Macroeconomist Lyn Alden expects Bitcoin to finish 2025 higher than its current price of around $85,000, though she says it would have been much higher if not for US President Donald Trump’s tariff announcement in February.

“Before all this tariff kerfuffle, I would have had a higher price target,” Alden told Natalie Brunell on the April 17 episode of Coin Stories. “My guess is that we end up higher at the end of the year than we are now, at least,” she added.

Bitcoin’s 24/7 trading bolsters volatility when TradFi “freaking out”

However, she said that a “massive liquidity unlock” could be the catalyst needed for Bitcoin (BTC) to reach more optimistic targets, similar to those before the tariffs were introduced.

For example, if the US bond market “broke” and the US Federal Reserve had to step in with measures like yield curve control or quantitative easing (QE), Alden explained.

Lyn Alden spoke to Coin Stories’ host Natalie Brunell on April 17. Source: Natalie Brunell

While Alden said that there is a “good chance” Bitcoin reclaims the $100,000 price level before the end of the year, she emphasized that market “down days” will remain a challenge for the asset, especially since Bitcoin trades 24/7, unlike traditional stock markets with trading hours.

“Because it trades 24/7, if people are worried about how things are going to open on Monday, some pools of capital can sell their Bitcoin on a Sunday and prepare,” she said. 

Alden explained that crypto’s round-the-clock trading contributes to its “volatile pricing,” particularly when traditional financial markets are “freaking out.”

Bitcoin is down 0.95% over the past 30 days. Source: CoinMarketCap

At the time of publication, Bitcoin is trading at $84,868, according to CoinMarketCap data.

However, Alden said Bitcoin can “disconnect” from the Nasdaq 100, especially in situations that “hurt Nasdaq margins” without affecting global liquidity. As an example, she pointed to a potential repeat of the five years leading up to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, which she believes could be favorable for Bitcoin.

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She pointed to the 2003–2007 period, where there was a weaker US dollar cycle, and while there wasn’t a mass exodus of capital, it did flow into “emerging markets,” commodities, gold, and other assets — with US stocks not “really being the place to be.”

“If we encounter a five-year period like that again, that could be a period where Bitcoin does pretty well, even as the US stock market doesn’t do particularly well.”

Alden wrote in a September research report that Bitcoin moves in the direction of global M2 83% of the time in a given 12-month period.

The research termed “Bitcoin a Global Liquidity Barometer” compared Bitcoin to other major asset classes such as SPX, gold and VT, and BTC topped the correlation index concerning global liquidity.

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