Bitcoin Snaps Downtrend, Hits $105K as Anticipation Builds for Trump’s Inauguration

Bitcoins Crypto investors have high hopes for the incoming administration, including potential digital asset-focused executive orders that could add fuel to the rally.

Jan 17, 2025, 6:27 p.m. UTC

Bitcoin (BTC) hit its strongest price in U.S. dollar terms in 2025 on Friday and notched a new record against the British pound as excitement for a new era of crypto-friendly U.S. government mounts ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration next week.

BTC topped $105,000 during the U.S. session, surging 5.2% over the past 24 hours and leading the broad-market crypto benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index higher. Of the CoinDesk 20 constituents, only NEAR, and Litecoin’s LTC kept pace with bitcoin’s gains, while solana (SOL) and Ethereum’s ether (ETH) lagged with 3% advances. XRP posted a 4% decline, retreating from its record highs after a massive market-leading rally earlier this week.

Crypto-related stocks are also moving higher. MicroStrategy (MSTR), the largest corporate BTC holder, was up 7% during the day, while exchange giant Coinbase (COIN) advanced 4.5%. MARA Holdings led gains among major bitcoin miners, up 13%.

It’s quite the turnaround from earlier in the week, when a broad-market sell-off had bitcoin plunging below $90,0000, with fear mounting of a deeper pullback. BTC since, though, has bounced 17% first as investor anxiety over Wednesday’s U.S. CPI inflation report passed and then as focus turned to speculation about Donald Trump’s potential crypto actions following his inauguration on Jan. 20.

Overcoming last week’s local high of $102,000, BTC also broke out of its multi-week downtrend of lower highs to target its December record price, said Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy.

“Now $108,000 is near term target resistance,” he said in an X post. “Lots of reasons to be bullish.”

Strong bitcoin ETF flows

Spot bitcoin ETFs combined saw $1.381 billion net inflows in the past two days, reversing the four-day streak of outflows, per Farside Investors data. 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 on traditional markets before Trump’s inauguration.

BlackRock’s Ishares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) booked almost $1 billion trading volume in little over the first hour of the session, posting the fourth-largest volume among all U.S. ETFs and surpassing Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF (VOO) with almost ten times of assets under management, per Barchart data.

All eyes on Trump

The most important upcoming catalyst will be Trump’s inauguration ceremony on Monday, and crypto investors expect a sea change from the new president. Trump promised on the campaign trail to position the U.S. as a leader in the crypto space including creating a national stockpile of bitcoin, in stark contrast to past years’ regulatory crackdowns and enforcements.

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 for policy recommendations.

Odds of the U.S. establishing a bitcoin reserve rose sharply over the past days, with Polymarket traders putting a 38% probability on Trump making it happen during the first 100 days of his presidency.

“As we close out the final week of the Biden presidency, the technical picture remains very constructive for BTC,” John Glover, chief investment officer at crypto lender Ledn, said in an emailed note.

“The only thing that could cause a large corrective move lower is if Trump fails to act on his plans to loosen regulatory policy around digital assets and to start building up BTC treasury holdings,” he added. “Recent headlines indicate that he is serious in making this a priority in his first 100 days,”

Glover’s analysis using wave theory projects bitcoin to hit $128,000 in the coming months following its interim 5 wave pattern, completing its larger wave 3 in its uptrend. According to wave theory, market trends unfold in five waves, three of which represent the primary trend and the others constitute retracements.

Breaking above the record high of $108,000 is key, Glover said, and there remains a slim possibility of revisiting the recent lows at $90,000. This scenario, however, is becoming increasingly unlikely, he added.