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Representations of cryptocurrency Bitcoin are seen in this illustration taken Nov. 25, 2024.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

After a blistering rally in bitcoin this year, crypto investors and industry executives told CNBC, they’re expecting the flagship cryptocurrency to hit new all-time highs in 2025.

In December, the world’s largest cryptocurrency broke the highly-anticipated $100,000, setting a record high price above that. That came after Donald Trump — who ran on a prominently pro-crypto policy platform — secured a historic election win in November.

Trump’s imminent return to the White House has boosted sentiment surrounding crypto with many industry executives and analysts expecting him to promote a more favorable regulatory environment for digital assets.

During his election campaign, Trump vowed to replace incumbent Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, who has taken aggressive legal actions against various crypto firms. Gensler agreed to step down from the SEC in 2025.

Trump has also indicated the U.S. could establish a strategic bitcoin reserve, by pooling funds obtained through seizures from criminal activity.

Also in 2024, bitcoin topped 2021’s price milestone of close to $70,000 after the SEC gave the green light to the first U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, or ETFs.

The ETF approval was widely viewed as a key moment for the cryptocurrency as it broadens its appeal to more mainstream investors.

The other key moment in 2024 was the halving, an event that takes places every four years and reduces the supply of bitcoin onto the market. This is typically very supportive for bitcoin’s price.

These developments helped move crypto past the narrative of an industry marred by scandal. That was the dominant theme of 2023 as two of crypto’s most prominent figures — FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and Binance’s Changpeng Zhao — both received prison sentences over criminal charges.

This year, bitcoin has more than doubled in price. The token is widely expected to see even more positive price momentum in 2025 — with several industry watchers predicting a doubling in value to $200,000.

CoinShares: $80,000-$150,000

James Butterfill, head of research for crypto-focused asset manager CoinShares, told CNBC that he sees prices of both $150,000 and $80,000 being on the cards for bitcoin in 2025.

Butterfill said in the long term it wouldn’t be “unreasonable” to expect bitcoin to become worth about 25% of gold’s market share — up from about 10% currently. That would equate to a price of $250,000.

But he doesn’t see that happening next year. “Timing of this is very difficult though and I don’t expect this to occur in 2025, but it will head in that direction,” Butterfill told CNBC via email.

He said that it is “likely” bitcoin could hit both $80,000 and $150,000 during the course of the year.  

Butterfill’s $80,000 call, if hit, would be a result of Trump’s promised pro-crypto policies not materializing.

“Disappointment surrounding Trump’s proposed crypto policies and doubts about their enactment could prompt a significant market correction,” Butterfill said.

Next year, Butterfill expects a favorable U.S. regulatory environment to be the primary driver supporting bitcoin prices.

In 2023, CoinShares forecast bitcoin at $80,000 in 2024.

Matrixport: $160,000

Matrixport, a crypto financial services firm, said bitcoin could hit $160,000 in 2025.

“This outlook is supported by sustained demand for Bitcoin ETFs, favorable macroeconomic trends, and an expanding global liquidity pool,” Markus Thielen, head of research at Matrixport told CNBC by email.

Bitcoin is known to be very volatile with the potential for corrections of between 70% and 80% from all-time highs. Thielen said the drawdowns in 2025 will be “less pronounced.”

“Bitcoin’s growing base of dip buyers and robust institutional support is expected to mitigate severe corrections,” Thielen said.

Matrixport predicted in 2023 that bitcoin would hit $125,000 in 2024.

Galaxy Digital: $185,000

Alex Thorn, head of research at crypto-focused asset manager Galaxy Digital, sees bitcoin crossing $150,000 in the first half of the year before reaching $185,000 in the fourth quarter.

“A combination of institutional, corporate, and nation state adoption will propel Bitcoin to new heights in 2025,” Thorn wrote in a research note shared with CNBC.

“Throughout its existence, Bitcoin has appreciated faster than all other asset classes, particularly the S&P 500 and gold, and that trend will continue in 2025. Bitcoin will also reach 20% of Gold’s market cap.”

Galaxy predicts U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded products will collectively cross $250 billion in assets under management in 2025.

The firm expects next year will also see five Nasdaq 100 companies and five nation states add bitcoin to their balance sheets or sovereign wealth funds.

Standard Chartered: $200,000

Geoffrey Kendrick of Standard Chartered is calling for a doubling in price for bitcoin. The bank’s head of digital assets research said in a note earlier this month that he expects bitcoin to hit $200,000 by the end of 2025.

Standard Chartered expects institutional flows into bitcoin to “continue at or above the 2024 pace” next year.

Bitcoin inflows from institutions have already reached 683,000 BTC since the start of the year, the bank noted, via U.S. spot ETFs that were largely purchased by MicroStrategy, a software firm and effective bitcoin proxy.

Kendrick said bitcoin purchases by MicroStrategy should “match or exceed its 2024 purchases” next year.

Pension funds should also start including more bitcoin in their portfolio via U.S. spot ETFs next year thanks to anticipated reforms from the incoming Trump administration to rules on so-called “TradFi” (traditional finance) firms making investments in digital currencies, he added.

“Even a small allocation of the USD 40tn in US retirement funds would significantly boost BTC prices,” Kendrick noted. “We would turn even more bullish if BTC saw more rapid uptake by US retirement funds, global sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), or a potential US strategic reserve fund.”

Carol Alexander: $200,000

Carol Alexander, professor of finance at the University of Sussex, sees $200,000 bitcoin as a possibility next year.

“I’m more bullish than ever for 2025,” Alexander told CNBC, adding bitcoin’s price “could easily reach $200,000 but there are no signs of volatility reducing.”

“By the summer I expect that it will be trading around $150,000 plus or minus $50,000.” Alexander clarified she doesn’t actually own any bitcoin herself.

Explaining her rationale, Alexander said that supportive U.S. regulation will boost bitcoin, however, a lack of regulation on crypto exchanges will continue to drive volatility due to highly-leveraged trades shooting prices up and down.

Alexander has a history of correctly calling bitcoin’s price. Last year, she told CNBC that bitcoin would hit $100,000 in 2024, which it did.

Bit Mining: $180,000 – $190,000

Youwei Yang, chief economist at Bit Mining, is predicting bitcoin will hit a price of between $180,000 to $190,000 in 2025 — but he’s also cautious of potential pullbacks in price.

“Bitcoin’s price in 2025 is likely to see both significant upward momentum and occasional sharp corrections,” Yang told CNBC. “In moments of market shocks, such as a major stock market downturn, bitcoin could temporarily drop to around $80,000. However, the overall trend is expected to remain bullish.”

Factors underlying an anticipated bitcoin rally in 2025 include lower interest rates, support from Trump, and increased institutional adoption.

Based on these dynamics, I predict Bitcoin could peak at $180,000 to $190,000 in 2025, aligning with historical cycle patterns and the growing mainstream adoption of crypto,” Yang said.

Nevertheless, Yang also expects next year to bring a number of “corrections” for bitcoins price, too.

Risks to the downside include U.S.-China tensions, global capital market disruptions, potential unexpected restrictive measures, and possible delays to the Fed rate-cutting cycle.

Last year, Yang forecast bitcoin would hit $75,000 in 2024.

Maple Finance: $180,000 – $200,000

Sid Powell, CEO and co-founder of centralized finance platform Maple Finance, is targeting a price of between $180,000 and $200,000 for bitcoin by the end of 2025.

“If you look historically when we saw gold ETFs come in, the inflows in the first year increased dramatically in subsequent years — and I think we can expect to see that with the bitcoin ETFs,” Powell told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”

“I think we will see higher inflows in subsequent years as bitcoin and indeed crypto becomes a core asset allocation for institutional asset managers,” Powell added.

Another factor Powell sees boosting bitcoin’s price is the anticipation of a bitcoin strategic reserve in the U.S.

Still, Maple Finance’s boss is mindful about market pullbacks. “I think you’ll of course see corrections — crypto remains a cyclical industry,” Powell told CNBC.

Bitcoin to hit $200,000 in 2025 thanks to Trump, crypto CEO says

In previous market cycles, bitcoin has risen wildly over the course of a few months before plummeting sharply in value.

Take the previous cycle, for example: in 2021, bitcoin rallied to nearly $70,000 as more and more investors piled in but the subsequent year, the token plunged to less than $17,000 on the back of a series of major crypto company bankruptcies.

However, Powell stressed that the 70% to 80% drawdowns bitcoin has seen in cycles past are unlikely in 2025 “because there is more of a buffer from those institutional inflows into the sector.”

Nexo: $250,000

Elitsa Taskova, chief product officer of crypto lending platform Nexo, is more bullish on bitcoin’s 2025 prospects than the general consensus.

“We see bitcoin more than doubling to $250,000 within a year,” Taskova told CNBC, adding that in the longer term — as in, over the next decade — she sees the entire crypto market capitalization surpassing that of gold.

“These projections align with ongoing trends and social markers: increasing recognition of Bitcoin as a reserve asset, more Bitcoin and crypto-related exchange-traded products (ETPs), and stronger adoption,” Nexo’s product chief said.

Supportive macroeconomic conditions, such as easing of monetary policy from the world’s major central banks, is likely to boost bitcoin, she added.

“The Federal Reserve’s balancing act – managing interest rates and inflation while avoiding stagnation – will be pivotal,” she said, cautioning that on the flipside, persistent inflation could also prompt a hawkish pivot.

“As the U.S. leads in crypto-related capital deployment, rate decisions and inflation dynamics will likely remain key influences on bitcoin’s price in 2025.”

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Super Micro ‘confident’ it will meet SEC deadline and reach $40 billion next fiscal year

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Super Micro 'confident' it will meet SEC deadline and reach  billion next fiscal year

Super Micro Computer CEO Charles Liang at the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, on June 5, 2024.

Annabelle Chih | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Super Micro Computer gave optimistic commentary for its fiscal 2026 and delayed annual report that overshadowed its slashed fiscal 2025 revenue guidance in Tuesday’s preliminary second-quarter results.

CEO Charles Liang said he is “confident” that the company will file its delayed annual report by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Feb. 25 deadline. The company also said it expects to hit $40 billion in revenue in fiscal 2026. Analysts polled by LSEG expected $30 billion in revenue for the period.

Shares of Super Micro were up as much as 10% in extended trading. 

For the near term, however, the company slashed its guidance for fiscal 2025 revenue. The company said it expects revenues to range between $23.5 billion to $25 billion for fiscal 2025. That was down from a previous forecast of $26 billion and $30 billion. Analysts polled by LSEG expected revenues of $24.9 billion for the year.

The company also said it expects to report net sales between $5.6 billion and $5.7 billion for the quarter that ended Dec. 31. Wall Street expected $5.89 billion, according to analysts polled by LSEG. The company also offered weaker-than-expected guidance for the current period.

Super Micro also said that it “continues to work diligently” to meet the deadline to file its delayed fiscal 2024 annual and fiscal 2025 first and second quarter reports as it faces the possibility of a Nasdaq delisting.

Shares of the company, known for its servers powered with Nvidia graphics processing chips, have been on a rollercoaster ride since Hindenburg Research revealed a short position in the stock and the company delayed releasing its annual report in August. The company’s auditor quit in October, citing governance issues, and Super Micro’s drop in share price spurred the possibility of a delisting from the Nasdaq exchange.

The rollercoaster continued into Tuesday’s release. The stock is up about 27% in 2025 but down from its March 2024 high.

Super Micro’s prime position in the artificial intelligence world catapulted the stock to new heights as ChatGPT’s 2022 debut set off a craze for AI infrastructure. Recent earnings reports and commentary suggest that megacaps Meta, Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft plan to invest as much as $320 billion into AI projects this year.

WATCH: Super Micro Computer cuts full year revenue guidance

Super Micro Computer cuts full year revenue guidance

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Tesla drops 6% after BYD partners with DeepSeek, Musk adds to DOGE distractions with OpenAI bid

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Tesla drops 6% after BYD partners with DeepSeek, Musk adds to DOGE distractions with OpenAI bid

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk joins U.S. President Donald Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office at the White House on Feb. 11, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

Tesla shares dropped 6% on Tuesday after Chinese rival BYD announced plans to develop autonomous vehicle technology with DeepSeek, and said it would offer its Autopilot-like system in nearly all of its new cars, adding to fears that Elon Musk’s company is falling behind the competition.

There’s also growing concerns surrounding Musk’s distractions outside of Tesla, after news surfaced that the world’s richest person is offering to lead an investor group in purchasing OpenAI, while he steps up his work with President Donald Trump’s White House.

Tesla’s stock price has slid for five straight days, falling close to 17% over that stretch to $328.50, and wiping out over $200 billion in market cap.

BYD, which has emerged as Tesla’s fiercest rival on the world stage, said on Monday that at least 21 of its new model vehicles will come equipped with its partially automated driving systems that include features for automatic parking and navigating on highways.

Tesla doesn’t yet offer a robotaxi and its EVs currently require a human driver to remain at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at any time. On Tesla’s earnings call last month, Musk said the company is aiming to launch “Unsupervised Full Self-Driving,” and a driverless rideshare service in Austin, Texas, in June. Alphabet’s Waymo already operates a robotaxi service in Austin as well as in parts of Phoenix, San Francisco.

“In our view, competition between Waymo, Tesla and a host of Chinese players is a key driver on the path to commercialization” of robotaxis,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note to clients after the BYD announcement. The firm recommends buying the stock and has a price target of $430.

Waymo said on Tuesday that it added 10 square miles of coverage to its robotaxi service in Los Angeles.

The rise of Phoenix as a major tech hub with chips, autonomous cars and drones

In a report on Tuesday, Oppenheimer analysts wrote that the “autonomy competition may limit [Tesla] profitability.” Even if Tesla meets its June 2025 timeline for driverless cars in Texas, the company is “one of several autonomous technology providers, suggesting competition on price and performance,” they wrote.

In addition to running Tesla, Musk is CEO of SpaceX, owns social media company X and is head of artificial intelligence startup xAI. He’s also spending significant time these days in Washington, D.C., running the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) as a special government employee, aiming to slash federal spending, personnel, regulations and even entire agencies.

Many projects, many distractions

Investors already concerned about Musk’s hefty commitments beyond his trillion-dollar EV company have more reason for trepidation after events that unfolded on Monday. Musk’s attorney, Marc Toberoff, confirmed to CNBC that Musk was leading a consortium of investors in a $97.4 billion bid for OpenAI.

Musk was among the founders of OpenAI in 2015, when the AI startup was created as a nonprofit research lab. Musk sought to have Tesla acquire OpenAI, and he later departed the organization’s board.

OpenAI has since commercialized numerous products, most notably ChatGPT. Co-founder and CEO Sam Altman is seeking to restructure OpenAI as a for-profit entity. Musk has sued OpenAI to prevent that transition, and started xAI as a direct competitor.

The Oppenheimer analysts wrote that, “While [Tesla] has shifted focus to being a Physical AI play, we view Elon Musk’s bid for Open AI as a distraction from [Tesla’s] challenges.”

Altman told employees in a memo on Tuesday that OpenAI’s board hasn’t received an official offer from Musk and reminded staffers that “Elon has a history of making claims that don’t hold up.” 

Later on Tuesday, Toberoff said in a statement that he emailed the bid for OpenAI on behalf of the Musk-led consortium a day earlier to OpenAI’s outside counsel William Savitt and Sarah Eddy “for transmission to their client.” Toberoff said the bid was “in the form of a detailed four-page letter” and was addressed to OpenAI’s board.

“Whether Sam Altman chose to provide or withhold this from OpenAI’s other Board members is outside of our control,” he wrote.

Oppenheimer’s analysts also highlighted the added risks associated with Musk’s extensive work with the Trump administration.

While Musk’s behavior “has fans in certain circles,” his public life “risks alienating consumers and employees as the Trump administration tests the limits of its power,” they wrote. For example, they referenced recent vehicle registration data that showed steep year-over-year declines in California and across several European markets.

Tesla and Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

WATCH: Tesla still on track

Tesla is still on track and we will add exposure when it's near $300 per share: KKM's Jeff Kilburg

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Amazon opens beauty and personal care store in Italy as part of brick-and-mortar expansion

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Amazon opens beauty and personal care store in Italy as part of brick-and-mortar expansion

Amazon is opening a beauty and health products store in Milan, Italy, marking the company’s latest brick-and-mortar experiment.

The store is located in the city center of Milan, and features a range of beauty and personal care items, as well as nonprescription drugs, Amazon said in a blog post. The first store, which is called Amazon Parafarmacia & Beauty, will open its doors to the public on Wednesday.

The store will be stocked with products from beauty and skin-care brands including La Roche-Posay, Eucerin and Vichy. There are also “Derma-bars,” where shoppers can get a “complimentary digital skin analysis” of their skin type and condition, and receive product recommendations.

Amazon says the store includes a section staffed by on-site pharmacists where shoppers can purchase “non-prescription, over-the-counter medications.”

By launching its first “parapharmacy,” the e-commerce giant is hoping to parlay its online success in the beauty and personal care category into sales in the physical world. Beauty and personal care items, which include everything from hairspray and cosmetics to deodorants and Q-tips, make up one of the fastest-growing verticals on Amazon.

The company began offering health and beauty products in 2000, but its selection was initially limited to most mass-market brands. It has since added more luxury brands such as Estée Lauder and La Mer.

The new store format also marks Amazon’s latest experiment in physical retail. The company opened and then shuttered all of its bookstores, pop-up shops, four-star stores and apparel stores. It has also shrunk its footprint of Amazon Go convenience stores, shutting down a storefront in Woodland Hills, California, last month. In grocery, Amazon’s portfolio includes Whole Foods supermarkets and its own chain of Fresh stores.

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