Bitcoin passes $120k milestone as US Congress readies for 'crypto week'
85 comments
·July 14, 2025TrackerFF
whatsupdog
> Back then, when things were starting out, the idea was to bank the unbanked, make money transfer seamless, cheap, and fast, and basically break up actors like PayPal et. al.
Yes, that was before Gregory Maxwell, Luke-jr, Adam Back et. Al hijacked the project with the help from "theymos". They derailed the whole project by doubling down on keeping the block size at 1mb, with the ulterior motive of providing their own private centralized layer 2 service (lightning) as a solution for scaling.
This was the biggest setback for the actual grassroots adoption of Bitcoin. They openly censured and banned any opposing opinions and alienated a lot of crypto enthusiasts including myself. I'll never forgive them for what they did.
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DSingularity
It’s the algorithmically enforced scarcity coupled with “to the moon” culture. That’s all that’s going on. If it keeps going up I won’t be surprised. If it dumps down I won’t be surprised.
No floor and no ceiling — only a gambler would keep his net worth tied up to crypto. You did the right thing once you crossed a threshold to significantly change your financial status. Any other decision would have put yourself in a position vulnerable to outcomes of extreme regret.
throwaway48476
The valuation is predicated on a market existing to provide exit liquidity. But where is that going to come from?
vachina
From new gamblers. There is some truth when BTC maxis say they’re still early.
polivier
I started looking into bitcoin when it was at around $3, but never made a move to buy any. I have some regrets, but when I stop to think about it, I would clearly have sold everything when it reached $10 or something. So I haven't passed up the opportunity to make millions, I only passed up the opportunity to make a couple hundred bucks.
TrackerFF
When I was active, most people I knew (that were active in crypto) sold most of their stuff prior to 2015-2017.
It was almost a rite of passage to make your exit-post once you reached your goal, or didn’t want the risk/stress. For most that included things like purchasing a home, car, paying off student loans, retiring your parents.
Most of the people I know that became rich off crypto, were those that went all in around 16/17/18. And many of those did buy/sell their way up. Or got lucky with meme coins etc.
I don’t know anyone that bought 1000 BTC in the very early days, and just held onto them with diamond hands. Nor do I know anyone that DCA’ed from 2012 up until today.
(Not that they don’t exist, probably a bunch of them)
sharperguy
There are very few unbanked people in western countries, and so its natural that it would be unusual to come across those use cases there. There are in fact services that will act as a glue between the bitcoin ecosystem and "fiat", such as bitrefill which allows you to buy gift cards for many different stores using bitcoin. However for most people and every day payments there isn't really a compelling reason to try to use bitcoin. In fact, if you have both bitcoin and national currency, with rising prices it makes more sense to hold onto the bitcoin and spend the national currency.
There certainly have been some countries where stablecoins have gained in popularity. They are a little easier to use than bitcoin and prices are more stable. It tends to be in places where governments are not heavily enforcing against their use, while at the same time the local currency has been unstable, such as in Argentina.
The downside with stablecoins is that they rely on trusted entities to maintain the peg, whereas bitcoin enforces its own scarcity and trades at its own value.
I don't really think its responsible to go around telling people that bitcoin will gain in value, but there are certainly many people who believe this to be the case, and the pool is growing. I think the key value for this community is that we have something which is easier to transfer globally than a hard asset like gold, while being independent from particular jurisdictions such as the US, EU or China.
And yes I see the lack of awareness in bitcoin community about the extent to which it has become the defacto standard for internet scammers, who trick vulnerable people into depositing their life savings into a bitcoin ATM using various methods. You can see many examples of this on kitboga's youtube channel. At least, he has been able to work with some bitcoin exchanges to fight back against this in a small way.
pjc50
> There certainly have been some countries where stablecoins have gained in popularity. They are a little easier to use than bitcoin and prices are more stable. It tends to be in places where governments are not heavily enforcing against their use, while at the same time the local currency has been unstable, such as in Argentina.
Yes, I think this really is a use case even if it's not one that flatters the prejudices of American bitcoiners. People from non-US countries want access to shadow-dollars, yet the US has built a large and intrusive industry based on keeping them out.
tzs
> There are very few unbanked people in western countries, and so its natural that it would be unusual to come across those use cases there.
In the US it is 6% of adults [1] overall. It is 23% of adults with family incomes below $25k. It's 14% for Black adults and 11% for Hispanic adults.
[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2024-economic-we...
101008
Are you from Argentina? Crypto is used for the same reasons as in every other country. If someone gets paid their salary in crypto is not because the peso is weak, is simply to be avoid paying taxes for being outside the system.
RS-232
Thanks for sharing your story. I too frequently think back on "what could have been." Back in 2013, I bought and sold a bitcoin, and every time I see a crypto headline I remember my mistake of spending it.
Maybe we should not be so hard on ourselves. Afterall, we still have a heartbeat. Did we truly make a mistake, or did we narrowly avoid getting consumed by avarice?
tzs
It wasn't a mistake. In 2013, as in every year, there were plenty of speculative things you could have invested in without having any reasonable way of knowing if they would turn out to make a lot or lose a lot.
There are probably 75 year olds today regretting that they didn't spend an extra $0.12 in 1962 when they were at the comic book store to pick up an extra copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 to preserve. That was the first appearance of Spider Man and and a copy of that in near NM+ condition ("A very well-preserved collectible with several minor manufacturing or handling defects") sold at auction in 2021 for $3.6 million.
I did buy an extra copy of X-Men #137 (the death of Jean Grey) for $0.75 in 1980 and promptly bagged it. If I could actually find it and it actually is still in mint condition it might sell for around $400. From $0.75 then to $400 now is 15% a year growth.
But that $0.75 would have been better invested in Apple stock. That would be around $1600 now which is 18% a year growth. But in 1980 there were other exciting tech companies to invest in and most did not grow like Apple, so it is pointless to consider not buying Apple stock instead of X-Men #137 a mistake.
Nor would it have been a mistake to just put the money in an S&P 500 index fund. That would only have earned about 11% a year over the subsequent 45 years.
sweezyjeezy
BTC is a (roughly) net-zero enterprise, every dollar taken out of the system comes from someone else putting a dollar in. Sure, if you had a crystal ball you could have made millions, but if everyone else ALSO had that same crystal ball you couldn't, since traders are mostly just shuffling money between themselves anyway.
There's no point kicking yourself over not foreseeing a far-fetched future scenario, if you were at a casino and a roulette spin landed on 12 - would you feel bad for not betting on that happening, despite having no good information it would land on that?
TrackerFF
I take comfort in thinking that it wasn’t for early buyers/sellers, there wouldn’t really have been any traction.
And crypto today is extremely accessible and safe, compared to 10+ years ago. The first crypto I bought, was by paying some random seller on a forum with PayPal, and hoping that the deal was legit.
bspammer
The best antidote to this kind of thinking is to realise you would have been tempted to sell so may times over the last decade, that there's close to zero chance that you'd still be holding it today.
To make a lot of money with bitcoin you either need to have been a true believer for a ridiculously long period of time, or find the password to an old wallet you'd forgotten about.
lottin
It was NOT a mistake. Do you consider not buying the winning lottery ticket a mistake? No. You don't know which ticket is going to win in advance, and buying a random ticket is ill-advised because the odds are against it being the winning one.
agumonkey
Trading is soulless, yet it gives some deep philosophical lessons about regrets, future... You never know if a positive outcome is too early or too late. So you just take what you got and move on.
About crypto early narrative.. there's some lesson here, nothing means nothing, things get twisted, blended, rebranded .. they wanted to replace the world, they're not part of it, as yet another asset. Sad, cynical but nothing surprising IMO.
That said there might be an offspring of all the distributed blockchain VMS that will emerge a new layer replacing the economic and information exchange in the future (I still believe this a bit).
potatoproduct
I followed around the same time and came to the same conclusions, except I didn't buy or mine any because I 1) hugely underestimated how much that illegal activity was worth. 2) didn't appreciate the potential scale of the pump n dump
AbstractH24
Saying an investment will at some point drop in value is not hard, saying exactly when and how high it’ll get first is.
-my biggest learning from the first half of the 2020s
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ArtTimeInvestor
Reading through the comments here, it seems that most people on HN vastly underestimate the significance of the "store of value" use case.
It is a core aspect of human life.
And there is no other asset that does that with as little inflation and risk as Bitcoin. That seems counterintuitive because Bitcoin is portrayed as a very risky asset. Which it is in the short term. But long term, fiat, gold, equity, and real estate all have an even worse inflation and risk profile.
TrackerFF
I believe the risk with crypto lies in the regulatory aspect.
Crypto is polarized, as far as politics goes. Especially if we look past the US. When a pro-crypto government rules, risk goes down. And opposite when the skeptics take charge.
FabHK
Sorry, one cannot make statements about crypto "long term" yet.
Nobody should hold large amounts of fiat long term. That's what shares and bonds are for, which incidentally also support productive enterprises (unlike crypto).
Long term, equity, debt, gold have pretty good inflation and risk profiles. Real rates have overwhelmingly been positive, so government bonds are a fairly good store of value.
ArtTimeInvestor
Real rates have overwhelmingly been positive
When I look through my old bills, what I paid for apartments, hotels, coffee it seems the real inflation was around 8% over the last 20 years. For hotels for example, it is easy to look up the same hotel today and see how prices changed.
And bonds paid less than 4%.
Can you give an example of something that increased less than 4% in price annually?
pcdoodle
Shhhh. they like the hamster wheel...
webdevver
i actually used to like the hamster wheel. until i learned how much money people were making on crypto. now i dont like the hamster wheel...
crypto is a legit information hazard that threatens to completely demoralize the actually productive hamsters in the economy. if everyone knew they could've made more money in a year than their entire career, they'd give up working forever.
TrackerFF
You could have invested in any big tech company, and arrived in the same place.
It puzzles me how people see 10x-100x’ing their money on crypto as gods gift to humanity and a stroke of brilliance, but making the same amount by investing in NVDA seem like just another lucky stock pick.
If anything, there will always be the next FAANG startup, that will make one fabulously rich.
throw0101b
> And there is no other asset that does that with as little inflation and risk as Bitcoin.
LOL. Having 30% drops is not 'little risk':
* https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/19/bitcoin-btc-price-plunges-bu...
Or 50%:
* https://www.nbcnews.com/business/markets/bitcoin-whats-going...
I want a 'store of value' to be fairly predictable, and even with inflation (generally 0-4%) fiat currencies have that (I can plan around that by investing in bonds and equities, or even some bank savings products).
webdevver
true but then it always goes back up 100%...
...which is why its not gonna plunge anymore. too many people have "seen" the pattern now, and the instant it dips even 5% people are gonna be buying "the dip" in droves, thinking this is gonna be their entry, this is their moment in the sun. "I've seen it do this before, I know how it ends, I gotta get in now!!!"
FabHK
Indeed. And then at some point the sentiment will change. And at that point I hope the crypto and real world are not too intermingled, because it'll get ugly.
throw0101b
> true but then it always goes back up 100%...
So far.
It took gold, another popular 'store of value' commodity, several decades to reach its previous peak originally reached in 1980 (blue line):
* https://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/11/07/CMD_GLDNFLT0711_VF...
There was ~20 years of it not doing much. Then ~10 years post-GFC of it not doing much. A lot of folks are looking at headlines and making long-term conclusions that certain things are inevitable:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_bias
> ...which is why its not gonna plunge anymore. too many people have "seen" the pattern now […]
And how many times has the 'stock market plunging pattern' have we seen? Does that prevent people from panicking? As someone who has been in /r/PersonalFinanceCanada for many years now, the panicked posts of March-April 2020 were very real.
There is an entire field of study examining how people act badly when it comes to money:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics
People still think they can pick winning stocks and beat the market consistently over the long-term:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street
kupfer
I wish people would gamble with something other than a proof-of-work coin. There are very similar alternatives now. When bitcoin rises, more money is spent on mining. Whoever holds bitcoin is in part responsible for this waste of energy.
TrackerFF
I wish people would rather invest in companies, than parking their money in crypto.
dnpp123
Why is that? If you invest in a company, you steal worker wages.
FabHK
Absolutely. 1% of world electricity, with the waste approximately proportional to the Bitcoin price (due to medium term market forces) modulo halvings, of course.
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Lerc
I find it difficult to evaluate the potential regulation of cryptocurrency. I think it is necessary, in any domain, to have good laws that enable activity while protecting the people.
At the same time I don't have a great deal of faith in the ability of the existing government structures to enact legislation in the interest of society as a whole.
That presents a serious problem that makes the world of cryptocurrency pale into insignificance. Without belief that laws act in the interest of humanity in general, faith in the rule of law erodes. If that erosion is not stopped eventually nothing remains.
I hope things are not as bad as they seem to the outside observer.
inflationhedge
I have reason to believe my country's fiat will be inflated in the coming 12 months. Not hyper inflation, but a 50% to 100% increase in consumer prices over the next 12 months. My country is small and not connected to anything American related. Still wondering if it is a good idea to buy more crypto now as a further hedge against my fears. The article makes me think it may be unwise to do so given the massive speculation driving the price up led by similar american worries. Still does not change my fear of inflation at home.
lottin
For the most part inflation threatens cash holdings and fixed-income instruments (such as bonds) which have not priced in inflation. Therefore in order to "hedge" against inflation you should reduce your exposure to such assets to the largest extent possible. But a crypto-currency is a high-risk investment, so using it as a "hedge" against inflation is unwise because you're swapping one risk for another (potentially) greater risk.
pjc50
You could just buy dollars, Euros, or (absurdly) the stablecoins which let non-US persons more easily hold USD-equivalent assets than having a US bank account.
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gostsamo
by assets. home, gold, treasuries, shares should give you similar protection against inflation as the crypto with much less volatility. less profits as well, but it all depends on your risk profile.
seydor
I find it difficult to believe it has to do with the US regulation of crypto. These movements are made by whales, and were made for decades before regulation was in place. US citizens already have the dollar as a store of wealth so they need bitcoin less. If anything i expect a "sell the news" after this crypto week
acdha
Look at why cryptocurrency hasn’t had much real-world adoption: almost nobody must have it. A strong fiat currency like the USD has tons of built in demand from the economy which uses it and all of the people who get paid or pay the government, but a weak fiat currency like bitcoin is highly volatile because it doesn’t have that baseline volume stabilizing things.
The speculators are hoping that Trump will give them what they’ve been hoping for: officially-backed demand. That helps with both volatility and simple volume, and if it comes with exemptions for some of the anti-money laundering or gambling policies it could allow some of the businesses which have stayed out of the American market to come in and drum up business.
pyman
I'm interested in debating these facts:
- 2.4 million bitcoins are lost forever [0]. Their owners, for one reason or another, can't access their wallets. No insurance, no guarantees, nothing.
- 1.1 million are owned by a mysterious person who sits at the top of the pyramid [0].
- 2.3 million belong to investors and speculators [0] (who, I'm guessing, make money by pumping and dumping).
- 1 million are owned by banks [0], the same institutions that the mysterious man at the top of the pyramid, who created the "system of trust" said couldn't be trusted [2].
- 1.6 million are held by whales [0]: billionaires, money launderers, drug dealers [5], and so on.
- 1.4 million are still left to be mined [0], but only a handful of rich people with servers worth millions can actually mine them [3].
- The rest are owned by individuals who see it as a long term investment [0].
- It's a digital currency most people don't use to buy or sell anything. The only ones making transactions are banks, investors, and the rich [1][3][4].
- Worst of all, banks, investment firms and billionaires with ties to politicians and policymakers are likely to find out first when major regulations or shifts are coming and they'll be able to sell early and minimise losses, while everyone else finds out after the fact. In a system that was meant to be decentralised and fair, the people with the most power and access still end up with the advantage.
– And if you own even a tiny bit of bitcoin and read something like this, you get upset because your investment's at risk and you end up siding with the banks, investors, and the rich to keep the system going.
The way I see it, the banks won.
---
[0] As banks buy up bitcoins, who else are the 'Bitcoin whales'? https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68434579.amp
[1] Research from 2025 has found that the popularity and application of cryptocurrencies have not only promoted financial innovation, but also exacerbated wealth inequality. In other words, blockchain developers have made the gap between rich and poor even worse. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391506544_Cryptocur...
[2] A quote from Satoshi's forum message that he posted on Feb. 11, 2009. It explains the goal of creating Bitcoin and why using banks demands too much trust with no guaranteed positive outcome. https://u.today/did-satoshi-nakamoto-foresee-current-bank-cr...
[3] Prior to May 2021 Bitcoin miners were hugely concentrated, with around 60% to 70% located in China. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/bitcoin-who-ow...
[4] Bitcoin ownership is concentrated among the rich. Research showed that at the end of 2020, there were 1,000 “clusters” controlling 2 million bitcoins. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/bitcoin-who-ow...
[5] Between February 2011 and July 2013, drug dealers operating on Silk Road facilitated sales amounting to 9,519,664 bitcoins. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)
TrackerFF
Many of the whales are crypto exchanges, funds, and companies like microstrategy. So in essence, they’re held by many others.
pyman
The total amount of Bitcoin held by all DEXs is a relatively small fraction compared to centralized exchanges. And crypto exchanges and funds are typically backed by large corporations and banks. For example, 51% of Coinbase shares are owned by a bank.
FabHK
Agreed, by and large. Furthermore, Nakamoto wanted to disintermediate intermediaries.
Instead, now we have many centralised exchanges, centralised stablecoin issuers, centralised custodians, centralised miners, etc. So many additional intermediaries, providing so little value. Remarkable.
pyman
Exactly. Like I said in another comment, the system was supposed to be decentralised and fair, but fast forward 15 years, and it's still the same players with the most power end up with the advantage.
agumonkey
It's a law of nature, the large wins. They always have more buffers and more information.
pyman
My faith in Satoshi died the day I pictured him in a suit, shaking hands as JPMorgan's newest partner.
The way I see it now, Satoshi didn't create a system for the people. He created a system for the rich, where regular people are just resources doing the work, keeping the network running and helping the rich stay rich.
tonyhart7
this fact does not matters since if people valued bitcoin at 120k then bitcoin price would be 120k simple as that
also pump and dump scene exist in stock too, does this stop people trade in stock??? I don't think so
pyman
Sure, but the people who value Bitcoin at 120k and have the power to move markets aren't average people, they're banks, investment firms and billionaires. In a system that was supposed to be decentralised and fair, it's still the same players with the most power, access and early information who end up with the advantage. That's the problem.
tonyhart7
it is decentralised in a way that it is "decentralised system", its achieve its function
You asking decentralised power that everyone can have "fair" power level, that not exist
scotty79
Looking at btc price charts in dollar and euro can give you a good feel for how much everyone who earns dollars or holds assets denominated in dollars lost of their purchasing power since Trump took office. If you didn't get a raise (or appreciacion) of 18% since then you are in the red.
TrackerFF
Well, Trump is trying to devalue the dollar. If it was up to Trump, the dollar would be trading for half (against the EUR/GPB/etc.), to stimulate US exports.
webdevver
why did this get downvoted lol
i got a raise of 4% this year to account for "inflation". honestly id have preferred a pack of jelly beans, that would atleast be honest and funny.
I sold 100 BTC back in 2015, which cleared all my debts and landed my first apartment. But obviously in hindsight, it was the most expensive mistake I've made in my life. I started following cryptocurrencies back in 2012.
Still, for my life, I can't see the real value. Back then, when things were starting out, the idea was to bank the unbanked, make money transfer seamless, cheap, and fast, and basically break up actors like PayPal et. al.
It is 2025, and I've yet to see shops here in Europe that actively take any crypto, or people that use it in their daily lives. "Fast and cheap payments" have been fixed using regular fiat and banking services. I daily transfer and pay for stuff without any charges.
Crypto in general, but stablecoins more so, just feels like another asset that's being pumped and dumped periodically, with some constant growth factor pushing it up. At least with metals as gold, silver, etc. there's some real usage - though most of the value is just "store of value".
I don't know, for me it is mentally difficult to just buy into some asset that that has practically no real value, other than that others are willing to purchase it for more. It is as if everyone has just agreed that it has value due to demand, and that's it. It feels so artificial, that it is hard to wrap my brain around why people are willing to trade it (other than the next guy buying it for more, as mentioned).
EDIT:
Sure, there are some very legit usage of crypto, like:
- Circumventing sanctions
- Laundering money
- Scams and transactions of illegal goods
And of course just a storage of value.