BItcoin (BTC) retains a $138,000 price target for 2025 as the market recovers from US trade tariffs, new analysis concludes.

Data covering bets on prediction service Polymarket suggests that BTC/USD could still gain around 60% from current levels this year.

“Conservative” Polymarket users cap BTC price upside at 60%

Bitcoin bull market projections have taken a beating this quarter thanks to multiple setbacks impacting crypto and the wider risk-asset spectrum.

Now, an assessment of all potential BTC price outcomes on Polymarket concludes that the bull market cycle may be capped at around 60% before 2026.

The results were uploaded to X by user Ashwin on March 27 and show that price bets extend all the way down to $59,000.

“The great thing about this analysis is that it not only provides a market sentiment score, like the Fear and Greed Index, but also attaches to it the expected price target for both bearish and bullish scenarios,” he explained. 

“This offers a reference to compare one’s price prediction with the market’s.”

BTC price targets on Polymarket. Source: Ashwin/X

Ashwin deconstructed the methodology used to analyze odds across multiple Polymarket arenas, resulting in a potential BTC price range between $59,040 and $138,617.

“The $138k Bitcoin price target may not seem bullish to most Bitcoiners, who are accustomed to hearing hyperbolic valuations. However, the market remains conservative as it recovers from the Trump tariff uncertainty,” he continued.

The modest expectations for BTC/USD mimic those elsewhere. On fellow prediction site Kalshi, one average BTC price target stands at $122,000 — just $11,500 beyond current all-time highs.

BTC price odds (screenshot). Source: Kalshi

Bitcoin support failure remains a risk

As Cointelegraph continues to report, market participants have drawn lines in the sand that price action should not violate in order to protect the broader bull market.

Related: Bitcoin price just ditched a 3-month downtrend as ‘key shift’ begins

These include the area around old all-time highs at $73,800 and the 2021 peak at $69,000.

Earlier this month, a historically accurate forecasting tool, which its creator describes as showing where Bitcoin “won’t be” in the future, gave a 95% chance of $69,000 holding.

In his latest update, popular trader Aksel Kibar stressed that the yearly average of $76,000 must stay in place.

“Extremely important for the price not to breach the year-long average,” he told X followers on March 26.

BTC/USD chart. Source: Aksel Kibar/X

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Solana Ghibli-inspired memecoins are surging in popularity as ChatGPT users have flooded social media with Studio Ghibli-inspired images over the past 24 hours.

On March 25, OpenAI launched image generation for its ChatGPT-4o mode, leading users to splash images across social media style in the art style of Studio Ghibli — known for its anime films Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk contributed to the trend, posting portraits of themselves generated by the model. Musk, with over 219 million followers on his platform X, has a history of influencing memecoins such as Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Dogecoin (DOGE) with his posts.

Sam Altman posted a Studio Ghibli-inspired AI image while announcing ChatGPT’s image generation tool. Source: Sam Altman

Neither Musk nor Altman mentioned any Ghibli-themed memecoin. Still, the largest Ghibli-themed token by market cap, Ghiblification (GHIBLI) has reached a market cap of $20.80 million since it went live 19 hours ago, according to DEX Screener.

At the time of publication, it is trading at $0.02083, up approximately 39,010% since it was created.

The Solana-based memecoin Ghibli has climbed by nearly 40,000% since it launched on March 26. Source: DEX Screener

At least 20 other Ghibli-related memecoins have been created since. Some crypto traders see it as a potential sign of life for the memecoin market, which has dropped 57% in value since Dec. 8 — just days after Bitcoin first hit $100,000.

Crypto trader Sachs said in a March 26 X post that he is praying the memecoin “runs to $100M to bring some hopes into these markets.”

“Severely needed,” Sachs added.

Related: The $100B memecoin market meets AI-driven intelligence for smarter trading

It follows the recent trend of memecoins sparking out of cultural references and movements. The CHILLGUY token launched on Nov. 15 on the Solana blockchain, riding the wave of the viral “Just a chill guy” meme that gained popularity on social media.

CHILLGUY’s value surged, reaching a peak market capitalization of $643 million by Nov. 27. 

However, investing in memecoins tied to daily trends comes with significant risk. CHILLGUY is down 95% from its November high, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Magazine: Ex-Alameda hire on ‘pressure’ to not blow up Backpack exchange: Armani Ferrante, X Hall of Flame

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Opinion by: Marc Boiron, chief executive officer of Polygon Labs

Decentralized finance (DeFi) needs a reality check. Protocols have chased growth through token emissions that promise eye-popping annual percentage yields (APYs) for years, only to watch liquidity evaporate when incentives dry up. The current state of DeFi is too driven by mercenary capital, which is creating artificial ecosystems doomed to collapse.

The industry has been caught in a destructive cycle: Launch a governance token, distribute it generously to liquidity providers to boost total value locked (TVL), celebrate growth metrics, and watch helplessly as yield farmers withdraw their capital and move to the next hot protocol. This model doesn’t build lasting value — it creates temporary illusions of success.

DeFi deserves a better approach to value creation and capital efficiency. The current emission-driven yield model has three fatal flaws that continue to undermine the industry’s potential.

Inflationary emissions

Most yield in DeFi comes from inflationary token emissions rather than sustainable revenue. When protocols distribute native tokens as rewards, they dilute their token value to subsidize short-term growth. This creates an unsustainable dynamic where early participants extract value while later users are stuck holding devalued assets.

Capital flight

Mercenary capital dominates DeFi liquidity. Without structural incentives for long-term commitment, capital moves freely to whatever protocol offers the highest temporary yield. This liquidity isn’t loyal — it follows opportunistic paths rather than fundamental value, leaving protocols vulnerable to sudden capital flight.

Misaligned incentives

Misaligned incentives prevent protocols from building sustainable treasuries. When governance tokens are primarily used to attract liquidity through emissions, protocols fail to capture value for themselves, making investing in long-term development and security impossible.

Recent: SEC plans 4 more crypto roundtables on trading, custody, tokenization, DeFi

These problems have played out repeatedly across multiple DeFi cycles. The “DeFi summer” of 2020, the yield farming boom of 2021 and subsequent crashes all show the same pattern: unsustainable growth followed by devastating contractions.

Protocol-owned liquidity

How can this be fixed? The solution requires shifting from extractive to regenerative economic models, and protocol-owned liquidity represents one of the most promising approaches to solving this problem. Rather than renting liquidity through emissions, protocols can build permanent capital bases that generate sustainable returns.

When protocols own their liquidity, they gain multiple advantages. They become resistant to capital flight during market downturns. They can generate consistent fee revenue that flows back to the protocol rather than temporary liquidity providers. Most importantly, they can create sustainable yield derived from actual economic activity rather than token inflation.

Use bridged assets to generate yield

Staking bridged assets offers another path toward sustainability. Usually, bridged assets just sit there and don’t contribute much toward the liquidity potential of connected blockchains. Through staking the bridge, assets in the bridge are redeployed into low-risk, yield-bearing strategies on Ethereum, which are used to bankroll boosted yields. This allows protocols to align participant incentives with long-term health, and it’s a boost to capital efficiency.

For DeFi to mature, protocols must prioritize real yield — returns generated from actual revenue rather than token emissions. This means developing products and services that create genuine user value and capture a portion of that value for the protocol and its long-term stakeholders.

While sustainable yield models typically produce lower initial returns than emissions-based approaches, these returns are sustainable. Protocols embracing this shift will build resilient foundations rather than chasing vanity metrics.

The alternative is continuing a cycle of boom-and-bust that undermines credibility and prevents mainstream adoption. DeFi cannot fulfill its promise of revolutionizing finance while relying on unsustainable economic models.

The protocols that do this will amass treasuries designed to weather market cycles rather than deplete during downturns. They’ll generate a yield from providing real utility rather than printing tokens.

This evolution requires a collective mindset shift from DeFi participants. Investors need to recognize the difference between sustainable and unsustainable yield. Builders need to design tokenomics that reward long-term alignment rather than short-term speculation. Users need to understand the true source of their returns.

The future of DeFi depends on getting these fundamentals right. It’s time to fix our broken yield model before we repeat the mistakes of the past.

Opinion by: Marc Boiron, chief executive officer of Polygon Labs.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.