Six weeks of war have divided bitcoin market on two sides. The institutional buyers who continue to accumulate regardless of conditions, and everyone else who leaves.
The result is a market that appears stable on the surface, with bitcoin holding a range of $65,000 to $73,000 through five weeks of conflicting headlines, $600 million sell-off events, and the worst sentiment readings since the 2022 bear market, but that 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 conviction really lies.
Mandatory buyers
Three entities represent almost all of the sustained buying pressure in the bitcoin market right now, and all three are buying because their business model requires it and not because they have made a discretionary decision on price.
The strategy has been the most visible. The company revealed its latest purchase on April 5, adding 4,871 BTC for approximately $329.9 million at an average of $67,718 per coin.
Total holdings now stand at 766,970 BTC acquired for $58.02 billion at a combined cost base of $75,644. The position is down about 8% at current prices, but Strategy continues to buy below its average, lowering the breakeven point with each purchase.
A report from CoinDesk last week showed that Strategy’s 30-day accumulation remained stable at approximately 44,000 BTC through March.
Strategy’s STRC preferred stock product saw hundreds of millions in new inflows around its recent ex-dividend date, providing the capital for continued accumulation. As long as investor appetite for that performance product remains, Strategy will continue to buy. If STRC inflows are slow, so is supply.
Meanwhile, US spot bitcoin ETFs absorbed roughly 50,000 BTC in the March 30-day rolling window, the highest monthly pace since October 2025.
But broader ETF industry data tracked weekly tells a less rosy story. CoinShares last week reported just $22 million in US spot ETF inflows out of a total of $107 million in total bitcoin ETP flows globally. Meanwhile, the majority of flows came from a single country: Swiss-listed products raised just $157 million, representing 70% of the global ETP inflow of $224 million.
The institutional channel is open but the flow is very concentrated and slows down weekly.
Meanwhile, Bitmine Immersion Technologies, although primarily an ether play, represents the same structural dynamic on the ETH side.
The company bought 71,252 ETH last week, its largest single-week purchase since December 2025, and now owns 4.8 million tokens worth about $10 billion.
Chairman Tom Lee called the stock market bottoming this week as his company actively spent hundreds of millions accumulating the asset he talked about publicly.
discretionary sellers
Everyone who has a choice runs for the exit.
Whales holding between 1,000 and 10,000 BTC have gone from being the market’s biggest buyers to its biggest sellers. The one-year swing in whale holdings has gone from roughly 200,000 positive BTC at the peak of the 2024 bull market to negative 188,000 BTC, a nearly 400,000 BTC reversal that CryptoQuant described as one of the most aggressive large holder distribution cycles on record. The 365-day moving average continues to fall, confirming that the selling is structural and not reactive to a single event.
Mid-tier holders, wallets with between 100 and 1,000 BTC, are technically still accumulating, but the pace has plummeted more than 60% since October 2025, from nearly 1 million BTC in annual additions to 429,000. They have not started selling yet, but the trajectory points in that direction.
Publicly traded bitcoin miners are liquidating the treasury. Riot Platforms, MARA Holdings, and Genius Group revealed that they sold more than 19,000 BTC from their treasuries in a single week earlier this month.
Some face operational strains, with bitcoin near $70,000 and struggling at record highs and rising energy costs. Companies such as Core Scientific, Iris Energy and Hut 8 are shifting their capacity to AI hosting, where contracted revenue replaces the volatility of mining revenue.
Bhutan, the only sovereign nation to build a position in bitcoin through its own hydropower-backed mining operation, has sold 70% of its holdings since October 2024, from about 13,000 BTC to 3,954. The kingdom moved another 319.7 BTC to exchange-linked wallets this week. Its last mining entry exceeding $100,000 was recorded more than a year ago, suggesting that the operation may have stopped completely. Strategy now buys more bitcoins in a typical week than Bhutan has left.
The sentiment gap
The gap between what mandatory buyers do and what the rest of the market feels is historically unusual.
The Fear and Greed Index spent more than a month between 8 and 14, the most sustained period in extreme fear territory since the 2022 low. It only breached single digits this week after the ceasefire was announced.
Santiment data showed five bearish social media posts for every four bullish ones last weekend, the most negative bias since the war began.
However, despite all that, ETFs bought 50,000 BTC a month, Strategy bought 44,000, and bitcoin never went below $65,000. The floor held because mandatory buyers were absorbing what discretionary sellers were undoing. The question is whether this absorption is sustainable.
What the ceasefire changed and what it didn’t
Tuesday’s ceasefire announcement produced the sharpest single-day rally in more than a month, with bitcoin surpassing $72,000 and liquidating $427 million in short positions. Open interest in BTC and ETH perpetuals expands by $2.1 billion and $2.2 billion respectively in 24 hours, and coin-denominated OI also rises, confirming new net long positions rather than just short liquidations.
The Coinbase premium turned positive for both bitcoin and ether for the first time since October’s all-time high, reversing months of persistent negative readings. If it holds, it will be the first sign of a genuine new commitment to American buyers since the war began.
But the ceasefire has not changed the underlying structural dynamics. Whether it becomes a trend reversal depends on whether the two-week truce becomes permanent and whether the institutional flows that held the floor during the war can surpass the $73,000 ceiling that has rejected all rallies since late February.
In conclusion, a reading of all the data is that the bitcoin buyer base has been shrinking for months.
The number of entities exerting sustained buying pressure can be counted on one hand. Strategy, ETFs and to a lesser extent the new Morgan Stanley channel. Everyone else is selling, slowing down or exiting.
