Institutional vs. Retail: Who’s Driving the Crypto Market in 2025?

In midweek trade, Bitcoin is trading below 110,000 after recovering that level earlier this week on Monday, outperforming the crypto major recovering 2800.

Now the latest Bitcoin rise coincides with a spike in short liquidations where investors bought Bitcoin to cover leverage short positions.

GameStop reported a drop in Q1 revenue as more gamers chose digital downloads over buying in stores.

Now GameStop recently announced it's adopting Bitcoin as a treasury. of asset creating an opportunity to combine options income with the growing trend of digital assets in traditional companies.

Well joining me now is Ryan Rasmussen, who's the head of research at Bitwise Asset Management.

Ryan, great to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Great to be here, Remy.

Well, first and foremost, we've been seeing a lot of activity when it comes to crypto in the last 24, not to mention 48 hours.

Right now we are looking at Bitcoin trading above the 110 level.

But first and foremost.

Understand that you have some price targets here.

So when it comes to catalysts as well as price targets for the crypto major, what are we looking at?

Yeah, it's a great question.

A lot of people get excited about price targets going into this year.

Our price target for Bitcoin at the end of the year was 200,000.

We maintain that price target today.

Bitcoin, as you mentioned, is trading around 110,000, but we see a bunch of demand coming into the space for Bitcoin over the next 12 months, and we think 200,000 is a reasonable target for Bitcoin to hit, even though it's a bit above where it is today.

On Ethereum side of things, we cut our price target just a bit recently.

Previously we thought it hit above 7000.

We're down now around 4500, which is basically its previous all-time highs.

We think we'll touch that this year and then go higher in 2026.

And Ryan, you're here at the New York Stock Exchange and earlier this morning we did get CPI figures.

We saw that cooler than expected.

And when we take a step back, a lot of the volatility we've seen across the markets is because of uncertainty when it comes to trade.

And we've been keeping a close eye on what's happening, not in the nation, not just in the nation's capital, but also in London with those trade talks.

But here we are in midweek trade.

We've been hearing from the SEC as well as the House Financial Services and Ad committees.

So where are we in terms of regulation and what do you expect to see in the coming months?

Yeah, I think what's important to remember is the regulatory tailwinds for the crypto industry have never been stronger.

We have a number of very positive catalysts that have already happened.

We have many on.

Horizon.

You spoke about legislation that's currently making its way through Congress.

We have stablecoin legislation which everyone's very excited about.

There's many traditional companies, fintech companies, non-crypto companies that are excited about stablecoin, so it's not surprising to me that that's the first piece of major legislation making its way through Congress under the new administration.

But there's been a number of other catalysts on the regulatory front.

We expect to see market structure for crypto, more broadly speaking, also get packaged up with stable coin legislation later this year.

And what that will is innovation in the space to finally take place, and we'll finally see what this industry can do without a boot on its throat like it has had for the past 5 years.

And Ryan last week here at the New York Stock Exchange we had an IPO, and that was for stablecoin issuers Circle.

And for many here in the US they might not be as familiar with stablecoins, and I know that you talked to many stakeholders outside of the US in different parts of the world.

So what do you make of that IPO?

Yes, so Bitwise.

We spend every day speaking with investors all around the world.

We have a large team of distributors who talk to financial advisors, RAAs, other wealth managers who aren't as deep in the crypto space as many of us at Bitwise are.

And so what we do is educate them on crypto.

A lot of what we talk about these days are stablecoins.

Those are digital dollars that trade on blockchain rails.

Why people are so excited about stablecoins is because it's really the first killer application for crypto.

Today it's a market cap above $250 billion but 5.

Years ago it was pretty small and that just shows the exciting growth behind stablecoins.

Now Circle is the really only pure play stablecoin issuer that investors can get exposure to.

So the investors that we're speaking to who were so excited about the Circle IPO are really those that want exposure to the growing stablecoin boom.

They haven't been able to get it historically.

Coinbase has been a decent play because they are involved in the stablecoin space, but really Circle is the most pure play way to get exposure to stablecoins, and that's why people are so excited about the IPO.

And since we are here at the New York Stock Exchange, let's talk about institutional adoption.

Of course there's focus on what companies are doing in terms of putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet, but also there are a lot of filings, not just for ETFs or ETPs, but also confidential IPOs for other companies in the crypto space.

So give us your summary of what you expect this summer.

Yes, so going back to the predictions we made at the beginning. of the year.

We thought this was going to be the year of the crypto IPO.

As I mentioned, the regulatory environment and the macro environment for crypto really hasn't been positive for the past 4 years, and we finally saw that take a turn this year.

We've already seen 3 big IPOs this year.

We saw eToro, we saw Weibo, and of course we saw Circle.

We already know there's a number of companies that are filing to go public like Gemini and others, and so we expect there to be at least 3 more IPOs this year.

Wouldn't be surprised to see something like 5 IPOs this year because investors are excited about crypto companies and that was clear in the stablecoin or in the circle IPO and I think that'll be clear to companies that are on the precipice of going public that now is the time to take advantage of that.

And one last question for you, Ryan, before I let you go.

What does this mean for retail investors out there?

It's a really good question.

A lot of people think retail hasn't really entered the cycle yet, which is maybe confusing to some.

Folks, because you see the price near all-time highs, typically Bitcoin and crypto is a retail driven market, but with the launch of the Bitcoin ETFs last January, which is the most successful ETF launches of all time, Bitwise launched a Bitcoin ETF back in January 2024.

With the launch of those ETFs, we can finally see institutional investors getting broad-based exposure to Bitcoin and crypto more broadly.

And so a lot of what's happened so far has been driven by institutional investors.

We go around.

The country talking to financial advisors RIAs really what we learned is that they weren't allocated to Bitcoin before the ETFs, and now they are.

So retail is really yet to come into this cycle.

I think that bodes well for what's ahead in terms of price for Bitcoin, for Ethereum, and for other crypto assets, and mainly it's been institutional driven, but I'm sure the retail investors will catch up.

Well, Ryan, we will have to leave it there, but I look forward to speaking with you as the second half of 2025 progresses.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.