This Week in Bitcoin: New High Price, Multi-Million Dollar Projections, and Trump Frees Ross Ulbricht

Bitcoin is again hovering around $105,000 per coin, barely budging since this time last week. Investors shouldn't complain, though, after an action-packed start to the week led the coin to hit a new high.

The price of the biggest coin by market cap broke a new record of $108,786 Monday ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration. It has since dropped by nearly 4%, CoinGecko shows.

And despite President Trump not explicitly declaring plans for a Bitcoin strategic reserve in his first crypto executive order, the coin is still sitting comfortably above the $100,000 mark.

Bitcoin soared above $100,000 following Trump's November election; the President promised to slash regulation and help the digital asset industry. And he is keeping his crypto promises—albeit while annoying some hardcore Bitcoiners in the process.

ETF movements

Money continued to flow into the crypto investment vehicles this week, after investors threw billions at the funds last week ahead of the inauguration.

But it didn't stop, with $802.6 million hitting the funds on Tuesday alone, data from Farside Investors shows. By the end of the week, over $1.75 billion worth of assets had entered the Bitcoin ETFs.

The bullishness comes as Donald Trump is expected to be a net positive for the industry. The Republican campaigned on a promise to help the industry and now buying Bitcoin has never been easier thanks to the funds.

Ross freed

Bitcoiners had been waiting for it for years. And on Tuesday, President Donald Trump kept his campaign promise to pardon Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.

The Bitcoin enthusiast and founder of the dark web e-commerce site—mainly used for buying drugs using Bitcoin—was released shortly after and expressed enormous gratitude to President Trump. The crypto community flooded his digital wallets with BTC donations, too.

But Ulbricht—who went to prison in 2013—might already just be sitting on a goldmine: Untouched Bitcoin wallets linked to Ross Ulbricht and Silk Road now hold over $47 million worth of the asset.

Ulbricht has long been considered a hero in the Bitcoin community for creating one of the first marketplaces to accept the cryptocurrency. And though it still can't be verified that the wallets do indeed belong to him, it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

Where's Bitcoin?

Ahead of Donald Trump's shock November 5 win, the President had promised plans for a Bitcoin strategic reserve. But after signing his first crypto executive order on Thursday, which touched on the possibility of a crypto stockpile, Bitcoiners noticed one thing—there was no mention of their beloved orange coin, just "digital assets."

"The Working Group shall evaluate the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile and propose criteria for establishing such a stockpile, potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the Federal Government through its law enforcement efforts," the order read.

The news has angered ardent Bitcoiners, who have been hurling the usual insults about "shitcoinery," and who think it may lead the government to building up a stash of other digital coins.

MicroStrategy moves

Software company MicroStrategy shareholders are seemingly all-in on the firm's Bitcoin strategy: They on Tuesday voted for a 30x increase to the number of authorized Class A common shares so that the company could have more resources to buy the cryptocurrency.

The news came as the company announced its latest Bitcoin buy, bringing its holdings to 461,000 Bitcoin—worth over $48 billion. And on Friday, the firm said that it would redeem over $1 billion worth of its existing debt accumulated early while building up the stash.

Soaring projections

Elsewhere, British multinational bank Standard Chartered, which has come out with very bullish predictions in the past, said in a Wednesday note that Bitcoin would continue to soar as pension funds enter the space.

Analysts at the bank forecasted that institutions enthusiasm for the asset could mean the coin hits $200,000 by the end of 2025.

But there were even bigger price predictions for Bitcoin from major players this week. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said that growing adoption could push the price of the asset to $700,000, while Coinbase founder and CEO Brian Armstrong projected a price in the "multiple millions" at some undetermined point in the future.

Edited by Andrew Hayward