Why Michael Saylor Can’t Pump Bitcoin. (Until This Happens)

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Michael Saylor just keeps buying Bitcoin. Strategy, his company, now owns 818,000 Bitcoin. And every time he buys, crypto holders assume that the price has to go straight up. But look at the chart.

[00:00:15]Sometimes it does, others it barely moves, and sometimes it even crashes.

[00:00:21]So, what does it mean when the world's largest Bitcoin holder just can't seem to push the price higher when he's spending a billions of dollars each week? Well, today I'm going to show you exactly why this issue exists, put all the claims to bed once and for all, and what has to change before Bitcoin and the altcoins actually start moving, and importantly, why this issue affects more than just Saylor. I'm talking, of course, about the ETFs.

[00:00:54]So, what is actually happening here?

[00:00:57]Well, picture Bitcoin as water in a bathtub. The water level is the price.

[00:01:02]The tap is the buyers, Saylor, the ETFs, the institutions. Now, the drain is the sellers. The water level only rises when buyers are forced to chase more expensive sellers. As long as cheap sellers keep showing up, the level stays flat. The tap can be running hard, but if the drain is open at the same time, the water level will barely move. So, one thing's for certain, for Bitcoin to actually explode, the tap has to stay on and the drain has to close. Now, while this explanation is quite simple and obvious to some, it begins our journey into part of the reason that Saylor can't seem to pump Bitcoin even though he's the biggest single buyer in Bitcoin's history. So, let me show you something that's going to change the way that you watch every Saylor buy announcement from this point forward because it's nothing like you've been told. Michael Saylor's company, Strategy, does not buy like us retail folk. If you or I want to buy Bitcoin, we open the Binance app, we hit buy, and that's about it. But Saylor's buys often run hundreds of millions of dollars at a time, and even billions. If he hit that same buy button on Binance, he would tear straight through every retail seller on the order book, the price of Bitcoin would jump hard on Binance's exchange, he would likely even end up overpaying by tens of millions of dollars, and the price would just likely immediately fall back down to similar places where he was buying originally because arbitrage traders fill gaps between Bitcoin's price on different exchanges. Now, that's the last thing he wants. So, instead of buying the way that you or I would, he just hands the entire job over to Coinbase. Back in 2020, Coinbase actually published a case study explaining exactly how they bought Bitcoin for Strategy. A few hundred big orders from Saylor's team were quietly broken down by Coinbase's computers into 200,000 tiny purchases averaging less than 0.3 Bitcoin each. These tiny purchases are spread across different exchanges and bought at different times of the day, sometimes even being days apart. That's how he avoids spiking the price of Bitcoin with huge buys on a single exchange, but I know what some of you were thinking. That still doesn't make sense. 200,000 small buyers is still 200,000 buyers. The total money buying Bitcoin is still hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. Why doesn't that alone pump the price? Well, it's not just the size of each order that matters, it's patience. When you and I want to buy Bitcoin, we click buy at market, which is essentially, I don't care what the price of Bitcoin is, just give me the damn Bitcoin. So, the exchange walks up the line of sellers, taking the cheapest first, then the next cheapest, then the next, and price climbs as it goes. That is actually what pumps the price. Now, Saylor's algorithm does the exact opposite. It says, "I'm not in a rush. I'll buy in tiny pieces and slow down when sellers start wanting more expensive prices." So, instead of forcing the market to meet his demand, the algorithm that Coinbase works with just sits and waits for ordinary sellers to walk into Saylor's standing offer on their own terms. Whether that's long-term holders cashing out in profit or miners selling to keep the lights on or funds rebalancing, even maybe random traders taking a win. All of those everyday sellers, what they do is they hit Saylor's standing offer one tiny piece at a time. And on top of that, it's spread across days, sometimes even weeks. That is why a billion-dollar Saylor buy can hit the news and the chart barely flinches. You've also got to account for what's called OTC desks, or over-the-counter desks, which can also pair Saylor's huge buys with other big sellers. So, look, at the end of the day, if the money is real and the Bitcoin is actually real, and those coins are really changing hands, then who's keeping the bathtub's drain open and selling to Saylor? The answer is uncomfortable because if huge buys keep buying without the price exploding, it means that sellers are still happy to hand them coins at this price. And right now, two groups are doing exactly that, and it's very important you understand who these are. First, long-term holders.

[00:05:46]These are the people who bought Bitcoin months or even years ago, some at 2,000 or even 10,000 dollars, but many at much higher prices during last year's run-up.

[00:05:56]But here's where things get interesting.

[00:05:57]According to a recent Glassnode report, long-term holders aren't even taking profit anymore. They're now capitulating, realizing roughly 200 million dollars in losses every single day. The mechanism is the same, old coins hitting Saylor's standing offer, but instead of cashing out gains, they are taking on losses. Second, the miners. Miners create roughly 450 brand new Bitcoin every single day, but bills don't get paid in the Bitcoin. They need to sell some of their production to cover electricity, machines, and payroll. Now, what's truly insane about this is that in the first 3 months of 2026 alone, public miners dumped over 32,000 Bitcoin. That's more than they sold in the entirety of 2025 combined.

[00:06:48]Miners are now the most concentrated and predictable leak keeping the drain open.

[00:06:55]So, this is the uncomfortable reality of the situation. Saylor isn't failing us at anything. He's just been soaking up the coins from holders and miners who would otherwise be hitting the market sending us much lower. So, while he may not be contributing to higher prices based on how he buys, he is giving us additional support. And look, in a bull market, that same kind of absorption keeps the next floor higher than it otherwise would be. But that's not quite the end of the story because half of the biggest buying force in this market, the spot Bitcoin ETF share keep seeing celebrated in the headlines, is actually not what you think it is, and this is extremely important to understand. See, the thing is, when people see a headline like, "Bitcoin ETFs pulled in 500 million dollars today," they assume every dollar is someone making a pure bullish bet on Bitcoin. Now, sometimes it is, but often it's actually not. A lot, now I mean a lot, of that ETF money comes from hedge funds running what's called a basis trade. Sounds fancy, but it's actually just a simple math trick.

[00:08:08]Real Bitcoin has one price, and that's called spot. Bitcoin futures has another. Those are the bets on Bitcoin's future price. Now, futures usually trade at a small premium because traders pay extra to lock in a price today for the future. Hedge funds spot that little gap, so they do two things at once. They buy the Bitcoin ETF on one side, which again is today's spot price, and they short Bitcoin's futures on the other side, betting that the future price will fall. Now, Bitcoin can pump or it can dump, they don't really care. The two bets mostly cancel out, and the hedge fund pockets the small gap between those prices. All you really need to remember is that these hedge funds are not buying the ETF because they're hodlers like you and I. They are buying to take advantage of this system. 10X Research estimated that only about 44% of US spot Bitcoin ETF buying has been from actual people wanting to hold Bitcoin long-term. The other 56% was closer to this kind of hedge fund math trick. But the effects that this game has on the market when it stops working is serious. Because in early 2026, that's exactly what happened. The math trick stopped being profitable, and those same hedge funds immediately turned around and pulled their money out of the ETFs, which is why you saw massive outflows, which helped push prices down faster. That is why the ETF inflow headlines can overstate how bullish the actual money is. Now, let me get one thing clear, the inflows, the actual money coming in, is not fake at all, but it's the conviction behind a lot of them that is, and it can quickly turn just as fast as it came in. Now, on the topic of and deception, there's one popular chart we've all seen that could be doing more harm than good. The chart is Bitcoin leaving exchanges. And the saying goes, when the line goes down, we all know what that means. A supply shock is coming because, well, Bitcoin is disappearing off exchanges. And to be fair, Bitcoin actually leaving exchanges can be very bullish. Less Bitcoin is technically available to dump, which means fewer sellers in the way, and therefore price can accelerate much faster. But, in the ETF era, there is an important caveat we do have to talk about. Where is all of this Bitcoin going? Well, the thing is, when someone buys a spot Bitcoin ETF, BlackRock or Fidelity have to go out and buy real Bitcoin to obviously back those shares.

[00:10:46]They may pull it off an exchange, then they park it in their ETF vault. So, yes, exchange balances drop, but the Bitcoin doesn't disappear.

[00:10:55]What's happening is it's technically just moving next door.

[00:10:59]Here's what I mean.

[00:11:00]Most of the time, the exchange and their vault are actually run by the same company. When BlackRock buys Bitcoin for IBIT, those coins are held by Coinbase Custody. So, Bitcoin leaves the part of Coinbase you can see on the chart, but it lands in the part of Coinbase you can't. It's the same building, but just accessed via a different door. In July 2025, the SEC made this even more direct. They approved something called in-kind creation, meaning the middleman can deliver Bitcoin straight to BlackRock and Fidelity without it ever touching a public exchange at all. The exchange wallet still drops on the chart, but the Bitcoin still ends up in the exact same place. This is exactly why exchange reserves have been in a huge downtrend since January 2024. It's exactly when the first spot Bitcoin ETFs were launched. Glassnode actually put some real numbers on this. Exchange balances have dropped to around 2.7 million Bitcoin, but when they added the Bitcoin sitting in ETF custody, basically Coinbase's institutional vault, the combined number stayed roughly flat at 3 million BTC, meaning we really haven't seen too many outflows. Now, in the long term, this is of course still bullish. We are still net seeing Bitcoin leaving both exchanges and the ETFs. I need to importantly remind you, ETF Bitcoin is held by investors, pension funds, retirement accounts, financial advisers building long-term portfolios. These kind of people who don't really panic sell on every red candle. So, the supply is sitting in hands that are much slower and likely don't really want to sell, unlike many of the coins that are potentially sitting with retail on exchanges. But, it's not necessarily the instant supply shock myself and many others once thought. So, what actually changes the picture? Well, remember that bathtub? Bitcoin does not explode just because the tap turns on. Bitcoin moves the hardest when the tap stays on and the drain slows down. That means you want to watch two real signals. One, long-term holder loss realization dropping below 25 million per day.

[00:13:16]That's the level that Glassnode has flagged as a key cool-down signal when those underwater holders finally stop capitulating. Two, miner selling cooling from that record 32,000 BTC sold in Q1.

[00:13:32]And on the buy side, keep an eye on the ETF basis trade staying broken because, as long as the future premium doesn't come roaring back, hedge funds can't run the math trick at scale, which means the ETF inflows that do continue start representing real conviction and real buyers, not this arbitrage math game.

[00:13:55]When all of this lines up at once, that is when buyers are finally forced to chase price up. And it's not going to be when Saylor announces another buy. Not when one ETF flow day is green. Not when someone posts a supply shock for the thousandth time. The violent move just has to happen when the buyers are there and the sellers start to run out. And if you hold altcoins, this matters even more to you because, while Bitcoin is still busy absorbing seller supply, money is not going to be rotating into altcoins. That rotation only happens after Bitcoin has had its turn.

[00:14:33]Historically, at least, when Bitcoin gets the money first, altcoins will soon follow. So, all in all, Michael Saylor isn't pumping Bitcoin. He never really was. The algorithm is built specifically not to chase price upwards. You can kind of think of him more of the floor, not the catalyst. The actual pump only fires when the drain slows so much that the market runs out of cheap sellers, at which point seller's standing offer becomes the price everyone else has to bid above. That is when this gets dangerous to the upside. So, until then, watch the drain, not just the tap. Take very good care of yourselves. I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye-bye.