Bitcoin Surges 11% This Week, Largest Gain Since November 2024

Bitcoin (BTC) has been on a remarkable rally, poised for its strongest weekly gain since the election victory of Donald Trump. The largest and oldest cryptocurrency held around $95,000 during U.S. afternoon hours, marking a 1.8% increase over the past 24 hours. Ethereum’s ether (ETH) followed closely, gaining 2% to hover just over $1,800. Sui’s native (SUI), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Hedera’s HBAR led gains in the broad-market crypto benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index.

This momentum comes as crypto markets recover from the early April lows amid tariff turmoil. BTC is up over 11% since Monday, putting it at its largest weekly gain since November 2024. This surge has been driven by a strong rebound in investor appetite, with U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs recording $2.68 billion in net inflows this week so far, the largest since December.

Bitcoin's recent strength relative to U.S. stocks and gold underscores its decoupling from traditional macro assets. According to David Duong, global head of research at Coinbase Institutional, this decoupling highlights bitcoin’s maturing role as a store-of-value asset. Duong noted that this divergence is gaining traction with more companies adopting BTC corporate treasuries, following the success of Michael Saylor’s Strategy. Twenty One Capital, a new firm backed by Tether, Bitfinex, SoftBank, and a Cantor Fitzgerald affiliate, also plans to hold 42,000 BTC at launch.

Due to recent accumulation, liquidity in the spot BTC market has been significantly drained. Dr. Kirill Kretov, lead strategist at trading automation platform CoinPanel, noted that a large portion of bitcoin liquidity has been withdrawn from actively transacting addresses, including exchanges, since November 2024. This has exposed markets to volatile price swings, with sharp swings of 10% up or down likely to remain the norm for now.

While the route to fresh records could be choppy, this week’s rally is likely the early innings of bitcoin’s next leg higher to new records. John Glover, chief investment officer of crypto lender Ledn, based on his technical analysis using Elliott Waves, said BTC began the fifth and final wave of its multi-year bull market. Elliott Wave theory suggests asset prices move in predictable patterns called waves, driven by collective investor psychology. These patterns typically unfold in five-wave trends, in which the first, third, and fifth waves are impulsive rallies, while the second and fourth waves are corrective phases.

While retesting this month’s low at $75,000 cannot be ruled out, Glover sees BTC climbing to a cycle top around late 2025, early 2026. "My expectations continue to be for a rally to $133-$136k into the end of this year, beginning of next,” he said.