Bitcoin Drops 10.2% YTD Despite Political Tailwinds

Bitcoin, one of the leading cryptocurrencies, has seen significant gains following a shift in political attitudes towards the cryptocurrency industry. Just weeks after the U.S. presidential election, the Bitcoin market reached an impressive milestone of $100K. However, the upward momentum in the BTC market has started to slow down since the beginning of 2025, with a year-to-date (YTD) change of -10.2% and a decline of over 2.71% in the last seven days.

Despite the recent slowdown, Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee has made a bold prediction that Bitcoin will become the best-performing asset class of the year and outperform gold in 2025. In the previous year, the gold price reported a rise of 27.44%, while the Bitcoin price registered a surge of at least +121.1%. Although BTC strongly outperformed gold in 2024, it struggled to maintain its growth pace in the first quarter of 2025. The YTD change of gold is nearly 13.7%, while the YTD of Bitcoin is -10.2%.

Bitcoin’s poor performance in the first quarter has raised questions about its potential to challenge the dominance of gold in the market as the most trusted store of value. However, Lee predicted that the Bitcoin market would outperform the gold market this year. At the start of 2025, the price of BTC was at $93,536.41. In January, the BTC market experienced a moderate growth of 9.54%, but in February, the market saw a significant drop of -17.55%. The month-to-date (MTD) of BTC stands at -0.48%.

At the beginning of March, the price of Bitcoin was at $84,381.04. In the first two days of the month, the market witnessed a rise of 11.68%, reaching as high as $95,048.73 on March 2. However, the market has recorded two major corrections: an 8.5% drop on March 3 and a 13.25% decline between March 6 and 10. The market has not yet fully recovered from these corrections, with the current BTC price remaining at $83,873 – at least 13.32% below the peak of the month.

Lee’s prediction for 2025 is that the price of Bitcoin would reach as high as $150,000. While Lee has a mixed record in BTC predictions, he is a very respected figure in the financial sector. Fundstrat, the organization he co-founded, is one of the most prestigious independent financial research firms. Lee’s optimism about the future prospects of the BTC market is based on his analysis of the cryptocurrency’s potential to outperform traditional assets like gold.