Billionaires are buying as much Bitcoin (BTC -2.15%) as they possibly can. Michael Saylor, founder and executive chairman of Strategy (MSTR 0.32%), seemingly makes a new Bitcoin purchase every week. Other billionaires are embracing the Bitcoin treasury company model to buy Bitcoin for their companies.
In theory, all of that new buying pressure should be sending Bitcoin to the stratosphere. But Bitcoin still trades for less than $110,000, short of its record high of about $112,000. Ever since it hit that all-time high in May, Bitcoin has barely budged. So why isn't the price of Bitcoin soaring?
Macroeconomic uncertainty
The easiest answer, of course, is macroeconomic uncertainty about the Trump administration's proposed trade tariffs. In April, President Donald Trump promised "90 deals in 90 days," and it's now looking like that's not going to happen. So tariff uncertainty is not going away anytime soon.
Image source: Getty Images.
On top of that, Trump continues to call for lower interest rates, as well as the possible replacement of Jerome Powell as chairman of the Federal Reserve. According to the White House, lowering interest rates is the easiest way to juice the financial markets. Until there's a Fed rate cut, the markets may continue to trade sideways.
And don't forget about the One, Big, Beautiful Bill. Even if the bill passes with bipartisan support, not everyone is convinced that it's going to calm financial markets. In fact, it might make financial markets even more uneasy because it would add so much to the U.S. national debt.
Are long-term Bitcoin investors taking profits?
However, in my opinion, macroeconomic uncertainty seems to be a lazy explanation. Surely, there must be something specific going on in the crypto market that is causing the price of Bitcoin to remain under the $110,000 mark?
One possible explanation is that longtime holders of Bitcoin are now taking profits on their crypto positions. According to this logic, investors who bought Bitcoin when it was trading well under $100,000 are now locking in gains.
Bitcoin Magazine recently looked into this, and found that some longtime investors started selling as soon as the price of Bitcoin hit $70,000 last year. That's because they were sitting on enormous profits. Some of them bought Bitcoin when it was trading for less than $10,000.
Since activity on the Bitcoin blockchain is transparent, crypto investors can see each Bitcoin transaction as it is added to the blockchain. Thus, it's possible to do a bit of deductive sleuthing to see who's buying, and who's selling.
In doing so, Bitcoin Magazine found that longtime Bitcoin investors had sold the same amount of Bitcoin as new billionaire investors had acquired, and perhaps even more. Thus, new demand is being matched by new supply (i.e., the Bitcoin being sold back into the market by retail investors). The market is essentially in equilibrium, and the price of Bitcoin can't move higher.
It's open to interpretation, of course, why this is happening. Some have suggested that retail investors who bought Bitcoin years ago are now using FOMO (fear of missing out) to sell to financial institutional buyers entering the market. This is the opposite of what usually happens, and is certainly worth a chuckle if nothing else.
There's one more wrinkle here. Some investors don't want to invest in spot Bitcoin. Instead, they want to get leverage, and they are doing this by investing in financial derivatives. According to Bitcoin Magazine, money is now flooding into the Bitcoin derivatives market. Money is sloshing around, but not necessarily with any buying of spot Bitcoin. This, too, may be keeping a lid on the price of Bitcoin.
New Bitcoin catalyst ahead?
The good news, if you're a Bitcoin investor, is that new catalysts are emerging that will encourage billionaires to continue buying Bitcoin. The most important of these is new crypto legislation that is currently making its way to the White House for a final signature by Trump.
The piece of legislation that has the greatest potential to send Bitcoin higher is the Clarity Act (officially known as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025). This is a proposed U.S. law aimed at establishing a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets, including cryptocurrencies. The legislation should, in theory, make it easier for institutional investors to buy and hold Bitcoin.
If all goes according to plan, investors should be getting some new clarity on Bitcoin by the end of the summer. The price of Bitcoin may trade sideways until then. But just wait until early fall. If Bitcoin is going to soar this year, that's when it could start to take off.
