Everyone Is Selling Bitcoin to Buy Rockets. The Smart Money Is Doing the Opposite.
Money is rotating out of Bitcoin and into the biggest IPO in history. But while retail panics, the wealthiest Bitcoin holders are quietly buying everything they can. Who is going to be right?
Two Very Different Stories, Same Asset
Depending on which numbers you look at this week, Bitcoin is either in serious trouble or sitting in one of the best buying windows in years. The strange thing is both are true.
The price is down more than 50% from its all-time high. The people who bought Bitcoin ETFs after Trump won the election have made nothing — all those gains have been wiped out. Inflation just hit a three-year high. The Federal Reserve is now more likely to raise interest rates than cut them. Google searches for “Bitcoin to zero” just broke their all-time record. And this week, the biggest stock market listing in history launched, pulling enormous amounts of money away from Bitcoin and into a rocket company.
At the same time: the wealthiest, most sophisticated Bitcoin investors just bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth at the low and locked it away in cold storage. The UK’s financial regulator proposed opening the door for mainstream pension funds and ISAs to hold Bitcoin. Japan’s three largest banks announced they’re building a stablecoin together. The most important piece of US crypto legislation in history still has a 60% chance of passing this year. And Michael Saylor — the man who has bought more Bitcoin than anyone on earth — says the selloff has nothing to do with Bitcoin itself.
So what is actually going on? Let’s take each side seriously.
Why the Money Left: Rockets, Robots, and the Biggest IPO Ever
Michael Saylor released a video on June 4 explaining his view of what’s been happening. His argument was simple: this isn’t a Bitcoin problem. It’s a competition for cash problem.
Think about what’s been happening in the technology world this year. Every major company on the planet is pouring money into artificial intelligence. Building data centres the size of small towns. Buying computing chips by the shipload. Wiring up AI infrastructure at a pace and scale the world has never seen. Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta alone have committed to spend over $600 billion in 2026, most of it on AI. That money has to come from somewhere.
Then, on top of that, three of the most hyped companies in a generation all decided to go public at the same time. SpaceX — Elon Musk’s rocket company, which we wrote about recently after it disclosed $1.3 billion in Bitcoin on its balance sheet — priced its IPO on June 11. The largest stock market listing in recorded history. Four times more demand than shares available. Then OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT — filed its paperwork. Then Anthropic. All three targeting listings worth hundreds of billions of dollars each.
When opportunities like that arrive, big institutional investors — pension funds, hedge funds, asset managers — need to raise cash quickly to participate. And to raise cash, you sell whatever you’re already holding. Stocks. Bonds. And yes, Bitcoin.
Saylor’s point is that investors aren’t selling Bitcoin because they’ve stopped believing in it. They’re selling it because they need the money for something else right now. It’s like selling your gold to buy a house. The gold hasn’t become worthless. You just need the cash today.
He warned it could continue for a while yet. OpenAI and Anthropic still haven’t listed. The AI spending wave shows no sign of slowing. “This is going to be the biggest year of IPOs and equity issuance in our lifetime,” he said.
There is one small irony worth mentioning. Saylor made this argument in the same week his own company, Strategy, sold a small amount of Bitcoin for the first time since 2022 — not out of panic, but to cover a routine dividend payment. The amount was tiny. But the market reacted as though the world was ending, triggering a wave of forced selling that sent Bitcoin crashing below $60,000. Strategy bought the dip the following week. But the episode showed how fragile the market had become, and how much it had been leaning on Saylor as a permanent buyer.
Why the Smart Money Is Buying: Whales, the FCA, and Japan
Here’s the thing about panic. It creates opportunities for people who aren’t panicking.
While retail investors were selling and Google was filling up with “Bitcoin to zero” searches, a different group was doing the opposite. On-chain data — which tracks what’s actually happening on the Bitcoin network in real time — tells a striking story. In the five days after Bitcoin hit its low near $60,000, the largest and most sophisticated Bitcoin holders accounted for more than 60% of all the buying. They then took roughly $700 million worth of Bitcoin off exchanges and moved it into cold storage — meaning they have no intention of selling it any time soon.
This pattern has appeared near every major Bitcoin bottom since 2018. The small investors panic and sell. The big investors quietly buy everything they can. It doesn’t tell you exactly when the recovery comes. But it tells you very clearly who thinks prices are cheap right now.
While that was happening, two pieces of regulatory news arrived that barely made a ripple in the mainstream coverage.
The first was from the UK. The Financial Conduct Authority — the FCA, the body that regulates financial products in Britain — published a proposal this week that would allow mainstream investment funds to hold up to 10% of their assets in crypto products. We’re talking about the funds that sit inside your pension, your ISA, your workplace savings scheme. If this proposal goes through, every mainstream fund manager in the UK could put a slice of your retirement savings into Bitcoin exposure.
To understand how significant that is, consider the timeline. Just eight months ago, the FCA lifted a four-year ban on retail investors even accessing crypto products. Then in April this year, Bitcoin products became eligible to hold inside tax-free ISAs. Now they’re proposing to open the entire mainstream fund sector. The speed of that progression is remarkable. The consultation closes July 13 — so this is very live right now.
The second piece of news came from Japan. The country’s three largest banks — institutions that together manage more money than most countries’ entire economies — formally agreed this week to launch a joint digital yen stablecoin by March 2027. This isn’t a research paper. It’s a signed agreement with a commercial launch date. The world’s financial infrastructure is quietly being rebuilt around digital assets, week by week, regardless of what the price chart is doing.
The Lawsuit That Woke Up 14-Year-Old Bitcoin
There’s one more story this week that’s either completely irrelevant or potentially the most dramatic legal event in Bitcoin’s history. Nobody knows which yet — but it’s worth knowing about.
Back in March, someone filed a lawsuit in New York trying to claim legal ownership of roughly 3.8 million Bitcoin — worth around $285 billion — sitting in tens of thousands of wallets that haven’t been touched in years. The argument: the coins have been abandoned, so lost property law should apply.
This week, a wallet that had been completely untouched since 2011 — back when Bitcoin was worth less than a dollar — suddenly moved its coins. Then another dormant wallet moved. Both owners had apparently been notified about the lawsuit via an unusual method: tiny amounts of Bitcoin sent to their wallets with a legal message embedded in the transaction.
The lawsuit is almost certainly going nowhere. Courts aren’t designed for this. But the fact that people who haven’t touched their Bitcoin in 14 years are now moving it to protect it tells you something interesting: those coins aren’t lost. The owners are still out there. Still watching. Still very much not interested in giving them up.
So Which Way Does the Elastic Snap?
Here’s the honest answer: nobody knows exactly when. But the direction has a logic to it.
The things pushing Bitcoin down right now are mostly temporary. The AI fundraising wave will eventually slow. The mega-IPO queue will clear. The Iran conflict will eventually resolve — one way or another — and oil prices will come off the boil. When inflation eases, the Fed gets room to cut rates. When rates fall, the conditions that drove Bitcoin to its all-time high of $126,000 come back.
The things building beneath the surface are not temporary. The FCA opening UK pension funds to Bitcoin doesn’t reverse. Japan’s stablecoin infrastructure doesn’t get unbuilt. The Clarity Act, if it passes, doesn’t get unpassed. Strategy’s 845,000 Bitcoin doesn’t get unsold. The whales who bought $700 million at $60,000 and locked it in cold storage aren’t selling at $62,000.
The gap between what Bitcoin’s price says right now and what its structural story says has rarely been wider. That gap is the elastic. The price is depressed by temporary forces. The underlying demand is building from permanent ones.
The Fear and Greed Index hit its lowest reading in months this week — lower even than during the FTX collapse in 2022. Every time it has been this low in previous cycles, it has marked the territory where the pain was closest to ending. Not the exact bottom. Not immediately. But the zone where patient buyers are eventually proved right.
The elastic is stretched. Something has to give.
Three things to watch over the next three weeks: the Fed decides on rates on June 17, the FCA consultation on Bitcoin in pension funds closes July 13, and the Clarity Act is pushing for a Senate floor vote before the August recess. I’ll cover each one as it happens. Make sure you’re subscribed.