Shorts folding, records tumbling, inflows mounting, bitcoin's unstoppable ascent takes another leg up.

By Jules Rimmer

Bitcoin ETFs saw second-highest inflows on record Thursday

Bitcoin recorded another all-time high and pierced $118,000 in Friday trading, boosting its return in 2025 so far to 26%, roughly matching the performance of gold.

The latest inflection point upward started in earnest on Wednesday when it (BTCUSD) broke through the previous peak of $111,000 established in May, bringing on board another wave of momentum investors, those who typically back trends rather than fundamentals.

Thursday occasioned the second-highest daily inflows into bitcoin exchange-traded funds with $1.18 billion drawn in by the chart breakout. Cumulative net inflows into bitcoin ETFs in 2025 are estimated at $51 billion. CoinDesk reported a huge short-squeeze contributing to the velocity of the spike in trading with $1.01 billion of short seller positions being liquidated within 24 hours across various crypto exchanges.

Approximately 237,000 traders were caught on the wrong side of the sudden move higher, and one single short exposure on the HTX crypto trading platform took an $88 million hit in the process, CoinDesk said.

While bitcoin has been in an uptrend since the start of 2023, the rally became turbocharged by President Trump's victory in the 2024 election. He had made a manifesto promise on his campaign to establish a regulatory framework to encourage the adoption of digital assets and blockchain technology in general, and signed an executive order to that effect upon taking office in January this year.

Furthermore, in June, the Senate passed the Genius Act, a bill to regulate some cryptocurrencies, which also provided crypto-trading sentiment with additional impetus. As well as the regulatory initiatives, Trump has proposed government creating a strategic reserve for cryptocurrencies, naming five - bitcoin, Ethereum UK:ETHP , solano ,SOLZ ripple TOSRF and cardano TWOCF - he would include.

The growing acceptance of bitcoin's strategic role in global finance has been vindicated by institutional take-up. In January 2024, under the previous administration, the SEC finally approved bitcoin ETFs with the first funds launched immediately thereafter. Funds like BlackRock and Fidelity have launched bitcoin ETFs CL:IBITCL FBTC, lending it credibility as an asset class.

It's not just institutional investors who have embraced bitcoin's appeal; corporates globally have been buying it too, and recent data releases reveals about 130 listed companies own 3.2% of all bitcoins in issue.The most well-known is Michael Saylor's Strategy (MSTR), which holds almost 600,000 bitcoins with an average price of approximately $66,000.

Wall Street analysts are now regularly including bitcoin in their strategy notes and portfolio recommendations. Citi's macro strategy outlook for the second half of 2025 published Friday, for example, highlights bitcoin tailwinds while discussing its wider role in portfolios as part of a diversification blueprint. The team led by Dirk Willer emphasizes how bitcoin's diversification properties differ from gold , belying its frequent label of "digital gold".

Citi points out that bitcoin has a different rate sensitivities and "trades more like a physical commodity in the sense that it has excelled during an overheating economy when yields are rising, but also can handle higher term premium environments".

Read: This big-name adviser says avoiding crypto is now a more speculative investment move than buying it

-Jules Rimmer

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