Bitcoin (BTC 7.46%) soared to an all-time high of $106,182 per coin in January. With the fourth Bitcoin halving firmly in the rearview mirror and a more crypto-friendly regime in the White House, the original cryptocurrency looked ready to skyrocket like it did in 2020 and 2017.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. Bitcoin is down to $79,200 as of this writing on April 8. That’s a hair-raising 25% price crash, well ahead of the S&P 500 (^GSPC 9.52%) stock market tracker’s 19% drop.

Is this the start of a three-year crypto winter like the one you saw after the 2017 peak, or is it a temporary pullback like in the spring of 2021? Nobody knows for sure, but here’s how I look at the Bitcoin situation today.

Bitcoin’s volatile roller coaster

Bitcoin has a long history of extreme volatility. The oldest cryptocurrency swung from $785 per coin at the start of 2017 to $19,345 in mid-December. About one year after that, it ended 2018 at $3,880 per coin. The S&P 500 gained a modest 12% over that period, which looks like a horizontal line by comparison:

Bitcoin Price data by YCharts

The recent price swings are actually quite modest from a historical perspective. The cryptocurrency’s daily standard deviance is about 2.7% in 2025. This volatility measure was twice that size in 2017 and just astronomical in 2009 and 2010:

Data source: Coin Codex. Chart by the author.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but this volatility chart shows a couple of helpful trends.

• Bitcoin’s volatility tends to rise and fall in the same four-year cycle as the underlying halving process. Things calm down during each crypto winter, followed by a sharp spike in the year after each halving event. As a reminder, the fourth halving took place in April 2024. Bitcoin may be due for a much more volatile price chart in 2025.
• The current year-to-date volatility is comparable to last year’s, which was one of the least fickle years in Bitcoin’s history. The price swings over the past week or so should boost the volatility rating, especially if the wilder changes continue.
• This chart lumps price jumps together with price drops as a single value. But there is a certain mountain-like shape to Bitcoin’s cyclical tendencies, with game-changing jumps typically followed by a long, slow drop back to a somewhat higher plateau than the previous cycle’s.
• The introduction of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) appears to have disrupted the standard pattern a bit, pre-loading Bitcoin’s chart with a short-lived price increase in the spring of 2024. The 2024 election results also gave most crypto names an unusual price boost. Other than these events in the run-up to 2025, the leading cryptocurrency still looks ready for the usual price gains in the second year of each halving turn.

Not just fancy chart art

You didn’t come here for the math, and I can’t blame you for distrusting Bitcoin’s charting patterns. Technical analysis is more performance art than financial science, and the chart-based musings above are kinda-sorta an example of that nonsense.

Then again, I’m also basing the discussion on more than the basic chart squiggles. There are reasons for Bitcoin’s four-year cyclicality, because the economic model of producing more coins keeps changing at that pace. Every turn of the wheel is unique, as the economic environment around the crypto sector keeps changing. Still, the halving events make a real difference — hard to predict with pinpoint accuracy, but still useful as a guiding rule of thumb.

My two Satoshis (digital micro-cents): Why Bitcoin’s future still looks bright

And after all of that, I’m convinced that Bitcoin will recover from the recent price cuts. It could take a few months, and there may be more pain to come, but I’ll be shocked if the tide doesn’t turn in the second half of 2025.

This digital currency was designed as a secure long-term storage facility for monetary value, also known as wealth. Strategy (MSTR 23.44%) chairman and co-founder Michael Saylor will talk your ear off on that topic while turning every possible stone to buy more Bitcoin for the company. One of my college-age kids just started her investment journey with an early Roth IRA account, and about 2% of that portfolio holds a popular Bitcoin ETF.

I’m no Saylor-style Bitcoin maximalist, but a small amount of exposure to the original crypto name seems appropriate for most investors. Getting in below $85,000 per coin is a serious discount from just three months ago, making the cryptocurrency about 25% more interesting.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is disbanding a team of prosecutors who targeted cryptocurrency crimes and is shifting its focus away from complex crypto-related cases involving banking and securities law, according to a memo reviewed by The Associated Press.

“The Department of Justice is not a digital assets regulator,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a memo sent to prosecutors Monday.

It’s the latest move by the Trump administration to try to boost the cryptocurrency industry while undoing the Biden administration’s efforts to crack down on wrongdoers in the industry. The Trump administration’s effort has included a similar shift in crypto-related enforcement priorities at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Blanche’s memo is part of a larger move by the Justice Department to step back from certain white-collar enforcement to align with President Donald Trump’s priorities of tackling illegal immigration, gangs and drug crimes.

READ MORE: How an emboldened crypto industry is trying to cement political influence

Blanche said the Biden administration had used the department to “pursue a reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution, which was ill conceived and poorly executed.” Instead, Blanche said, the department’s narrower crypto-related priorities will target people and entities that rip off crypto investors or use digital assets to fund criminal conduct like human trafficking, drug running or terrorism.

The crypto industry, which spent heavily to help Trump win election, has long complained that the Biden administration unfairly targeted innocent actors with either criminal or civil enforcement actions. Opposing the ongoing criminal case against the developers behind Tornado Cash, a tumbler used to hide ownership of crypto assets, has been a celebrated cause among some privacy and crypto enthusiasts.

“We should be going after bad guys. Not the developers of good tools that bad guys happen to use,” Peter Van Valkenburgh, the executive director of the advocacy group Coin Center, said on X in praise of Blanche’s memo.

READ MORE: A look at the Trump crypto ventures that will help the industry–and likely enrich his family

The National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team was created during President Joe Biden’s administration with the explicit goal of targeting exchanges, mixers and others “that are enabling the misuse of cryptocurrency and related technologies to commit or facilitate criminal activity.”

But Blanche said those kinds of entities will no longer be targeted for “the acts of their end users or unwitting violations of regulations.”

Blanche said the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team’s disbandment is effective immediately. He also said the Market Integrity and Major Frauds Unit “will cease cryptocurrency enforcement in order to focus on other priorities, such as immigration and procurement fraud.”

Once a crypto skeptic, Trump, a Republican, has pledged to make the U.S. the world capital of crypto. He and his sons have also sought to expand their personal fortunes with various crypto-related enterprises.