When Donald Trump returned to the White House, much of the crypto market expected a familiar playbook. Pro-crypto rhetoric, friendlier regulation, entry of institutional investors, and greater risk appetite were expected to combine to create a significant bull market.
However, with the end of 2025, the crypto market finishes the year substantially lower, operating at only 20% of the peak recorded during the Biden era.
Even with Trump, the crypto market is only at 20% of the levels from the Biden era
This contradiction is at the center of a growing debate about whether crypto is facing a difficult phase or if a deeper rupture has occurred in the sector.
“… It’s time to recognize and admit that the crypto market is broken,” said Ran Neuner, analyst and host of Crypto Banter.
The analyst highlighted an unprecedented gap between fundamentals and prices. According to Neuner, 2025 presented “all the elements for a bull market”:
Abundant liquidity,
A pro-crypto US government,
Spot ETFs (especially based on Bitcoin and Ethereum)
Aggressive accumulation of Bitcoin by figures like Michael Saylor,
Participation of governments and sovereign funds, and
Macro assets like stocks and precious metals, including gold and silver, hitting all-time highs.
“Even with all these factors,” Neuner said, “we are ending 2025 lower and only 20% of the levels of the Biden era.”
This indicates that traditional explanations no longer apply. Theories about four-year cycles, trapped liquidity, or an IPO moment for crypto sound more and more like ex post justifications than genuine answers.
For Neuner, the market presents only two plausible paths from now on:
There is either a hidden structural seller or some mechanism suppressing prices, or
Crypto is preparing for what he calls “the mother of all recovery opportunities,” with markets eventually returning to equilibrium.
Not everyone agrees that something is wrong
Market commentator Gordon Gekko, a popular user on X, rebutted, arguing that the suffering is intentional and structural but does not represent dysfunction.
“Nothing is broken; this is exactly the scenario planned by market makers. Sentiment has never been so low in years; leveraged operators are losing everything. It shouldn’t be easy; only the strongest will be rewarded,” he wrote.
This difference reflects a deeper change in crypto behavior compared to previous cycles. During Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2020, the sector thrived in an almost absent regulatory environment.
Retail speculation prevailed, the use of leverage was unrestricted, and the forward escape dynamic drove prices far beyond the fundamental value of assets.
Under Biden's administration, on the contrary, the market has institutionalized. Regulation focused on oversight limited exposure to risk, while ETFs, custodians, and compliance rules have redefined allocation and capital movement.
Irony or not, many of the most anticipated favorable winds for crypto arrived precisely during this more restricted period:
ETFs opened access, but mainly to Bitcoin
Institutions invested but with protection and automatic rebalancing.
There was liquidity, but allocated in traditional financial products, not in on-chain ecosystems.
The result is scale without reflexivity.
Bitcoin holds while altcoins register declines in the new crypto regime
This structural transformation has been especially painful for altcoins, with analysts and influencers like Shanaka Anslem, among others, assessing that the unified crypto market no longer exists.
With this, 2025 has split into “two games”:
Institutional crypto: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and ETFs, with reduced volatility and longer horizons, and
Attention crypto: millions of tokens compete for fleeting liquidity and most collapse within a few days.
Capital no longer flows naturally from Bitcoin to altcoins, the so-called altcoin season. It flows directly to the segment to which it is intended.
“… Your only choices now: operate institutional crypto with patience and attention to the macro, or act in attention crypto with agility and infrastructure,” wrote Anslem.
According to this opinion leader, holding altcoins based on theses for months has become the worst possible strategy.
“You are not early in the altseason. You are waiting for a market structure that no longer exists,” he added.
Perhaps this is the foundation of a trader's conviction in the search for the right direction. Lisa Edwards supports this thesis, suggesting that participants monitor market liquidity flows.
“Everything changes, cycles shift, money circulates in different ways. If you’re waiting for the old altseason, you will miss the opportunities that are already underway,” he stated.
Quinten François shares this perspective, pointing out that in 2025, the number of tokens significantly exceeds past cycles. With more than 11 million tokens in circulation, the idea of a broad altseason, similar to that of 2017 or 2021, may be outdated.
Everyone keeps waiting for a classic altseason like 2017 or 2021.
But the entire market structure has changed.
2017 had a few hundred coins competing for capital.
2021 had a few thousand.
2025 has more than 11 million tokens, memecoins, and worthless experiments.
The days where…
— Quinten | 048.eth (@QuintenFrancois) December 2, 2025
Between repricing and recovery: the post-institutional test of crypto
Meanwhile, macroeconomic pressures continue to weigh on market sentiment. Nic Puckrin, investment analyst and co-founder of Coin Bureau, assesses that Bitcoin's drop towards its 100-week moving average reflects renewed fears of an AI bubble, uncertainty about the future leadership of the Fed, and sales to offset tax losses at year-end.
“All of this contributes to a weak close in 2025,” he said in an email to BeInCrypto, warning that BTC could briefly fall below $80,000 if sales intensify.
It is unclear if the crypto market is broken or just undergoing transformations, and investors should conduct their own research.
What is clearly observed is that expectations from the Trump era clash with the current market structure under Biden, making the old model outdated.
Debates among economists and investors at large tables suggest strong repricing or an aggressive recovery rally, which could define the identity of crypto in the post-institutional scenario.
The article Return of Trump brought everything to the crypto market, except the rise was seen for the first time in BeInCrypto Brazil.
