That’s not exactly news to frustrated bitcoiners bulls risking assets across the planet for months have recorded what appear to be daily record highs, while price action in BTC remains fairly muted.
“What if everyone’s looking at this wrong,” asks longtime traditional financial asset manager Jordi Visser in a heavily shared (1.5 million views by X and counting) weekend essay titled “Bitcoin’s Silent IPO: Why This Consolidation Isn’t What You Think.”
While bitcoin never had a traditional IPO, the factors that limit capital gains are almost exactly the same as those that cause poor price performance in stock IPOs, Visser argues.
Tradfi IPOs and the months that follow Visser reminds us that – especially in tech – are big liquidity events for early investors.
“Early-stage investors take huge risks,” Visser wrote. “If the investment succeeds, they deserve huge rewards. But ultimately, and this is crucial, they need to realize those gains. They need liquidity. They need an exit. They need to diversify.”
The examples, especially in technology, are legion, but consider the Facebook (now Meta) IPO in 2012. The offering at $38 per stock raised $16 billion for a valuation of $104 billion — odd numbers today, but staggering amounts at the time. A year later, the stock was down 30%, and experts are questioning Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership.
More likely than Zuck’s missteps, it was early investors—be they his Harvard buddies or Silicon Valley types or the carpenters who framed Facebook’s first offices (who took salaries in stock instead of cash)—using public markets to realize life-changing profits.
It is important, says Visser, that the early investors do not hit the bid all at once. “They’re methodically allocating their positions. They’re cautious. They don’t want to crater the price. They’re patient. They’ve been waiting years for this moment. They can wait a few more months to get it right.”
The result, he says, “A sideways grind that drives everyone crazy.” Does that sound familiar?
Economic forces do not disappear
“The on-chain data tells a clear story if you know how to read it,” says Visser, turning to bitcoin. “Old coins, coins that haven’t moved for years, some dormant since the single-digit pricing days, are suddenly active.”
The ETFs, the institutional adoption, the friendly regulatory environment… this created IPO-like conditions for bitcoin’s early believers.
“For years, the liquidity was simply non-existent,” he wrote. “Try selling $100 million in bitcoin in 2015. You’d crater the price. Try selling $1 billion in 2019. Same problem. The market couldn’t absorb it.”
“But now,” he continued. “ETFs provide institutional bids. Larger companies have bitcoin on their balance sheets. Sovereign wealth funds are getting involved. The market has finally matured to the point where early holders can exit significant positions without causing chaos.”
Again, Visser reminds, it won’t be done all at once – no one is interested in crashing the price. But instead, steady and methodical: hence the sideways grind and the rallies that turn so quickly.
Patience required
What is happening now is hardly something that can be called a bear market, says Visser, but rather a distribution of ownership.
In the long run, this is a bullish event, but the process – at least in traditional markets – can take 6-18 months. Although cycles are often set up in crypto, Visser suspects there could be many more months of this frustrating price action in bitcoin.
“Sentiment will only improve after the distribution is essentially complete,” he wrote. “People are demoralized because they don’t understand what phase we’re in. They’re waiting for bitcoin to ‘catch up’ to stocks. They’re worried about the four-year cycle. Be patient. Once the heavy selling pressure lifts, once the institutional patient backlog has absorbed the OG supply, the way will become clearer.”
