Bitcoin is the first and largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation. No company or central bank sets its price: it is discovered every second on exchanges around the world, where buyers and sellers meet in open order books. This page tracks the live BTC price and explains what actually moves it.
Bitcoin’s current price is $80,519.00, with a market cap of $1.62T and rank #1 among all cryptocurrencies. Over the last 24 hours it has moved +0.1%, and −0.7% over seven days, on a trading volume of $13.08B.
Bitcoin’s all-time high is $126,080.00, set on 6th October 2025.
Key takeaways
- Only 21 million bitcoin will ever exist. New coins enter circulation through mining, and the reward per block halves every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years.
- The price is set by supply and demand on exchanges that trade 24/7. Liquidity, derivatives, spot ETFs, interest rates and regulation all shift that balance.
- Bitcoin is volatile. Large moves in either direction have followed exchange failures, government crackdowns, ETF approvals and comments from public figures.
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency that runs on a public blockchain. Its pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, published the white paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” on 31 October 2008 and mined the first block, the genesis block, on 3 January 2009.
Transactions are grouped into blocks roughly every ten minutes and secured by proof-of-work mining. Thousands of independent nodes check every block against the same rules, which is why no single party can change the supply schedule or reverse confirmed payments. If you want the mechanics in more depth, our guide on how Bitcoin works covers keys, nodes and transactions step by step.
Bitcoin price chart
The chart at the top of this page plots Bitcoin’s price in US dollars over the last 30 days.
What moves the Bitcoin price
There is no official Bitcoin price. The figure you see on any tracker is the last price at which a buyer and a seller agreed to trade, usually averaged across several large exchanges. Everything below works by changing how many people want to buy or sell, and how much bitcoin is available to them.
Supply and demand
Bitcoin’s supply is fixed by its code. Only 21 million coins will ever exist, and the rate at which new ones appear is known years in advance. Fiat currencies work differently: central banks can expand the money supply when they choose.
Because supply cannot respond to demand, changes in demand show up almost entirely in the price. When more people want to hold bitcoin than want to sell it, the price has to rise until enough holders are willing to part with their coins. When demand falls, the price drops until new buyers step in.
Demand comes from many places: retail buyers, long-term holders who treat bitcoin as a store of value, traders, funds, and public companies such as Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy, renamed in February 2025) that hold bitcoin on their balance sheets. In countries with high inflation or capital controls, some people also use it as an alternative to the local currency.
The halving
Miners who add a block to the chain receive newly created bitcoin, called the block subsidy. Every 210,000 blocks the subsidy is cut in half. This event, the halving, slows the flow of new coins into the market.
- First halving, 28 November 2012 (block 210,000): 50 to 25 BTC per block
- Second halving, 9 July 2016 (block 420,000): 25 to 12.5 BTC
- Third halving, 11 May 2020 (block 630,000): 12.5 to 6.25 BTC
- Fourth halving, 20 April 2024 UTC (block 840,000): 6.25 to 3.125 BTC
Each halving reduces the amount of new bitcoin miners need to sell to cover their costs. Past halvings have been followed by bull markets, but the timing and size of those moves have varied, and other factors were always at work at the same time. A halving changes supply on a known date; it does not guarantee any price outcome.
Exchanges, order books and liquidity
Bitcoin trades on exchanges such as Coinbase, Kraken and Binance through order books: lists of buy orders (bids) and sell orders (asks). The price moves as orders are filled. If buyers keep accepting higher asks, the price climbs; if sellers keep hitting lower bids, it falls. This happens around the clock, including weekends, which is why the price can change by the minute.
Liquidity, meaning how much can be traded without moving the price, decides how sharp those moves are. In deep markets a large order is absorbed with little impact. In thin markets, for example during quiet hours or on smaller exchanges, a single large order from a “whale” can move the price noticeably.
Prices also differ slightly between exchanges because of trading volume, fees, the quote currency (USD, EUR, USDT) and local banking or regulatory conditions. Arbitrage traders buy where bitcoin is cheaper and sell where it is dearer, which keeps prices close but never perfectly aligned, since transfers take time and cost fees.
Mining costs and difficulty
Bitcoin mining secures the network and issues new coins. It needs specialised ASIC hardware, cooling, premises and, above all, electricity, so mining operations cluster where power is cheap.
The network adjusts mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks (about two weeks) so that blocks keep arriving roughly every ten minutes, however much computing power is connected. If the price falls below what less efficient miners spend per coin, some switch off, the hash rate drops and difficulty adjusts down. Production cost does not set the price, but it influences how much selling pressure comes from miners, especially after a halving cuts their revenue.
Spot ETFs and institutional demand
On 10 January 2024 the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved the first spot Bitcoin exchange-traded products, and 11 funds started trading the next day. Spot ETFs let investors buy bitcoin exposure through an ordinary brokerage account, and each fund buys and holds the underlying coins.
Daily ETF inflows and outflows are now one of the most watched demand signals, because they show how much new money traditional investors are putting in or taking out. Corporate treasuries add a further source of demand that did not exist in earlier cycles.
Interest rates and the wider economy
Bitcoin reacts to the same forces that move other risk assets. When interest rates are low and central banks are expanding the money supply, cash and bonds earn less and investors look for higher returns elsewhere, which has tended to support bitcoin. When rates rise and liquidity tightens, the opposite has applied.
Inflation data, central bank meetings, the strength of the US dollar and stress in the banking system all feed into this. Some investors treat bitcoin as a hedge against currency debasement; others treat it as a high-risk technology bet. Which view dominates at a given moment affects how it trades.
Regulation and government action
Rules decide who can buy bitcoin, through which products, and on what terms. Clear frameworks tend to widen access; bans and enforcement actions narrow it. Some examples:
- On 21 May 2021 China’s State Council called for a crackdown on bitcoin mining and trading, and on 24 September 2021 the People’s Bank of China declared all crypto transactions illegal. Bitcoin fell after both announcements, and mining moved to other countries.
- El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law made bitcoin legal tender from 7 September 2021. On 29 January 2025, as part of an IMF loan agreement, lawmakers made acceptance by businesses voluntary.
- The approval of US spot Bitcoin ETFs on 10 January 2024 opened the asset to investors who could not or would not hold coins directly.
- On 6 March 2025 President Trump signed an executive order creating a US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, funded with bitcoin the government had already forfeited in legal cases.
Tax rules and actions against exchanges or other service providers can also disrupt trading in a particular country, even when they do not change the global picture.
Sentiment, media and derivatives
Bitcoin is still a young asset, and sentiment plays a large part in its price. News coverage brings in new buyers, and comments from public figures can move the market. In February 2021 Tesla disclosed a $1.5 billion bitcoin purchase and said it would accept bitcoin for cars, and the price rose sharply. On 12 May 2021 Elon Musk said Tesla had suspended bitcoin payments over the energy used in mining, and the price fell within minutes.
Futures, options and perpetual swaps let traders use borrowed money, which magnifies swings. When prices move quickly, positions bought on margin are forcibly closed (liquidated), which can push the price further in the same direction. Momentum traders and chart-based strategies add to this when many participants act on the same signals.
Tools such as the Crypto Fear and Greed Index try to measure the mood of the market from volatility, volume, social media activity and bitcoin dominance. Readings at either extreme have often come near turning points, which is why some traders read the index as a contrarian signal, but it only describes the current mood of the market.
Whales and market manipulation
A relatively small number of wallets hold a large share of all bitcoin. When these holders move coins to exchanges, other traders watch closely, because a large sale can push the price down, especially when liquidity is thin.
On less regulated venues, manipulation also happens. Wash trading inflates volume by trading between accounts the same party controls. Spoofing places large orders with no intention of filling them to create a false picture of demand or supply. Pump-and-dump schemes push a price up with misleading promotion and sell into the buying they attract.
Correlation with other assets
Bitcoin is often called “digital gold” because, like gold, it has a limited supply, is created through mining and is held as a store of value. In practice its link with gold, and with stocks, changes over time.
Before 2020 bitcoin often moved independently of major stock indices. During the COVID-19 sell-off in March 2020 it fell together with stocks and then traded more like a technology stock for long stretches. In other episodes, such as worries about bank failures, it has risen while stocks fell. This shifting behaviour is part of why bitcoin is hard to model and why its price can react to news that seems unrelated to crypto.
Bitcoin price history: key milestones
Bitcoin’s history is a series of sharp rallies and deep falls. These are the dated events most often cited as turning points:
- 31 October 2008: Satoshi Nakamoto publishes the Bitcoin white paper.
- 3 January 2009: the genesis block is mined, with a 50 BTC reward.
- 28 November 2012: the first halving cuts the block reward to 25 BTC.
- February 2014: Mt. Gox, then the largest bitcoin exchange, halts withdrawals and files for bankruptcy in Tokyo on 28 February, after losing hundreds of thousands of bitcoin.
- 9 July 2016: the second halving.
- 11 May 2020: the third halving, two months after the March 2020 market crash.
- February and May 2021: Tesla’s bitcoin purchase and its later suspension of bitcoin payments.
- May and September 2021: China’s crackdown on mining and its ban on crypto transactions.
- 7 September 2021: bitcoin becomes legal tender in El Salvador.
- 11 November 2022: FTX files for bankruptcy, adding to a long bear market.
- 10 to 11 January 2024: US spot Bitcoin ETFs are approved and start trading.
- 20 April 2024: the fourth halving cuts the reward to 3.125 BTC.
- 6 March 2025: the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is created by executive order.
Bitcoin supply
Bitcoin’s maximum supply is 21 million BTC. Every new coin comes from the block subsidy paid to miners, and the subsidy halves every 210,000 blocks until it reaches zero, which is expected around the year 2140. The current subsidy is 3.125 BTC per block. The next halving is due at block 1,050,000, which on current block times falls in 2028, and will cut the subsidy to 1.5625 BTC.
Because most of the supply has already been mined, the yearly increase in supply is now small compared with the coins already in circulation. Some coins are also permanently lost, for example when owners lose their private keys, so the number of bitcoin that can actually trade is lower than the circulating supply figure suggests.
How to buy Bitcoin
You can buy bitcoin on a regulated crypto exchange or broker, or gain price exposure through a spot ETF in markets where they are available. The usual steps are:
- Choose an exchange that is licensed or registered in your country.
- Open an account and complete identity verification.
- Deposit funds by bank transfer, card or another supported method.
- Buy BTC, then decide whether to keep it on the exchange or move it to your own wallet.
If you plan to hold your coins yourself, read our guide on how to send and receive Bitcoin before your first withdrawal, and start with what Bitcoin is if you are new to it. Only invest money you can afford to lose: bitcoin’s price can fall by large amounts in short periods.
To compare Bitcoin with other assets, see our cryptocurrency price tracker, or go straight to the Ethereum price and XRP price pages.
FAQs
Who sets the price of Bitcoin?
Nobody sets it. The price is the result of trades between buyers and sellers on exchanges around the world. Price trackers usually show a volume-weighted average across several large exchanges, which is why the figure can differ slightly from one site to another.
Why does the Bitcoin price change so much?
Bitcoin trades 24/7 on many exchanges, its supply cannot respond to demand, and a large share of trading uses borrowed money through derivatives. News about regulation, ETF flows, interest rates and large holders can therefore move the price quickly in either direction.
Why do exchanges show different Bitcoin prices?
Each exchange is its own market with its own buyers, sellers, fees and quote currencies. Arbitrage traders keep prices close, but transfer times, withdrawal limits and local banking conditions stop them from matching exactly.
How does the halving affect Bitcoin?
The halving cuts the number of new bitcoin paid to miners per block by 50 percent every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years. It reduces new supply on a known schedule. Past halvings were followed by rising prices, but each cycle had other causes too, and a halving does not guarantee any price move.
How many Bitcoin will ever exist?
21 million. The block subsidy keeps halving until it reaches zero, expected around 2140. After that, miners will be paid only through transaction fees.
