Today in crypto: Tether acquired 8,888 Bitcoin (BTC), making its wallet the fifth-largest holder. Bitcoin ended 2025 lower than it began, marking the first time it’s fallen in a post-halving year. Meanwhile, Strategy’s Michael Saylor and other crypto industry leaders saw their net worths shrink by billions in 2025, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Tether snaps up another 8,888 BTC, now fifth-largest Bitcoin wallet
Tether picked up 8,888 Bitcoin on New Year’s Eve, increasing its disclosed Bitcoin stash to more than 96,000 to close out 2025, its CEO Paolo Ardoino said.
The USDt (USDT) stablecoin issuer has become one of the biggest active Bitcoin holders, placing the company’s Bitcoin address as the fifth-largest behind Binance, Robinhood, and Bitfinex and ranking second among privately held corporate BTC treasuries.
The move is part of a pattern of Tether’s quarterly Bitcoin accumulations. The company has been funneling up to 15% of its earnings into Bitcoin every three months. The latest batch was worth about $780 million at the time of acquisition.
Bitcoin is not the company’s only hard asset bet. Tether purchased 26 tons of gold in Q3 2025, which was a larger quarterly acquisition than any reporting central bank and placed its total holdings at 116 tons, among the world’s top 30 gold holders.
Bitcoin ends year after halving in the red
Bitcon has ended 2025 lower than it began, marking the first time it’s fallen in a post-halving year.
Bitcoin (BTC) halvings occur every four years, when mining rewards are cut in half and fewer new coins enter the market. Historically, this has resulted in a cycle of accumulation: a post-halving bull run that peaks, followed by a sharp correction and a multi-year bear market.
After the 2012 halving, Bitcoin spiked to end the following year at a new high; a similar pattern played out in 2016 and again in 2020.
However, the pattern has broken this time.
Despite the latest halving being in April 2024, Bitcoin is now trading down more than 30% from its all-time high of $126,080, set on Oct 6 and ending the year lower than it began, according to data from CoinGecko.
The four-year cycle has frequently been used to predict and analyze how the crypto markets will broadly act.
Crypto billionaires are among biggest losers of 2025: Report
Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor and other prominent cryptocurrency executives lost billions of dollars in 2025, partially as a result of losses in an October flash crash.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index released on Wednesday, Saylor lost $2.6 billion over the previous 12 months, reducing his net worth to $3.8 billion. Gemini co-founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao also saw significant losses due to a “massive slide” in the crypto market in October.
“[Strategy’s Bitcoin treasury strategy] generated huge returns through early October, when Bitcoin hit fresh highs,” Bloomberg reported. “However, things began to turn south soon after as a slump in Bitcoin’s value sent Strategy’s stock price plunging by more than half, dragging Saylor’s net worth down nearly $6 billion from its high-water mark in the process.”
While Bloomberg reported that eight people accounted for about 25% of the $2.2 trillion in gains among billionaires for 2025, many industry figures lost big over the year. The news outlet reported last week that Zhao lost about 5% of his net worth, estimated at $50.9 billion, since Jan. 1, 2025, while the Winklevosses lost 59% over the same period.
In contrast, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire reportedly increased his net worth by 149% since June 4, amid the US government passing a comprehensive payment stablecoin bill, the GENIUS Act.
