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In a explainer video, Joe Burnett, Director of Market Research at the Bitcoin-native financial services firm Unchained, dissects what many retail traders still perceive as a paradox: how Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) can accumulate “tens of thousands of Bitcoins” without catapulting the spot price into a vertical climb. Burnett’s core argument is that Michael Saylor’s billion-dollar shopping sprees are not the direct injection of fresh demand they appear to be, but rather a sophisticated reallocation of existing exposure within the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Why Is Bitcoin Not Skyrocketing?
Burnett opens by reminding viewers that Bitcoin’s explosive move “from the $16,000 lows of 2022 to $95,000 today” has historically been accompanied by the awakening of dormant supply. He points to on-chain “hodl wave” data, noting that when price accelerates, “older coins start to move,” a signal that seasoned holders are willing to part with inventory into strength. Those coins, he says, “transfer…to new hands,” a cohort he defines broadly as “Strategy, ETF buyers, institutions, nation-states, and of course, more individuals.”
Strategy sits squarely in that cohort, yet Burnett stresses that the software company’s trading style is calibrated to minimize market disturbance. “They use a disciplined, patient strategy, placing thousands or even millions of small buy orders over several days,” he says, quoting Saylor’s own public comments that the firm prefers letting “sellers come to them without bidding against themselves.” The tactic allows long-term, arguably less-price-sensitive holders to exchange coins for cash without triggering runaway order-book imbalances.
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The video’s analytical pivot arrives when Burnett introduces what he calls an “additional theory” on why Strategy’s purchases fail to ignite parabolic price action: the funding structure. He unpacks it with a simple but pointed analogy. “If you sell one Bitcoin on Kraken and buy one Bitcoin on Coinbase, what happens to the price? Nothing,” he states. “That’s an economically neutral trade.” According to Burnett, Strategy’s balance-sheet maneuvers replicate that neutrality on a corporate scale.
When the firm raises cash by issuing new equity, “someone buys that stock instead of buying Bitcoin,” Burnett explains. Strategy then turns the equity proceeds into spot BTC. “Net effect? A shift in exposure. No net new demand.” The same mechanics, he argues, apply to the company’s convertible-note programs. Hedge funds that subscribe to the notes simultaneously hedge by short-selling MSTR shares, expanding float rather than siphoning dollars from unrelated asset classes. “In both cases… the dollars that flow into Bitcoin are first pulled out of a Bitcoin proxy, MSTR shares,” he says, underscoring the zero-sum nature of the flow.
New Demand Is Needed
Burnett likens the dynamic to the cash migration that followed the launch of US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in early 2024. Billions poured into products from BlackRock and Fidelity, but “billions also flowed out of GBTC,” he notes, leaving aggregate demand for Bitcoin largely unchanged: “From A to B. Not new demand.”
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What, then, would constitute price-moving capital? Burnett’s answer is unequivocal: money that “enters Bitcoin without exiting another Bitcoin proxy.” He cites hypotheticals ranging from Apple’s treasury to sovereign wealth funds, or individuals reallocating real-estate and bond holdings directly into BTC. Against that benchmark, Strategy’s transactions look more like intra-system plumbing than fresh inflows.
None of this, Burnett emphasizes, should be read as criticism of Saylor. He calls the Strategy chairman “a world-class Bitcoin educator” whose accumulation strategy is “brilliant.” Yet the market impact, Burnett cautions, “is more nuanced than [it may] appear.” In fact, he suggests that the upcoming Saylor-branded STRF funds—which target fixed-income investors rather than equity buyers—could deliver the genuine outside capital that finally “sends the price of Bitcoin parabolic.”
Until such exogenous demand materializes, the Bitcoin market is likely to keep absorbing Strategy’s billion-dollar bids with surprising calm. In Burnett’s words, “Saylor can buy a lot of Bitcoin without moving the price much because he’s buying from long-term wealthy holders and doing so in a way that minimizes short-term price impact.” For traders who expected fireworks each time the software company files a new 8-K, that explanation may prove as sobering as it is illuminating.
At press time, BTC traded at $94,971.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
