Analysts at research and brokerage firm Bernstein have outlined the key upcoming catalysts that could propel bitcoin’s price to their cycle target of $200,000 in 2025.

“We are entering a stage, where we expect intrigue will turn to pain for the bitcoin bears,” analysts led by Gautam Chhugani said in a Monday note to clients. Bernstein set their latest bitcoin target in June when its price was around $66,000. “Bitcoin to $100K seems around the corner and our $200K bitcoin target [by the end of] 2025 now looks not as delusional,” the analysts said.

Following Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential election win, his transition team has already begun making nominations for top roles, including bitcoin advocates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Health and Secretary of Defense, respectively. However, perhaps the two most important appointments from a crypto perspective are still to come: a new Securities and Exchange Commission Chair to replace Gary Gensler and Trump’s nomination for Treasury Secretary, the analysts noted.

American investor and hedge fund manager Scott Bessent and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, a Bitcoin advocate whose company serves as a custodian for billions of dollars worth of Tether's reserves, are currently neck and neck on the decentralized predictions platform Polymarket for Treasury Secretary pick, with Lutnick having the slightest of edges.

Lutnick’s odds have grown significantly in recent days following endorsements from Elon Musk and RFK Jr. “Bitcoin is the currency of freedom, a hedge against inflation for middle-class Americans, a remedy against the dollar’s downgrade from the world’s reserve currency and the offramp from a ruinous national debt. Bitcoin will have no stronger advocate than Howard Lutnik,” RFK Jr. posted to X on Saturday.

“Scott is favored by broader equity markets as better positioned on macro and fiscal stabilization, but Lutnick is seen as a stronger bitcoin bull,” Chhugani said. “Regardless, we expect the SEC Chair and Treasury position to be filled by a pro-crypto candidate and that the market should remain positive, regardless of specific appointments.”

Progress toward a bitcoin strategic reserve, or national bitcoin stockpile, as Trump pledged during the election campaign, is another key catalyst, the analysts said. They believe political momentum toward its creation is now well underway but that it could require a longer legislative process if it involves material purchases of bitcoin every year. Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) has already introduced a draft BITCOIN Act bill to adopt a national bitcoin reserve, including a plan for the U.S. to acquire up to 5% of bitcoin's total supply over five years — the equivalent of nearly $100 billion worth at current prices.

“Demand for bitcoin this cycle is led by institutions, corporates and retail,” the Bernstein analysts said. “We believe the next bitcoin cycle will be sovereign led and the political seeds for a sovereign led market are being sown today. The political winds of change are favoring candidates that prefer crypto deregulation and are against potential surveillance from a CBDC.”

Progress toward Trump’s broader crypto promises is also an important factor, including support to establish the U.S. as a bitcoin mining “powerhouse,” improved energy policy for mining and AI data centers, a pledge to shut down “Operation Choke Point 2.0” — which impacted banking on-ramps for crypto businesses — a regulatory framework for stablecoins and a potential markets structure bill that would push crypto regulation more towards CFTC oversight and eliminate the "regulation by enforcement" approach by SEC, according to the analysts.

“As [these] regulatory catalysts play out, we would expect a new-found confidence in the crypto bull market, reflected in not just higher bitcoin prices but overall crypto market cap impacting prices of ETH, SOL and leading digital assets,” they noted.

This could also allow crypto tokens that suffered from challenges amid the previous regulatory environment to start restructuring their tokenomics to include project fees and cashflows as sources of value accrual, the analysts said. 

“We expect registration of crypto securities to be streamlined and crypto tokens to become acceptable investments for institutional investors,” they argued. “We would expect creation of active crypto token funds by leading asset managers, moving the frontier from passive crypto ETFs today.”

Finally, the analysts highlighted the demand side of the equation, with total bitcoin exchange-traded fund assets under management now standing at $92 billion and a net inflow rate over the last few weeks of around $1.7 billion per week.

MicroStrategy’s continued bitcoin purchases and plans to raise $42 billion for further acquisitions over the next three years is another source of substantial demand, with co-founder Michael Saylor recently indicating potential acceleration of this deployment, Chhugani noted. Increased hoarding of bitcoin from miners as the bull cycle progresses also reduces sell pressure, he added.

“We believe we are done with the Trump election trade here. However, in our view a ‘new crypto regulatory era’ is far from being priced in. We believe investors should continue holding bitcoin equity proxies for longer horizons ~12-18 months at least,” the analysts said. “With most institutional investors re-examining their anti-crypto stance, we have a long journey of fresh structural allocations to this market. If you are long, we expect you will be on the right side of bitcoin history.”

Bitcoin is currently trading for $91,959, according to The Block’s Bitcoin Price Page. The foremost cryptocurrency is just 1.5% away from making a fresh all-time high above $93,300, having gained around 1% in the last 24 hours and 12% during the past week.

Gautam Chhugani maintains long positions in various cryptocurrencies. Bernstein and its affiliates may receive compensation for investment banking services from MicroStrategy.

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