Whales Are Selling Bitcoin, Companies Are Absorbing All the Sales! What Does It Mean? Analysts Are Warning

A quiet yet effective power shift is taking place in the Bitcoin market. While whales holding large amounts of BTC in the $2.1 trillion BTC ecosystem are putting their assets up for sale, institutional investors such as exchange-traded funds (ETF), corporate treasuries, and asset managers are absorbing a significant portion of these sales.

According to 10x Research’s data, in the past year, whales have sold over 500,000 Bitcoins. This amount is nearly equal to the net BTC amount entering the ETFs approved in the US, and it is quite close to the approximately 65 billion dollar BTC portfolio that MicroStrategy, now known as "Strategy", has accumulated over the last five years.

However, these sell-offs are keeping Bitcoin's price stuck at around 110,000 dollars. Despite the increasing institutional demand, volatility is gradually decreasing, and Bitcoin is transforming from a speculative asset with high-profit hopes into an allocation tool that is part of long-term portfolios.

Parataxis Capital co-founder Edward Chin states, "We are seeing a movement at the bottom," indicating that this transformation is due to some whales using their BTC as collateral in stock-linked transactions.

According to Flipside Crypto, in 2020, 95% of Bitcoin was held by only 2% of wallet groups. However, today, a wide range of institutions from ETFs to MicroStrategy and other corporate companies hold 4.8 million of the approximately 20 million Bitcoins in circulation, which is almost a quarter.

According to Rob Strebel, the manager of Cumberland, DRW's crypto arm, this development is transforming crypto into a mainstream asset class and is bringing about a decrease in volatility. Indeed, Deribit's 30-day BTC Volatility Index has fallen to its lowest levels in the last two years.

However, experts warn that this situation carries certain risks. According to Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University Washington College of Law, the long-term goal has been to provide liquidity to whales through institutional investors and to create an exit opportunity. "Now that exit may have been provided," says Allen.

Despite the fact that the price of Bitcoin has more than doubled in the last two years, it has been stagnant since entering 2025. Even the pro-crypto statements of U.S. President Donald Trump have not been enough to push the price up.

Some analysts now predict that Bitcoin's annual profit potential may be limited to a range of 10-20%. Arca's CIO Jeff Dorman states, "Bitcoin may now become like a boring dividend stock over time. It rises a little more each year, but the rate of return gradually decreases."

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

According to 10x Research, when whale sales occurred at rates of %2 (2018) and %9 (2022) in the past, significant crashes of %74 and %64 were experienced respectively. Today, in a similar scenario, the market could be driven into instability the moment institutional demand stalls.

MARA Holdings' CEO Fred Thiel, a Bitcoin miner, says, "The market may be approaching its peak." However, he believes there is a different dynamic at play today.

Markus Thielen, the CEO of 10x Research, states that the transformation is long-term: "This process may take years. Bitcoin is becoming an asset with a return of 10-20%. Its nature is changing."