Bitcoin hits new ATH of $118K – Can 2025 take BTC’s price to $150K?

Key Takeaways

• BTC has printed consecutive new highs in the past 48 hours, with the latest being $118.4K. A crypto VC has projected that this could be the beginning of a springboard to $150K-$180K range. 

Bitcoin [BTC] has added $11K this week, a 10% run that pushed it to a record high of $118K on the Binance exchange on the 11th of July. 

Market data showed that the upswing was fueled by a massive short squeeze and boosted by record inflows from U.S. spot BTC ETFs (exchange-traded funds). And analysts still expected more growth. 

Record Bitcoin liquidation

The mid-week rally began with a short squeeze following a massive wipeout of leveraged short positions that piled above $111k and stretched to $115k in the past few days. 

These speculators were betting on muted price action and potential BTC retracement. But they were wrong and got burned. 

Such liquidity pools on the derivatives always trigger a liquidity hunt and act as a price magnet. 

CoinGlass data showed that over $1.2 billion positions were liquidated across the markets in the past 24 hours.

And BTC accounted for $655 million, with bears suffering a $635 million loss. 

In fact, on an aggregated basis, BTC trader Byzantine General noted that this was a record liquidation in recent years.

In other words, this was a strong bullish cue for BTC on the derivatives market. 

ETF inflows, low selling pressure

Although the spot market had shown slight demand contraction recently, a renewed institutional appetite boosted BTC further.

On the 10th of July, ETFs saw $1.18 billion in daily inflows, the second largest since their debut. 

Paired together, the lift-off from the short squeeze and additional fuel from ETFs extend the upswing to $118K. 

CryptoQuant also highlighted another catalyst for the bull run – A muted sell pressure in the spot markets. 

Unlike the Q2 bounce from $75K to $100K, which attracted increased selling pressure, this mid-week rally didn’t see any notable spike from sellers. 

The exchange inflow metric tracks the overall incoming BTC supply from custodial wallets with the intention to offload at centralized exchanges. 

In fact, compared to the Q4 2024 BTC price surge that attracted 81K BTC in sell-off, the current pump saw pressure dip further to 18K BTC. 

As expected, the breakout has seen new BTC price calls in the mid-term. Charles Edwards, founder of crypto VC Capriole Investments, projected that BTC could extend the rally to $150k-$180k in H2 2025. 

“I lean towards a major new price expansion trend commencing here, with a 50-70% gain over the next 6-months being a reasonable base case for me based on the data I look at. That would take us to $150-180K.”

He added that his projection would be weakened if BTC dips below $110K and invalidated if it drops below $105K.