The six-week war has split bitcoin market in two camps. The institutional buyers who continue to accumulate regardless of conditions and everyone else who leaves.
The result is a market that looks stable on the surface, where bitcoin has ranged from $65,000 to $73,000 through five weeks of conflicting headlines, $600 million liquidation events and the worst sentiment readings since the 2022 bear market, but is narrowing underneath in ways that matter for what comes next.
Here’s who’s on each side and what their behavior tells us about where the convictions actually sit.
The authorized buyers
Three entities account for almost all of the sustained buying pressure in the bitcoin market right now, and all three are buying because their business model demands it rather than because they’ve made a discretionary call on the price.
The strategy has been the most visible. The company disclosed its latest purchase on April 5, adding 4,871 BTC for approximately $329.9 million at an average of $67,718 per coin.
The total holding is now 766,970 BTC acquired for $58.02 billion at a mixed price of $75,644. The position is underwater by about 8% at current prices, but Strategy continues to buy below average, pulling the breakeven lower with each purchase.
A CoinDesk report last week showed Strategy’s 30-day accumulation holding steady at approximately 44,000 BTC through March.
Strategy’s STRC preferred stock product saw hundreds of millions in new inflows around its most recent ex-dividend date, providing capital for continued accumulation. As long as investors’ appetite for this yield product lasts, the strategy will continue to buy. If the STRC flows slowly, so does the bid.
Meanwhile, US spot bitcoin ETFs absorbed approximately 50,000 BTC in March’s 30-day rolling window, the highest monthly pace since October 2025.
But the broader ETF industry data tracked on a weekly basis tells a less bullish story. CoinShares reported just $22 million in US spot ETF inflows last week out of $107 million in total bitcoin ETP flows globally. Meanwhile, most flows came from one country – Swiss listed products alone pulled in $157 million, accounting for 70% of global ETP inflows of $224 million.
The institutional channel is open, but the flow is highly concentrated and decreases on a weekly basis.
Meanwhile, Bitmine Immersion Technologies, while primarily an ether play, represents the same structural dynamics on the ETH side.
The company bought 71,252 ETH last week, its biggest single-week purchase since December 2025, and now has 4.8 million tokens worth about $10 billion.
Chairman Tom Lee called the stock market bottom this week while his company actively spent hundreds of millions to accumulate the asset he publicly talked about.
The discretionary sellers
Everyone with a choice runs for the exit.
Whales with 1,000 to 10,000 BTC have gone from the market’s biggest buyers to biggest sellers. The one-year change in whale holdings has swung from around positive 200,000 BTC at the peak of the 2024 bull market to negative 188,000 BTC, a reversal of nearly 400,000 BTC, which CryptoQuant described as one of the most aggressive distribution cycles for large holders ever. The 365-day moving average continues to decline, confirming that the selloff is structural rather than reactive to a single event.
Mid-tier holders, wallets with 100 to 1,000 BTC, are technically still accumulating, but the pace has collapsed more than 60% since October 2025, from nearly 1 million BTC in annual additions to 429,000. They have not moved on to selling yet, but the process points in that direction.
Publicly traded bitcoin miners are liquidating the treasury. Riot Platforms, MARA Holdings and Genius Group disclosed selling more than 19,000 BTC from their treasuries in a single week earlier this month.
Some are facing operational strains, with bitcoin close to $70,000 and difficulties at all-time highs and rising energy costs. The likes of Core Scientific, Iris Energy and Hut 8 are turning capacity to AI hosting, where contract revenue replaces the volatility of mining revenue.
Bhutan, the only sovereign nation to build a bitcoin position through its own hydro-backed mining, has sold 70% of its holdings since October 2024, from around 13,000 BTC to 3,954. The Kingdom moved an additional 319.7 BTC to exchange-related wallets this week. Its last mining activity exceeding $100,000 was recorded over a year ago, suggesting that the operation may have stopped altogether. Strategy now buys more bitcoin in a typical week than Bhutan has left.
The mood gap
The gap between what mandate buyers do and what the rest of the market feels is historically unusual.
The Fear and Greed index spent over a month ranging from 8 to 14, the most sustained period in extreme fear territory since the trough in 2022. It only climbed out of the single digits this week after the ceasefire was announced.
Santiment data showed five bearish social media posts for every four bullish last weekend, the most negative bias since the war began.
Yet through all this, ETFs bought 50,000 BTC per month, Strategy bought 44,000, and bitcoin never broke below $65,000. The word stuck because the empowered buyers absorbed what the discretionary sellers dumped. The question is whether that absorption is sustainable.
What the Armistice Changed and What It Didn’t
The cease-fire announcement on Tuesday produced the sharpest one-day rally in over a month, with bitcoin surging above $72,000 and $427 million in shorts being liquidated. Open interest in BTC and ETH perpetuals expand by $2.1 billion and $2.2 billion respectively in 24 hours, with coin-denominated OI also rising, confirming net new long positions rather than just short liquidations.
Coinbase Premium turned positive for both bitcoin and ether for the first time since October’s all-time high, reversing months of sustained negative readings. If it holds, it will be the first sign of genuine American buyer re-engagement since the war began.
But the ceasefire has not changed the structural dynamics underneath. Whether that translates into a trend reversal depends on whether the two-week truce becomes permanent and whether the institutional currents that held the floor through the war can push through the $73,000 ceiling that has rejected every rally since late February.
In conclusion, a perusal of all the data is that bitcoin’s buyer base has been narrowing for months.
The number of devices that provide sustained buying pressure can be counted on one hand. Strategy, ETFs and to a lesser extent Morgan Stanley’s new channel. Everyone else is either selling, slowing down or leaving.
