As of June 2025, Bitcoin remains the leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization, with a value of $2.13 trillion — comparable to the GDP of countries such as Canada and Italy. The increase in value is occurring against the backdrop of growing interest from institutional investors and the active development of the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector.

New historical high and market capitalization

In late May 2025, Bitcoin reached a new all-time high of $112,000. Its market capitalization approached $2.2 trillion, placing BTC in the top 10 most significant global assets, nearly catching up to Google's stock value. Over the past year, Bitcoin's capitalization has grown by 59%, and its market dominance has increased from 38.3% to 63%.

Bitcoin surpasses gold in number of holders

According to River's data, around 50 million Americans own Bitcoin, which accounts for 15% of the U.S. population — compared to 37 million gold holders.

A survey by Nakamoto found that one in four of 3,300 respondents is considering moving some of their gold assets into BTC. Many are willing to convert up to 39% of their capital into cryptocurrency.

Experts, including Michael Saylor (MicroStrategy) and Caitlin Long, emphasize that Bitcoin's dominance over gold is not just a short-term trend but a profound shift in the way capital storage is viewed.

Bitcoin conquers the DeFi market

Starting in mid-2024, decentralized protocols based on BTC began to grow rapidly. By June 2025, the Bitcoin ecosystem had entered the top three in terms of Total Value Locked (TVL), surpassing BNB Smart Chain, Tron, and Base. The total TVL exceeded $6.5 billion, thanks to projects like Babylon, Lombard Finance, and Solv Protocol. Babylon alone accumulated $5.1 billion in liquidity.

The growth over a year and a half is more than 21 times (from $304 million). This gave rise to a new direction — Bitcoin DeFi (BTCFi), which aims to transform BTC from "digital gold" into a fully fledged DeFi asset. Key functions of BTCFi include:

• Staking and restaking
• Lending
• Trading via atomic swaps
• Liquidity mining and farming

Analysts consider BTCFi an undervalued area with immense potential, particularly given the untapped opportunities of L2 solutions and the "sleeping" liquidity.

Quantum threats: hypothesis or real risk?

Researchers from Chaincode Labs warn that the emergence of quantum computers capable of breaking cryptographic algorithms (so-called CRQCs — cryptographically relevant quantum computers) could pose a serious threat to Bitcoin's security. According to their estimates, between 20% and 50% of all existing BTC could potentially be vulnerable to this type of attack.

A survey by the Global Risk Institute revealed that approximately one-third of the 32 surveyed experts believe such quantum devices could emerge within the next decade. The primary danger lies in Shor's algorithm, which enables a quantum computer to compute a private key from a public one in literally hours. For classical machines, this task would take trillions of years.

Chaincode Labs emphasizes that Bitcoin has a window of approximately seven years to develop and implement a quantum attack-resistant architecture.

This work is already underway. Proposed solutions include protocol updates to enhance network resilience, modernizing digital signatures, and improving throughput.

Internal disputes in the community: the "83-byte conflict"

In the spring of 2025, a significant conflict arose within the Bitcoin community over a proposal to remove the 83-byte data storage limit in the OP_RETURN opcode. 

Bitcoin Core wallet developers argued that the limit was hindering innovation and slowing down the development of Layer 2 (L2) solutions. Opponents were concerned about network congestion and the loss of Bitcoin's identity as "digital gold."

After heated debates, the team decided to maintain the limit to preserve the integrity and stability of the network.