Just how bad were 2025 Bitcoin price predictions from Hayes, Lee and Saylor?

The crypto industry’s bigwigs had high hopes for Bitcoin — and other cryptocurrencies — in 2025.

With a pro-crypto president in the White House and the leading digital asset hitting new highs in January and February, Bitcoin looked set for an ace year.

At least that’s what the CEOs, market observers and digital asset traders thought.

Those outlandish predictions came to a halt after unpredictable macroeconomic headwinds and tired investors stunted the orange coin’s rise.

Indeed, since January 1, Bitcoin is down 10% — leaving many of the industry’s biggest bulls scratching their heads.

Arthur Hayes

Co-founder and former BitMEX boss Hayes has been known for his hyperbole with past predictions. 2025 was no different.

The billionaire crypto entrepreneur said in the first half of the year that Bitcoin was headed towards $200,000 or more by the end of 2025.

Despite things starting well, by April, President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements were rocking markets, sending Bitcoin down below $80,000 after it had traded for comfortably above $100,000 in January.

Hayes stuck to his guns, though, albeit toning down slightly his May prediction and forecasting the coin to hit $150,000 in 2025.

He reasoned that US monetary policy — namely the Federal Reserve’s money printing — would push the coin’s value up as cash gets cheaper and pushes investors into riskier assets, such as stocks and cryptocurrencies.

Fast forward to November, and crypto markets had been gutted.

Bitcoin dropped by 30% from its October all-time high of $126,080, trading below $90,000. Still, Hayes was confident and predicted a price of $200,000 by year-end.

“I’m going to stick with it,” he said on a podcast at the end of November of his $200,000 forecast. “If I’m wrong, it doesn’t matter.”

Bitcoin was priced at nearly $86,568 per coin on December 19, so it would have to shoot up by over 130% within 10 days.

Still, Hayes does at least have some self-awareness — admitting that his predictions in the past have been “pretty shit.”

Tom Lee

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee has been making big Bitcoin price predictions for years. And he has usually been proven right, albeit off by a few years with the timing.

Lee began the year optimistically, saying in January on CNBC that he expected the orange coin to soar to $250,000 by year’s end.

At the time, Bitcoin was trading slightly below $100,000, so it wasn’t that far-fetched a forecast.

Lee was all-in on crypto this year and, in June, became chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies, a publicly traded Bitcoin miner that pivoted to become an Ethereum treasury that bought over $12.1 billion in Ether.

Despite saying that the second biggest digital coin could become the “next Bitcoin, Lee also had bold ideas for Bitcoin, in September saying that it could “easily get to $200,000 before the end of the year.”

He, like Hayes, bet that a Federal Reserve interest rate cut would help the price of the risk-on asset.

One month later, Bitcoin did hit new highs. Still, the central bank’s moves haven’t been enough, and the leading digital asset is now down year-to-date.

By the end of November, Lee had trimmed his forecast to above $100,000 instead — meaning Bitcoin would still have to climb 17% from where it’s trading now.

Michael Saylor

Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor also had overly optimistic predictions for the biggest digital asset.

But then he would: his company is the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin with more than $59 billion on its balance sheet, according to the firm.

Saylor, who first proposed a digital asset treasury in 2020 when his company’s stock was suffering, believes Bitcoin will be worth millions of dollars per coin.

But its gains over the years, he predicts, will be slower and less volatile compared to previous cycles.

The software entrepreneur started the year by saying that Bitcoin would continue its grind up as institutions flood into the space while pushing the digital asset treasury narrative with increased fervour.

Saylor met with President Trump’s incoming cabinet, alongside crypto executives, in January. In March had a spot at the White House Digital Assets Summit, where he pushed for the US to embrace Bitcoin as a strategic national asset.

Despite all the pro-crypto policy — including passing landmark stablecoin legislation and preventing the US government from selling forfeited Bitcoin — investor fatigue and a risk-off sentiment kept Bitcoin from breaking new records after October’s big crash.

But Saylor was still bullish, saying on October 29 that “our expectation right now is that end of the year it should be around $150,000.”

Saylor may be off by nearly 80% from his prediction, but zooming out, his $20 million-per-coin Bitcoin in 20 years only requires a 30% year-over-year rise.

Easy, right?