Crypto market explodes to the upside. What’s next for the back half of 2025?

Bitcoin rocket-jumps past $118,000 — and it’s not meme magic this time. Dive into ETF super-flows, Capitol Hill’s “Crypto Week,” a friendlier Fed outlook, and the onchain squeeze strangling supply. See why Open Money says the real story is a shift toward open, programmable value networks.

Bitcoin vaulted through $118,000 in its fastest seven‑day move since early 2024. Four forces did the heavy lifting: record‑setting ETF inflows, a Congressional “Crypto Week” that finally looks constructive, a risk‑on macro pivot with rate‑cut bets firming, and an onchain supply squeeze that is starving exchanges of coins.

Today we unpack why the rally feels different — and how it fits the Open Money thesis that value networks are becoming as open as the web.

Please remember: I’m a writer, not a financial adviser. Nothing here should be taken as investment advice. Always do your own research and exercise caution, especially when markets move this quickly.

market snapshot

📈 BTC price (close 13 Jul): $118,147 (finance.yahoo.com)
📊 YTD performance: +61 % (marketwatch.com)
💸 Spot‑ETF cumulative inflows: $51 B (marketwatch.com)
🏛️ House “Crypto Week” votes: begin 14 Jul
🪙 BTC dominance: ≈55 % (statmuse.com)

Is $120 000 a ceiling—or just a signpost on an endless road?

A dimensional shift

A year ago pundits still dismissed Bitcoin as an exhausted meme turned boomer relic. Last week they watched the price candle‑stick its way past $118,000, setting successive all‑time highs while volume and volatility kept their cool. Not long ago, market moves followed a familiar playbook — Twitter hype, retail FOMO, halving hopium — but this rally feels different. Three hard fundamentals are lining up at the same time: flows, policy, and macro.

Flows: Wall Street can now buy BTC as easily as SPY.
Policy: Capitol Hill is debating bills that treat digital bearer assets as legitimate pieces of national market infrastructure.
Macro: Rate‑cut expectations and dollar liquidity are rising in tandem.

Put simply, 2025’s breakout looks less like tulips and more like treasuries discovering programmable scarcity. As the chart heads toward the psychological $120,000 magnet, traders are asking whether price discovery has finally gone three‑dimensional—and, if so, what comes next?

The ETF effect

Since the first U.S. spot funds cleared the SEC in January 2024, Bitcoin ETFs have morphed into a hydraulic pump that turns dollars into custody‑locked sats. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) just crossed $83 B AUM and 700,000 BTC under management — the fastest path to an $80 B fund in ETF history.

Zoom out: the 12 U.S. products now warehouse 1 265 000 BTC — over 6 % of supply — and have swallowed $50 B in net inflows in just 18 months. Two days last week saw back‑to‑back $1 B intakes, another first. Every fresh share minted tucks real coins into Coinbase‑controlled cold storage, driving exchange inventories toward seven‑year lows. In market‑structure terms, ETFs are not a passive sleeve. Instead they are a one‑way liquidity sink whose plumbing couples trad‑fi capital to block‑level scarcity.

Corporate treasurers are copying Michael Saylor’s balance‑sheet playbook, funneling operating surpluses into ETF wrappers auditors already understand. Sovereign wealth funds from the Gulf and Southeast Asia have filed 13‑Fs showing low‑single‑digit allocations. Strip away the ticker tape and you’re left with a startling truth: an institutional bid now competes with every retail FOMO candle.

Political winds shift: “Crypto Week” on the Hill

Monday kicks off what the House Financial Services Committee brands “Crypto Week.” Lawmakers will vote on three bills with teeth:

CLARITY Act — splits oversight between the CFTC (commodities) and SEC (securities).
Clarity for Payment Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act — green‑lights bank‑issued, dollar‑backed tokens.
CBDC Anti‑Surveillance Act — bars a retail Federal digital dollar.

The other side of the story is that heavy GOP backing and sizable crypto‑PAC donations give the package momentum, even amid Democratic pushback framing the effort as “Anti‑Crypto Corruption Week.” Meanwhile, the committee touts the marathon as a once‑in‑a‑generation rewrite of market plumbing.

The takeaway is that suddenly Bitcoin is no longer lobbying from the sidelines. Regulatory clarity compresses risk: pension funds can mark holdings without fearing overnight illegality, and banks can underwrite custody without compliance worries. The market responses is showing that uncertainty — not technology — was the heaviest anchor on the asset.

The macro setup: the dollar loosens its grip

Futures markets now price a 64% chance of a Fed rate cut by September and two more by year‑end. Reuters reports that Goldman now expects three 25 bp trims in 2025. Easing talk softens real yields — historically turbo‑charging Bitcoin, which thrives when the opportunity cost of holding digital assets falls.

Tariff skirmishes are clouding equity‑earnings visibility, nudging traders toward protocol equity whose revenues are uncapped by import duties. Bitcoin’s 30‑day realized volatility now sits below that of single‑name tech favorites, a stat BlackRock cites to woo cautious CIOs. Weakening local currencies from Argentina to Nigeria are driving capital into non‑sovereign stores of value, reinforcing global demand.

Macro backdrops rarely align this cleanly: a liquidity tide is beginning to rise while fiscal and trade policy inject new uncertainty into the fiat matrix. Bitcoin positions itself as the neutral float — a bearer asset with no central‑bank speed limits. The price chart is merely the surface turbulence of that deeper capital migration.

What now? price discovery

Where does Bitcoin go from here, price‑wise? Options desks show open interest clustering at $120,000 and $130,000 calls, evidence that quants expect another leg once algorithms confirm a round‑number breakout. Onchain forensics back them up: coins sitting on exchanges have slipped to 2.35 M, the lowest since 2018, as ETF creations and self‑custody siphon liquidity.

If spot can consolidate above the $115,000 volume‑weighted node, technical models place the next resistance at the logarithmic regression band near $137,000. Failure to hold could invite a swift retest of $105 ,000, where March breakout gaps await. Either path extends the thesis: price is discovering scarcity in a landscape stripped of easy sellers.

Where are the risks?

Fed hawk surprise. An upside inflation print could push the Fed to delay cuts, strengthening the dollar and tightening global liquidity.
Legislative rug‑pull. Last‑minute amendments during Crypto Week—e.g., stable‑
coin reserve ratios above 1 : 1—could spook allocators.
SEC backlash. A failed FIT 21 might revive enforcement‑by‑press‑release culture, chilling alt‑coin liquidity and, by contagion, Bitcoin risk appetite.
ETF fatigue. The inflow firehose could slow; remember the May stretch that logged $358 M in net outflows.
Miner supply. Post‑halving revenue compression, combined with rising electricity costs, may force weaker operators to liquidate treasury coins around quarter‑end.

Big market upticks are exciting, but risk management is still the long‑term alpha.

Connecting back to the Open Money framework

Bitcoin’s latest vertical climb is more than a nice‑looking number. Through the Open Money lens it signals three systemic shifts:

Transparency as trust. ETF custody flows, on‑chain analytics, and public Congressional debates create observable financial policy. Verification replaces speculation.
Permissionless rails for global capital. A pension in Ohio, a merchant in Manila, and a hardware wallet in Lagos all tap the same liquidity pool. Price acceleration reflects widening optionality, not merely speculative fervor.
Incentive gradients for protocol development. Every uptick enlarges block‑subsidy budgets and side‑chain R&D, compounding the network’s resilience and utility.

In the Open Money framework, markets are feedback loops between code, capital, and community. Bitcoin at $118 K illustrates the loop in high gear: policy clarity lowers barriers → ETFs channel capital → scarcity tightens → price signals confidence → developers ship faster → policy becomes even friendlier. The current rally is a sign of the economic engine rewiring itself to be as open, programmable, and borderless as the internet.

Open money project progress report

I’ve spent what feels like the last few weeks (it might be months, actually) writing in circles. While a lot of that output won’t make the final draft, I finally arrived at a structure that makes sense.

I still need some time to unveil it, but things are shaping into a three‑act arc:

Part I — Introducing the Open Money framework. Much of this material comes from recent daily posts.
Part II — Tensions and objections. The bulk of the book will be organized around frictions that slow adoption.
Part III — Why the shift makes sense. We’ll explore market forces, technological drivers (AI included), demographics, macro‑economics, and other themes we cover in this newsletter.

The bad news: reshuffling the outline set me back on the timeline. The good news: the new structure feels like a true unlock. I have rough drafts for the first two sections and am revising them before diving into the finale.

You can respond to this email with questions or comments. Or connect on X or BlueSky.