Whenever a finite asset runs into a seemingly insatiable amount of demand, prices tend to go up and up.
And that's about where Bitcoin (BTC +0.51%) sits today. On one side, the protocol's latest halving means that barely an appetizer's worth of new coins are mined each day. On the other side, a new category of steady buyers with a huge amount of capital on hand has arrived, and they're looking for a seven-course meal's worth of the asset.
The mismatch between supply and demand probably isn't going anywhere, either. So let's explore this dynamic in a bit more detail and unpack what it means for Bitcoin over the long term.
Image source: Getty Images.
The new buyers are structural, while new supply is fixed and slow
After Bitcoin's April 2024 halving, roughly 450 new coins are mined each day. Recall that this amount of new supply is the most that will ever be produced because future halvings will slash the mining reward in half again and again.
U.S. spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) increasingly absorb more than the daily new issuance. On Aug. 25, net inflows totaled about $173.5 million, a figure that equates to about triple that day's mining output. But that figure actually significantly undersells the strength of demand because it's data from just one day and from just one type of buyer.
Funds and ETFs bought 1,430 bitcoins per day on average in 2025, intensifying the demand imbalance dramatically. Despite that, it's actually businesses that have been the largest net buyers of the coin this year, with companies pulling in a shocking sum of about 1,755 coins per day on average in 2025. And more and more companies are announcing that they plan to hold the asset in their corporate treasuries; at the same time, more and more new crypto treasury businesses are launching.
CRYPTO: BTC
Key Data Points
In other words, the picture here is one of a diverse set of buyers competing with each other to bid higher and higher to secure some of the existing Bitcoin supply, as the newly mined supply is nowhere near enough to sate their appetite. It's fully possible that it never will be.
Why this could power a multiyear uptrend
When structural buyers with long investment time frames outpace fresh supply, price discovery shifts to persuading existing holders to part with coins.
That tends to require higher prices over time. Even if one buying cohort stopped tomorrow, the others would still be taking in much more than miners produce on an average day, keeping a tailwind under the market's baseline.
Plus Bitcoin's stock is already mostly issued: 19.9 million, or 95%, of the protocol's 21 million mineable coins now exist, and issuance will keep slowing after each halving as mentioned previously. The idea is that over time there will be a steadily slowing trickle of new supply while demand sources diversify, institutionalize, and largely refuse to sell.
Until buyers face bearish macroeconomic conditions or struggle to fund their purchases -- which is very unlikely in the near term, as major asset managers and financial institutions are typically not short on capital -- Bitcoin's price is thus biased to the upside. Satisfying buyers' hunger could take years, if it ever happens.
Of course, Bitcoin could still go down by a lot, at least temporarily.
The same ETF pipes that deliver big inflows can deliver outflows if sentiment shifts. Corporate buying also comes in lumps, and can pause if boardrooms get cautious or if financing costs rise. And it's obvious that a sharp tightening of global liquidity could dent demand.
Therefore, treat the persistent supply squeeze as a durable tailwind, not an all-weather guarantee. Assuming that the ETFs maintain net inflows most months, and corporations continue to accumulate coins, the supply curve will favor holders. Price will do the work of rationing a finite asset.
For long-term investors, the strategy here is to accumulate coins patiently over time, preferably in an automated fashion like with dollar-cost averaging (DCAing). The core supply-demand imbalance at the heart of Bitcoin will take care of the rest.
