Bitcoin could end up reaching $125,000 by the end of the year, but other cryptocurrencies will likely outperform, according to CK Zheng, founder of crypto hedge fund ZX Squared Capital.
“There’s a correlation between bitcoin and altcoins, but I think bitcoin dominance is going to go down,” Zheng told CoinDesk in an interview. “If you want a crypto ecosystem to really develop, you can’t have 60% of the market’s value stuck in bitcoin.”
The reason? The Trump administration is already proving much friendlier towards the crypto sector than its predecessor. Not only is the White House contemplating the possibility of creating a national crypto reserve, but the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been ditching its lawsuits against crypto companies and protocols like Kraken and Uniswap.
“New policies and regulations will come out and trigger a lot of new ideas for innovation and shake up the crypto industry,” Zheng said. “Though it might take some time to play out — through 2025 and 2026.”
Ether (ETH) and solana (SOL) are two of the cryptocurrencies that ZX Squared sees benefitting from a potential new wave of innovation, especially if projects combining artificial intelligence (AI) and crypto take off. The key, Zheng said, is for these smart contract blockchains to keep increasing their throughput in order to remain attractive (in Solana’s case) or take back the initiative (in Ethereum’s case).
In the meantime, bitcoin is likely to keep behaving like a risk-on asset, rising and falling in tandem with other such assets as the Trump administration keeps unleashing new economic policies. Macroeconomics will remain firmly at the wheel for the top cryptocurrency, Zheng said, unless the U.S. government pulls the trigger on a potential national crypto reserve — something which could happen at the White House Crypto Summit this Friday.
“A bitcoin strategic reserve is something the President’s interested in. He spoke about it all during the campaign trail, and I think you’re going to see it executed on Friday,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told The Pavlovic Today. “So bitcoin is one thing, and then the other currencies, the other crypto tokens, I think, will be treated differently — positively, but differently,” he added.
In any case, even with tariffs against Mexico, Canada, and China seemingly coming into effect, Zheng said he didn’t expect bitcoin to go below the $75,000 mark.
“In the near term, things are quite choppy,” Zheng said. “But this is a good opportunity for long-term investors who have been waiting to allocate to bitcoin.”
