Bitcoin closed 2025 down 6.3% on Coinbase, its first annual loss since 2022

Bitcoin completed its first losing calendar year since 2022 on December 31, 2025, surrendering an earlier advance that had carried the asset above $126,000 during October.

On Coinbase’s BTC-USD market, the December 31 daily candle closed at $87,497.94. The corresponding December 31, 2024 candle had closed at $93,354.22. Comparing those two UTC closing observations produces a 2025 decline of 6.27%, calculated as ($87,497.94 ÷ $93,354.22 − 1) × 100.

That calculation is a venue-specific point-to-point return, not a universal cryptocurrency closing price. Bitcoin trades continuously across exchanges, and annual results vary slightly with the selected venue, currency pair, benchmark and cutoff time. Contemporaneous Reuters reporting described Bitcoin as down more than 6% and on course for its first annual loss since 2022, consistent with the completed Coinbase candle.

A record high did not become a positive year

The negative close was consequential because it followed an extraordinary intrayear reversal. Reuters reported that Bitcoin traded above $126,000 in early October before losing momentum during the fourth quarter. Relative to the $87,497.94 Coinbase year-end close, a $126,000 reference point implies a decline of approximately 30.6%. That comparison uses Reuters’s rounded peak threshold rather than a single Coinbase high, so it describes scale and not a precise venue-defined drawdown.

The reversal complicated the dominant institutional narrative of 2025. Cryptocurrency companies had gained a more favorable federal policy environment in the United States, including a federal framework for payment stablecoins and the retreat of several prominent enforcement cases. Traditional financial institutions also continued expanding access through exchange-traded products, custody services and derivatives.

Those developments changed the industry’s regulatory and distribution channels, but the December 31 result showed that policy access did not guarantee a rising Bitcoin price. Market structure still included leveraged derivatives, fragmented liquidity and continuous global trading. Institutional participation could deepen demand, but it could also connect Bitcoin more closely to interest-rate expectations, equity-market sentiment and broader reductions in risk exposure.

The final session remained volatile

Coinbase recorded a December 31 BTC-USD opening price of $88,397.24, a high of $89,100, a low of $87,082.64 and the $87,497.94 close. The candle covered the UTC day and recorded approximately 7,261 BTC of volume on that one market. It did not represent consolidated global Bitcoin turnover.

CoinDesk’s report published early on December 31 described repeated attempts to recover higher price levels being sold and characterized the fourth-quarter market as risk-off. That was contemporaneous interpretation rather than proof of one cause. Thin holiday liquidity, profit-taking and reduced leverage were plausible contributors, but the reviewed evidence does not isolate their individual effects.

The chronology also matters. Reuters published before the final UTC candle had completed and therefore correctly described the annual loss as still prospective. Coinbase’s completed daily record supplies the later event-date observation needed to confirm that the loss survived the final session.

What the year-end record established

The defensible conclusion is narrow: using Coinbase’s BTC-USD UTC closes, Bitcoin lost 6.27% from December 31, 2024 through December 31, 2025, and credible contemporaneous reporting identified this as its first negative calendar year since 2022.

The result did not prove that institutional adoption had reversed, that favorable regulation had failed, or that any later price direction was inevitable. It established that even after reaching a record during 2025, Bitcoin finished the calendar year below its starting reference level. That distinction made December 31 a useful checkpoint for evaluating claims about maturity, institutionalization and Bitcoin’s behavior as a global risk asset.