Are Bitcoins Really Flowing from Retail Buyers to Institutions? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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Are Bitcoins Really Flowing from Retail Buyers to Institutions?

408 sats \ 8 comments \ @spiderman 21h bitcoin

Coins are moving from retailers to institutions

Retailers are the ones selling, institutions are the ones buying

It seems like these two have been parts of a consistent narrative for past one year, may be more. Just wondering whether there are conclusive/objective references/research supporting this.

I mean these narratives are very often peddled by shills (on YouTube or elsewhere) with an ulterior aim to create FOMO or FUD because someone needs to sell something. But is there any objective research supporting the assertions?

I mean beyond the usual anecdotes of what MSTR or Metaplanet are doing, nobody really has access to global data, right? Even when an institution like Blackrock is buying, it is for their clients, which, to me, seems retail ownership nonetheless.

So I am genuinely curious on whether there are objective research or reference supporting the narrative.

Also, related, if individuals selling can really satisfy the appetites of institutional buyers, those individuals must be real whales, not a 10,000 sats owner like me. That suggests real OGs, who were in it from the beginning. Why would they let it go at this point? If so, does it suggest BTC has peaked?

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333 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 19h

Here's Glassnode's chart of new addresses. The red line is the 30D moving average.

Whoever is buying right now is either 1. keeping their coins with the exchange (not creating new addresses) or 2. keeping large numbers of coins per address (not a small buyer).

So if the small retailers are buying en masse, they are doing so on exchanges and via ETFs and not holding self-custody.

It's really hard to find out how many individuals hold their BTC on an exchange...this Bitcoin.com news article about a shitcoin wallet claims that "researchers from the University of Illinois report that self-custody wallets now hold over 35% of total crypto supply, compared to 25% in 2022." It doesn't have any citations...but maybe this implies like 65% of retail investors choose to use exchanges?

There's this MarketWatch report (citing a Nydig report form december 2024) that says "Retail investors were the largest owners of bitcoin ETFs, accounting for $77.9 billion, or 74% of the asset under management by such products as of Dec. 31, 2024"

As far as big buyers:

This Coinshares report says that corporate holdings of BTC have increased 18.76% YTD. The report also notes that "institutional investors retain a 22.9% share of total US Bitcoin ETF AUM."

121 sats \ 0 replies \ @bitcoingecko 21h

BTC is far from peaking. The amount of people that really know nothing about bitcoin other than the name is most people in this world. Bitcoin is a global asset that can't be stopped. No reason to worry. Nothing fundamentally has changed since the beginning. Bitcoin has only become easier to use over time. It feels slow, but we are over 100k now.

95 sats \ 0 replies \ @d680ecaa8e 18h

One thousand satoshis is small budget but it is better from clicking PTC ads to win satoshis. It could be staking related offer earnings.

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @teemupleb 12h

That suggests real OGs, who were in it from the beginning. Why would they let it go at this point?

From anecdotal evidence, there are a lot of OGs who don’t really understand Bitcoin and often bought it “by accident” or out of curiosity or because their financial advisor suggested it in circa 2011-2016.

Now they might be cashing out to buy that dream house, car, yacht or just for comfortable retirement.

5 sats \ 2 replies \ @stack_harder 18h

This cycle definitely feels like it's been mostly institutional. the average pleb is still as clueless and uninformed as ever, still spouting the same nonsense. Meanwhile, the big boys just keep buying and doing portfolio rebalancing.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @spiderman OP 16h

But previous cycles had no institutional effect? The average plagues were buying in the previous cycles then? What drove average plebs away then?

111 sats \ 0 replies \ @teemupleb 12h

Alex Mashinsky drove the plebs away

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @standard_sats 17h

Besides GBTC supply, bitcoin was always people's business not institutions.