Bitcoin $BTC in 2025 showed a divergence between market demand and base-layer activity. BTC maintained roughly 58% to 60% market dominance and a capitalization near $1.8 trillion, while liquidity and demand increasingly flowed through off-chain financial channels.
Two numbers in the report anchor that shift:
U.S. spot BTC ETFs accumulated over $21 billion in net inflows.
Corporate holdings surpassed 1.1 million BTC, equivalent to about 5.5% of total supply.
Figure 1: Spot BTC ETFs attracted over US$21.3B in net inflows
At the same time, active addresses declined about 16% year over year, and transaction counts stayed below prior cycle peaks. The point is not that the base layer is irrelevant, but that Bitcoin’s market role is increasingly defined by how it trades and is held within macro portfolios and regulated channels. Network security continued strengthening – hash rate exceeded 1 zettahash per second and mining difficulty rose about 36% year over year – reinforcing the idea of sustained investment into Bitcoin’s security budget even as usage metrics normalized.
In sum, Bitcoin is moving toward the status of a liquid, institutional-grade macro asset rather than a purely transaction-led network
