Bitcoin could hit $250,000 as early as this year with technology giants such as Microsoft and Apple entering the cryptocurrency space, industry veteran and founder of the Cardano blockchain Charles Hoskinson told CNBC.
Crypto markets have been hammered amid a sell-off of risk assets stoked by U.S. President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” on countries across the world. Bitcoin traded below the $77,000 mark on over the last week, but on Wednesday spiked above $82,000 as Trump dropped levies to 10% for 90 days for most countries to allow for trade negotiations.
Sill, bitcoin has fallen far from its more than $100,000 record high hit in January — even as industry players remain bullish on the cryptocurrency.
Hoskinson, who has been in the crypto industry for more than a decade and helped co-found the Ethereum blockchain, said he believes bitcoin will reach $250,000 “by the end of this year or next year.”
“What will happen is that the tariff stuff will be a dud, and that people will realize that the world is willing to negotiate, and it’s really just U.S. versus China. And a lot of people will side with us. Some people side with China,” Hoskinson told CNBC during a recording of the “Beyond The Valley” podcast on Tuesday.
“The markets will stabilize a little bit, and they’ll get used to the new normal, and then the Fed[eral Reserve] will lower interest rates, and then you’ll have a lot of fast, cheap money, and then it’ll pour into crypto.”
Hoskinson, who is also the founder of Input Output, or IOHK, made his comments before Trump’s temporary pause on full-blown reciprocal tariffs.
Hoskinson highlighted a number of reasons that could drive bitcoin to that price.
First, he pointed to there currently being more users of cryptocurrencies. Owners of cryptocurrencies rose 13% year-on-year in 2024 to 659 million people, according to Crypto.com.
Secondly, Hoskinson said that the geopolitical situation is moving from a “rules-based international order to a great powers conflict.”
“If Russia wants to invade Ukraine, it invades Ukraine. If China wants to invade Taiwan, it’s going to do that. So treaties don’t really work so well, and global business doesn’t really work so well there. So your only option for globalization is crypto,” Hoskinson said.
Third, Hoskinson said that there will be new stablecoin legislation and the Digital Asset Market Structure and Investor Protection Actwill also likely get passed, which will help the crypto market. The law aims to address the regulatory treatment of various digital assets. Both bills are currently working their way through the U.S. legislative process.
Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency pegged to a fiat currency but backed with real-world assets.
The stablecoin bill in particular could lead the “Magnificent 7” companies to begin adopting the assets too, according to Hoskinson. The Magnificent 7 is a group of seven mega-cap technology stocks including Apple, Microsoft and Amazon. Stablecoins could be used by these technology giants to pay workers in different countries or even facilitate small transactions on their platforms which ordinarily would be expensive on existing payments rail, Hoskinson said. Stablecoins can be sent quickly from one wallet to another across the world.
Hoskinson said the crypto market will be “reignited” by these factors, in particular the passing of the regulation and the adoption of stablecoins by the Magnificent 7.
“[The crypto market] will stall for probably the next three to five months, and then you’ll have a huge wave of speculative interest come, probably [in] August or September, into the markets, and that’ll carry through probably another six to 12 month,” Hoskinson said.
– The conversation with Charles Hoskinson will be published in full as an episode of CNBC’s Beyond The Valley podcast soon.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman walks on the day of a meeting of the White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Education in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 4, 2025.
Brian Snyder | Reuters
OpenAI on Tuesday announced it will launch a dedicated ChatGPT experience with parental controls for users under 18 years old as the artificial intelligence company works to enhance safety protections for teenagers.
When OpenAI identifies that a user is a minor, they will automatically be directed to an age-appropriate ChatGPT experience that blocks graphic and sexual content and can involve law enforcement in rare cases of acute distress, the company said.
OpenAI is also developing a technology to better predict a user’s age, but ChatGPT will default to the under-18 experience if there is uncertainty or incomplete information.
The startup’s safety updates come after the Federal Trade Commission recently launched an inquiry into several tech companies, including OpenAI, over how AI chatbots like ChatGPT potentially negatively affect children and teenagers.
The agency said it wants to understand what steps these companies have taken to “evaluate the safety of these chatbots when acting as companions,” according to a release.
OpenAI also shared how ChatGPT will handle “sensitive situations” last month after a lawsuit from a family blamed the chatbot for their teenage son’s death by suicide.
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“We prioritize safety ahead of privacy and freedom for teens; this is a new and powerful technology, and we believe minors need significant protection,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.
In August, OpenAI said it would release parental controls to help them understand and shape how their teens are using ChatGPT. OpenAI shared more details about those parental controls on Tuesday, and it said they will be available at the end of the month.
The company’s upcoming controls will allow parents to link their ChatGPT account with their teen’s via email, set blackout hours for when their teen can’t use the chatbot, manage which features to disable, guide how the chatbot responds and receive notifications if the teen is in acute distress.
ChatGPT is intended for users who are ages 13 and up, OpenAI said.
“These are difficult decisions, but after talking with experts, this is what we think is best and want to be transparent in our intentions,” Altman wrote.
If you are having suicidal thoughts or are in distress, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor
A Youtube podcast microphone is seen at the Variety Podcasting Brunch Presented By YouTube at Austin Proper Hotel in Austin, Texas, on March 8, 2025.
Mat Hayward | Variety | Getty Images
YouTube said on Tuesday it has paid out over $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies since 2021.
The surge has been fueled in part by growing viewership on connected TVs. The number of channels making more than $100,000 from TV screens jumped 45% year over year, the company said.
YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich praised the power of creators to “shape culture and entertainment in ways we never thought possible” in a release announcing the benchmark and a series of other new features.
The milestone comes as the Google-owned platform marks its 20th year and pushes to cement itself as one of the world’s most lucrative media businesses.
YouTube unveiled the updated payout figure and a slate of new creator tools at its annual Made on YouTube event in New York City.
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The company announced new artificial intelligence tools for YouTube Shorts, its short-form vertical video product. Creators will be able to turn raw footage into edited clips with AI and can add music, transitions and voiceover.
New features also include the ability to turn dialogue from eligible videos into a song to be used in the Short.
Google’s latest AI video generator, Veo 3, will also be integrated into Shorts, YouTube said.
Google uses a subset of YouTube videos to train Veo 3, to the surprise of many YouTube creators, CNBC reported in June.
YouTube turned 20 years old in April and announced it hosted over 20 billion videos on the platform, including music, Shorts, podcasts and more.
Last year, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said the company had paid $70 billion to creators between 2021 and 2024.
The framework agreement for the social media platform TikTok will include new investors as well as existing investors in the platform’s Chinese parent company ByteDance, sources told CNBC’s David Faber.
The deal is expected to close in the next 30 to 45 days, according to the sources, who asked not to be named because the details of the negotiations are confidential. As part of the agreement, Oracle will keep its cloud deal with the platform, the people said.
“Where this thing is capitalized and how large it is remains to be seen,” Faber said during CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Tuesday. “‘I’m hearing it’s actually going to be relatively small in terms of the actual size of the checks that are written for the entity itself, and it will not be something that is going to go public at some point.”
The White House, TikTok and Oracle did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
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TikTok’s future in the U.S. has been uncertain since 2024, when Congress passed a bill that would ban the platform unless its Chinese owner, ByteDance, divested from it. Lawmakers had grown concerned that the Chinese government could access sensitive data from American users or manipulate content on the platform.
Deal talks have dragged, with President Donald Trumpextending the deadline three times since taking office in January.
The new details about the deal come after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that the U.S. and China have reached a “framework” deal for TikTok.
Bessent said Tuesday that commercial terms had been in place since March or April, but the Chinese put it on hold after Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff blitz.
Oracle has been floated as a potential investor or buyer of TikTok for months.
Reuters reported in January that the White House picked Oracle to handle TikTok’s data collection and software updates as part of a deal.
Trump has previously said he’d be open to Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison buying TikTok in the U.S.