As of July 2025, Bitcoin is among the ten most significant assets in the world by market capitalisation. Its total value exceeds $2.4 trillion, and the price of a single coin is $120,000. By market cap, Bitcoin has already surpassed silver and come close to Google’s shares.
The first cryptocurrency reached this scale in just 16 years since its creation. No other financial asset in history has demonstrated such rapid growth over a comparable period.
From experiment to institutional recognition
The emergence of Bitcoin became the starting point for the formation of a decentralised economy, in which the key role is assigned not to banks, but to autonomous digital protocols.
Despite its age, Bitcoin continues to hold a leading position in the market, even accounting for its technological limitations. For example, the mining mechanism results in high energy consumption—comparable to that of countries such as Ireland and Argentina. In addition, the Bitcoin network lags behind newer blockchains in transaction processing speed, functionality, and fee size. Ethereum, XRP Ledger, Solana, Cardano, and other modern networks offer more flexible and scalable solutions.
Nevertheless, Bitcoin’s consensus algorithm—Proof-of-Work—remains one of the most reliable in the industry. Interfering with the operation of the Bitcoin network requires enormous computing resources, making attacks on the Bitcoin blockchain economically impractical.
Interest in Bitcoin from significant capital emerged quite early. As early as 2013, the venture fund Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) began investing in blockchain projects. In 2020, MicroStrategy, led by Michael Saylor, made Bitcoin part of its corporate financial strategy, and in 2021, Tesla, led by Elon Musk, followed suit.
Later, the world’s largest financial institutions—BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs—showed interest in the first cryptocurrency. A key stage of institutionalisation was the launch of Bitcoin ETFs* in 2024, which finally закрепили Bitcoin’s status as the primary cryptoasset.
* Bitcoin ETF is an exchange-traded investment fund whose shares are traded on traditional stock exchanges and reflect the price of Bitcoin. Such an instrument allows investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin without directly owning the cryptocurrency, storing digital keys, or using crypto exchanges.
Bitcoin as an alternative to the banking system
In 2024, Bitcoin surpassed Visa and Mastercard in daily transaction volume, which reached $45 million. This occurred amid the launch of Bitcoin ETFs and a sharp increase in trading activity—on certain days, the volume of Bitcoin transactions exceeded $100 billion.
Several factors explain the high interest in Bitcoin from retail and institutional investors:
- Censorship resistance — transactions cannot be blocked or reversed.
- No limits — Bitcoin transfers are available without geographic or financial restrictions.
- Relative confidentiality — Bitcoin transactions do not require the disclosure of personal data.
- Limited issuance, which makes Bitcoin a deflationary asset*.
* A deflationary asset is an asset with a predetermined limited or decreasing supply, where the total number of units cannot be arbitrarily increased. This model reduces inflationary pressure and contributes to the growth of the asset’s value as demand increases.
Against the backdrop of traditional banking restrictions—limits, long processing times, high transfer fees, strict verification, and the risk of account freezes—Bitcoin is perceived as a more flexible and independent financial alternative.
Why Bitcoin is called “digital gold”
Bitcoin earned the “digital gold” moniker due to its limited supply, reliability, and ease of use.
First, its issuance is strictly limited to no more than 21 million coins. This makes Bitcoin a scarce asset comparable to gold, whose reserves are also finite. At the same time, Bitcoin’s software code completely excludes the possibility of additional issuance.
Second, Bitcoin significantly surpasses gold in terms of storage and transfer convenience. As Michael Saylor emphasises, it can be easily divided, stored, and moved without physical logistics—Bitcoin transfers take minutes, regardless of distance.
The third factor is institutional recognition. According to Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Invest, fixed supply and digital nature have made Bitcoin attractive to investors at all levels. Unlike gold, it is organically integrated into the modern financial infrastructure.
An additional boost was provided by the launch of Bitcoin ETFs in the United States, which ensured regulated and transparent access to Bitcoin investments for participants in the traditional market.
Economist Lyn Alden notes that Bitcoin combines the scarcity of gold with the flexibility of digital technologies. It not only preserves value but also performs the function of a global payment instrument—something physical gold cannot provide.
Thus, Bitcoin does not copy the properties of gold; instead, it rethinks them, offering a new way to preserve capital in the digital era.
Why Bitcoin is so expensive and whether it will retain leadership
Bitcoin has proven its effectiveness as a hedge against inflation due to long-term price growth. Over the past 10 years, its value has increased more than 450 times, while gold has risen only 1.7 times over the same period.
Such growth has attracted an increasing number of institutional investors to the market. As of July 2025, public companies hold approximately $92.5 billion in Bitcoin—about 850,000 BTC, which accounts for more than 4% of the current circulating supply.
According to analysts’ estimates, by 2025, the number of public companies holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets will exceed 150, and total reserves will reach 1 million BTC.
Growing interest is also observed among retail investors. According to Fidelity Digital Assets, the number of Bitcoin wallets with balances over $1,000 has nearly doubled over the past two years, reaching 10.6 million.
Today, Bitcoin accounts for more than 60% of the total cryptocurrency market capitalisation. Most experts believe that Bitcoin dominance will continue to strengthen. Additional confirmation of this trend is the growing number of countries considering Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset—among them the United States, Japan, Germany, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Brazil, and Poland.