Bitcoin was the best investment of 2024, but not without its usual volatility
Bitcoin was far and away the best-performing asset class in 2024 as new exchange-traded funds ushered in more widespread adoption and hopes for deregulation under a new presidential administration lifted digital assets to record levels.
But owning cryptocurrency also came with its usual unpredictability and dizzying swings, as this month’s trading clearly illustrates. Bitcoin has more than doubled in price since starting the year in the $40,000 range, with it last trading near $95,500. Ether has scored a nearly 50% year-to-date gain, and last traded at around the $3,400 level.
Bitcoin and ether since the start of 2024
The most prosperous stretch of the year occurred in the weeks following the U.S. presidential election. By mid-December, the cryptocurrency had rocketed above $108,000 for the first time, fueled by optimism that President-elect Donald Trump‘s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris would open the door for greater regulatory clarity and send new money rushing into the sector.
Since then, however, prices have eased. Bitcoin is negative for the month, hurt by the expectation that the Federal Reserve’s rate cuts will roll out at a slower-than-anticipated pace. The market has also faced a stretch of apparent profit-taking and choppiness into the end of the year.
The year began with a strong boost of confidence from the introduction in January of new ETFs that hold the cryptocurrency. The funds, which are pitched by asset managers as a simpler way for investors to access bitcoin, have pulled in tens of billions of dollars of cash this year. The iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) now has more than $50 billion in assets.
Microstrategy shares this year
Ether ETFs joined the excitement in July. The demand for those funds has not been as strong as for their bitcoin counterparts, but the category has still attracted more than $2 billion in net inflows in less than six months, according to FactSet.
Strong tail winds for cryptocurrencies also lifted connected stocks to record levels. Bitcoin proxy Microstrategy has surged 388% since the start of the year, while Coinbase and Robinhood have rallied about 47% and 200%, respectively. MicroStrategy shares have surged since mid-December as the company was added into the Nasdaq 100 index.
Some mining stocks, however, haven’t performed as well, with Mara Holdings and Riot Platforms on track for double-digit year-to-date losses. The drop in mining stocks may be a direct result of this year’s bitcoin halving, which reduced the block rewards. Along with transaction fees, this is one of the most significant ways miners make money.
— CNBC’s Jesse Pound contributed reporting.
Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., during the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025.
Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images
In the weeks leading up to Nvidia’s third-quarter earnings report, investors debated whether the markets were in an AI bubble, fretting over the massive sums being committed to building data centers and whether they could provide a long-term return on investment.
During Wednesday’s earnings call with analysts, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang began his comments by rejecting that premise.
“There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,” Huang said. “From our vantage point we see something very different.”
In many respects, Huang’s remarks are to be expected. He’s leading the company at the heart of the artificial intelligence boom, and has built its market cap to $4.5 trillion because of soaring demand for Nvidia’s graphics processing units.
Huang’s smackdown of bubble talk matters because Nvidia counts every major cloud provider — Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle — as a customer. Most of the major AI model developers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and Meta, are also big buyers of Nvidia GPUs.
Huang has deep visibility into the market, and on the call he offered a three-pronged argument for why we’re not in a bubble.
First, he said that areas like data processing, ad recommendations, search systems, and engineering, are turning to GPUs because they need the AI. That means older computing infrastructure based around the central processor will transition to new systems running on Nvidia’s chips.
Second, Huang said, AI isn’t just being integrated into current applications, but it will enable entirely new ones.
Finally, according to Huang, “agentic AI,” or applications that can run without significant input from the user, will be able to reason and plan, and will require even more computing power.
In making the case of Nvidia, Huang said it’s the only company that can address the three use cases.
“As you consider infrastructure investments, consider these three fundamental dynamics,” Huang said. “Each will contribute to infrastructure growth in the coming years.”
Reversing the slide
In its earnings release, Nvidia reported revenue and profit that sailed past estimates and issued better-than-expected guidance. Last month, Huang provided a $500 billion forecast for sales of the company’s AI chips over calendar 2025 and 2026.
The company said on Wednesday that its order backlog didn’t even include a few recent deals, like an agreement with Anthropic that was announced this week or the expansion of a deal with Saudi Arabia.
“The number will grow,” CFO Colette Kress said on the call, saying the company was on track to hit the forecast.
Prior to Wednesday’s results, Nvidia shares were down about 8% this month. Other stocks tied to the AI have gotten hit even harder, with CoreWeave plunging 44% in November, Oracle dropping 14% and Palantir falling 17%.
Some of the worry on Wall Street has been tied to the debt that certain companies have used to finance their infrastructure buildouts.
“Our customers’ financing is up to them,” Huang said.
Specific to Nvidia, investors have raised concerns in recent weeks about how much of the company’s sales were going to a small number of hyperscalers.
Last month, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet all lifted their forecasts for capital expenditures due to their AI buildouts, and now collectively expect to spend more than $380 billion this year.
Huang said that even without a new business model, Nvidia’s chips boost hyperscaler revenue, because they power recommendation systems for short videos, books, and ads.
People will soon start appreciating what’s happening underneath the surface of the AI boom, Huang said, versus “the simplistic view of what’s happening to capex and investment.”
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