball being held underwater. The structural pressure is immense, with acceptance, security, and institutional rails at all-time highs, but the price is being suppressed by sentiment and exhaustion. I believe 2026 is when that beach ball finally explodes upward and price catches up to fundamentals,” he said.

Some still expect it to break another record in 2026: Bernstein analysts, for instance, expect bitcoin to hit $150,000 in the first half of the year (though they halved their projection in December) and predict the asset will hit $500,000 in 2030. But the overall mood around the asset’s trajectory is cautious.

“One year after Donald Trump’s inauguration, bitcoin sits between political victory and market frustration,” Jake Kennis, a research analyst at Nansen, told Sherwood.

Kennis said the inauguration marked “peak optimism,” also reflected by analysts’ expectations, which were “extreme.” For instance, he said that Bernstein projected $200,000, while Tim Draper and Tom Lee pointed to the $175,000 to $250,000 range.

Jayanand Sagar, cofounder of Hyperbola Network, echoed the sentiment, saying that a year ago, there was a lot of expectation that political signaling alone would trigger a step change in bitcoin adoption, but what actually played out was slower and more structural.

Sagar said that prices have responded to drivers like ETFs, institutional access, and clearer regulation.

“But bitcoin didn’t suddenly change its role overnight. It’s continued moving, gradually, from a speculative asset toward something that looks more like a macro hedge and a balance sheet asset,” he said.

Juan Leon, senior investment strategist at Bitwise, said that investors looking strictly at the 12-month return are missing the bigger picture.

Leon said that 2025 was a classic “buy the rumor, sell the news” event, and the euphoria of the inauguration front-ran the reality of legislative timelines.

He has a rosier outlook for 2026, saying the setup is arguably better than 2025, as we have washed out the “inauguration premium.” We’ve traded the regulatory headwinds of the past for the structural tailwinds of the future, even if the price action in the interim has been volatile, he said.

“The market structure looks far healthier at $95,000 today than it did at $109,000 a year ago. We are building a base to go higher in 2026 on solid regulatory ground, not just hope,” Leon said.

Nic Puckrin, cofounder of Coin Bureau, who acknowledged he wasn’t expecting bitcoin to finish 2025 down, said that the legion of headwinds bitcoin faced, including stiff competition from AI and precious metals, geopolitical uncertainty, and dwindling rate cut expectations, put enormous pressure on it.

At the same time, the catalysts that many pundits had expected to push bitcoin higher never materialized, he said.

“The national bitcoin reserve announcement was somewhat of a damp squib, and the long-awaited Clarity Act still hasn’t been passed. High expectations collided with reality, which stopped Bitcoin’s momentum in its tracks. Then we had the October 10th liquidation event, which severely dented confidence in the wider digital asset market,” he said.

2026: No “guarantee of future returns” 

Puckrin said that even though 2026 started on a positive note, bitcoin is now trading in negative territory over a 12-month period (as of January 20) on the back of renewed geopolitical tensions. It has also seen open interest plummet by 30%, from $15 billion in October to $10 billion, as leveraged traders have been flushed out of their positions, he said, adding that the latter isn’t actually a bad sign — such flush-outs have historically marked major bottoms. 

“In the short-term, we’re likely to see further downside, with a drop under $90,000 likely causing ETF holders to sell, and $88,000 acting as a strong support level. Longer-term, whether we see a push to a new all-time high will depend on the geopolitical backdrop, but we would need to see a rebound past the $100,000 mark first,” he said. 

However, he warrants caution, saying it’s quite likely BTC won’t reach the lofty price predictions, “so holding out for them would be a fool’s game.”

“And if 2025 has taught us anything, it’s that apparently political favor is rarely a guarantee of future returns,” Puckrin said.

Finally, as Justin D’Anethan, head of research at Arctic Digital, put it, today’s bitcoin, below $100,000, is “a fundamentally different animal,” far more institutionalized and widely accepted as a legitimate portfolio asset.

“Fingers crossed we avoid another presidential family memecoin and the ensuing doubts on the credibility of long-term value prop,” he said. “If we do, crypto investors may still be early in a multi-year trade that cements BTC as a serious valuable asset worldwide, whether for pure price speculation or as a long-term hedge against currency debasement and geopolitical risk.”

When asked whether he thinks bitcoin will hit another all-time high, D’Anethan said he’s “not good at prophecies.”

“But hopefully before year-end,” he said.