Bitcoin drops 6.5% as old wallets dump, corporates keep buying

Bitcoin started September bleeding, falling 6.5% just as older wallets began emptying fast. On Friday, nearly 97,000 BTC was pushed out by long-term holders, the largest one-day dump of the year, according to Glassnode.

The entire surge came from coins that had been sitting tight for anywhere between six months and five years. That’s what sent the 14-day simple moving average (SMA) for long-term spending climbing.

Wallets holding coins for 1 to 2 years let go of 34,500 BTC. Another 16,600 BTC came from the 6 to 12-month range, and the 3 to 5-year-old wallets dumped 16,000 BTC.

That’s over 70% of the total sell volume from just three age groups. All that Bitcoin hit the market just as prices dropped to $108,000 Friday afternoon. But by Monday, it bounced back to over $109,000.

Companies keep stacking while Bitcoin trades lower

Even with the price dip, Bitcoin is still up more than 17% for the year. But price isn’t the headline anymore. What matters is who’s buying. This year’s real story is corporate. Both private and public companies have been loading up their treasuries with Bitcoin, and that trend just got louder.

The model came straight from Michael Saylor, whose firm, Strategy (MSTR), formerly known as MicroStrategy, was the first to throw corporate weight behind the asset.

Now, that playbook has been copied by at least 180 other firms. And of those, around 25% were trading below the value of their Bitcoin holdings as of August 22, based on data from Capriole Investments. The situation’s getting strange enough that buying shares in these companies is basically buying cheap Bitcoin, sometimes cheaper than market price.

In July, public companies alone bought up nearly two-thirds of all the Bitcoin acquired by major players—ETPs, governments, corporates, everybody.

Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, Managing Director at JPMorgan, said the effect of these new buyers is already being felt. He believes this wave could make Bitcoin “more attractive from a valuation point of view,” adding that falling volatility may even make it a stronger challenger to gold. The steadier the buying, the more likely Bitcoin is to keep showing up in portfolios that used to only hold metals and fiat.

Corporate treasuries are also holding Ether, and even smaller names are getting attention. Just last week, Trump Media Group announced it would partner with Crypto.com to launch Trump Media Group CRO Strategy. That company will manage Cronos (CRO-USD), Crypto.com’s in-house blockchain token. Since the Tuesday announcement, CRO’s market cap has jumped to $9 billion.

The buying surge and political greenlight are unfolding while the U.S. economy sits in the shadow of quantitative easing. The Fed used it during COVID and the 2008 crash, pumping the economy with money to avoid collapse. Critics have long called it “money printing,” warning it fuels risky behavior and pushes bubbles higher.

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