Whales Are Selling Bitcoin, Companies Are Snapping Up All the Sales – What Does This Mean? Analysts Are Warning

There is a silent but effective power shift taking place in the Bitcoin market. While whales that have been holding large amounts of BTC for a long time in the $2.1 trillion BTC ecosystem are selling their assets, institutional investors such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs), corporate treasuries and asset managers are covering the majority of these sales.

According to data from 10x Research, whales have dumped over 500,000 Bitcoins in the past year. That’s almost equal to the net amount of BTC flowing into U.S.-approved ETFs and very close to the roughly $65 billion BTC portfolio that MicroStrategy (now “Strategy”) has amassed over the past five years.

But the sell-off has kept Bitcoin’s price stuck at $110,000. Despite rising institutional demand, volatility is gradually decreasing and Bitcoin is transforming from a speculative asset with high-yield prospects to an allocation vehicle for long-term portfolios.

“We are seeing a movement at the bottom,” said Edward Chin, co-founder of Parataxis Capital, adding that this transformation is due to some whales using their BTC as collateral in direct stock-related transactions.

According to Flipside Crypto, 95% of Bitcoin in 2020 was held by just 2% of wallets. But today, institutions ranging from ETFs to MicroStrategy and other institutional firms hold 4.8 million of the approximately 20 million Bitcoins in circulation, or nearly a quarter.

According to Rob Strebel, director of Cumberland, DRW’s crypto arm, this development is turning crypto into a mainstream asset class and bringing with it lower volatility. In fact, Deribit’s 30-day BTC Volatility Index has fallen to its lowest levels in two years.

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But experts warn that this poses risks. The long-standing goal was to provide liquidity and an exit route for whales through institutional investors, according to Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University Washington College of Law. “That exit may now have been provided,” Allen says.

Despite more than doubling the price of Bitcoin in the last two years, it has remained stagnant since entering 2025. Even US President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto rhetoric was not enough to push the price up.

Some analysts now predict that Bitcoin’s annual earnings potential could be capped at 10-20%. Arca CIO Jeff Dorman says, “Bitcoin could end up being a boring dividend stock over time. It’s going up a little bit every year, but the rate of return is going down.”

However, the picture is not completely clear. Not every whale movement can be tracked on-chain, and a new catalyst that could cause sudden changes in the market could emerge at any time.

According to 10x Research, in the past, when whale sales were at 2% (2018) and 9% (2022), there were major crashes of 74% and 64% respectively. In a similar scenario today, the market could be thrown into disequilibrium once institutional demand stalls.

“The market may be approaching its peak,” says Fred Thiel, CEO of bitcoin miner MARA Holdings. But he believes there is a different dynamic today.

Markus Thielen, CEO of 10x Research, says the transformation is long-term: “This process can take years. Bitcoin is now becoming an asset with a 10-20% return. Its nature is changing.”

*This is not investment advice.

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