Bitcoin Dominates 2025 Crypto Market Amid Geopolitical Tensions

2025 has been a year marked by persistent geopolitical tensions, monetary challenges, and evolving investor behavior. Amid these challenges, the crypto markets continue to navigate a complex macroeconomic landscape. Bitcoin’s performance, the increasing institutional adoption, the rise of certain fields in decentralized finance, as well as questions around traditional 4-year market cycles are all interesting and constantly discussed topics within the community.

David Prinçay, President of Binance France, offers his perspective on the current state of the market, the competition between centralized and decentralized exchanges, as well as the broader relevance of long-held theories such as the four-year crypto market cycle.

Macroeconomic factors have increased market uncertainty, which has affected crypto in similar ways to traditional asset classes. Crypto increasingly behaves like risk assets, which means that prolonged trade wars or geopolitical tensions could result in capital that might have entered crypto either staying on the sidelines or shifting into perceived safe havens like gold. Despite its reputation as ‘digital gold’ and a potential safe-haven, BTC has shown a stronger correlation with equities in the first half of the year than with traditional hedges like gold. However, a deeper look at the market also shows that BTC was less affected by ‘risk-off’ episodes than other crypto assets. While we have seen price recoveries since then, these types of movement show there can be a vulnerability to sudden policy shifts and macroeconomic drivers. However, analysts will be watching closely to see if BTC is able to retain its appeal as a non-sovereign, permissionless asset in an increasingly protectionist global economy. If inflation and rate cuts become a concern, we could expect to see BTC grow its appeal as an inflation resistant asset once again.

This cycle is turning out to be one where Bitcoin is dominating heavily, as the majority of altcoins fail to keep up. There are a number of reasons for Bitcoin’s current dominance. We continue to see strong interest in crypto from institutional investors and corporate treasuries, and naturally their primary interest is in Bitcoin as the most established cryptoasset. There has also been a great deal of economic uncertainty in global markets, whether caused by national economic policies, conflicts or other factors. Both of these factors typically drive BTC dominance in different ways, one as an effect of sustained interest and investment in it as a novel asset class, and the other as a familiar impact of uncertainty and volatility in traditional markets. In the longer term, it’s not possible to say how this might impact the next altcoin season. We may see institutions and corporations seek further diversification in their crypto holdings if or when BTC prices plateau, and markets for traditional assets will eventually regain their confidence. How an altcoin season plays out in a more mature and regulated crypto market will be interesting to see.

We are watching these developments with interest and it’s always good to see innovative projects challenging the status quo, it drives competition and inspires product innovation across the industry. We are constantly taking inspiration from across the industry and adding new products that our users love, such as Binance Wallet which recently hit an ATH of $12.5 billion in daily transaction volumes driven by TGEs and airdrops through Binance Alpha. Alpha allows our users to explore early-stage crypto projects with the potential to grow within the Web3 ecosystem as well as earning ‘Alpha Points’ which grant access to exclusive rewards for our most engaged community members. Our focus is to ensure that we continue to develop our business in compliance with our regulatory obligations around the world. We are the largest exchange in the world, and we have a responsibility to ensure that we grow sustainably and, as always, prioritise user protection.

There’s not yet been any strong evidence to suggest that the four year cycle has been broken. Certainly, there have been corrections that correlate to macroeconomic events but we have also seen price recoveries and fresh all time highs. Over the longer term it will remain to be seen whether macroeconomic factors and maturation of the crypto market will affect the historical pattern of cycles, but it’s not likely that we have reached that point yet.