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2025 is fast approaching and industry commentators are busy offering their two satoshis on what’s to come.
With price predictions aplenty as bitcoin posts new all-time highs, we’ll stray away from those this time.
One stock price expectation: Per Bitwise, Coinbase (~$324 Monday midday) will hit $700 as it surpasses Charles Schwab as “the most valuable brokerage in the world.”
The investment firm correctly predicted MicroStrategy’s addition to the Nasdaq 100 index (announced Friday night) and believes COIN will join the S&P 500 next year.
BLOK portfolio manager Dan Weiskopf told me he thinks MSTR’s ascent to that index in 2025 might be “a reach.” Still, it’s only a matter of time, he says.
Weiskopf and the Amplify ETFs team detailed a “fun hypothetical” (should BTC move north of $200k) that MSTR could one day have a larger weighting in the S&P 500 than Bank of America.
Moving on, VanEck’s Matthew Sigel and Patrick Bush wrote that President-elect Trump’s appointments — Howard Lutnick, David Sacks, Paul Atkins, etc. — signal “the start of a policy framework that positions bitcoin as a strategic asset.”
What they really mean: the national bitcoin reserve Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming floated earlier this year.
When asked about a US crypto reserve materializing, Trump himself told market prognosticator Jim Cramer, “Yeah, I think so.”
He added: “We’re going to do something great with crypto. …Others are embracing it and we want to be the head.”
With more companies holding BTC, bitcoin yielding strategies could become “a new corporate finance norm,” the CoinShares team posed.
More on the regulations/policy front: Bitwise is forecasting the US Department of Labor to relax its guidance against crypto in 401(k) plans in 2025. This would fit the flood-of-new-buyers narrative spurred by crypto-friendly regulation, with some pension funds and RIAs already making moves.
A repeal of SAB 121 (a bipartisan effort blocked by President Joe Biden) might not even be necessary in 2025. Ava Labs deputy general counsel Wee Ming Choon told me he believes that particular bulletin will be an easy one for a new SEC administration to rescind (more thoughts from Choon are coming in a future Forward Guidance edition).
Let’s conclude with a shared prediction from Bitwise and VanEck: The tokenized RWA space will surpass the $50 billion mark. Securitize’s Eric Ervin said during a panel I moderated at Permissionless in October that he thinks BlackRock’s tokenized fund BUIDL, backed by US Treasurys, could grow to $50b on its own in the next few years.
