The bitcoin market is splitting in two. Here's who is buying and selling amid the war

Six weeks of war have split the bitcoin BTC$72,945.65 market into two camps. The institutional buyers who keep accumulating regardless of conditions, and everyone else, who is leaving.

The result is a market that looks stable on the surface, with bitcoin holding a $65,000 to $73,000 range through five weeks of conflict headlines, $600 million liquidation events, and the worst sentiment readings since the 2022 bear market, but is narrowing underneath in ways that matter for what comes next.

Here is who is on each side and what their behavior tells us about where conviction actually sits.

The mandated buyers

Three entities account for nearly all of the sustained buying pressure in the bitcoin market right now, and all three are buying because their business model requires it rather than because they've made a discretionary call on price.

Strategy has been the most visible. The company disclosed its latest purchase on April 5, adding 4,871 BTC for approximately $329.9 million at an average of $67,718 per coin.

Total holdings now stand at 766,970 BTC acquired for $58.02 billion at a blended cost basis of $75,644. The position is underwater by roughly 8% at current prices, but Strategy continues buying below its average, pulling the breakeven lower with each purchase.

A CoinDesk report last week showed Strategy's 30-day accumulation holding steady at approximately 44,000 BTC through March.

Strategy's STRC preferred equity product saw hundreds of millions in new inflows around its recent ex-dividend date, providing the capital for continued accumulation. As long as investor appetite for that yield product holds, Strategy keeps buying. If STRC inflows slow, so does the bid.

Meanwhile, U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs absorbed approximately 50,000 BTC in March's 30-day rolling window, the highest monthly pace since October 2025.

But the broader ETF industry data tracked on a weekly basis tells a less bullish story. CoinShares reported only $22 million in U.S. spot ETF inflows last week out of $107 million in total bitcoin ETP flows globally. Meanwhile, most flows came from one country – Swiss-listed products pulled in $157 million alone, accounting for 70% of the global ETP inflow of $224 million.

The institutional channel is open but the flow tis highly concentrated and is slowing on a weekly basis.

Meanwhile, Bitmine Immersion Technologies, while primarily an ether play, represents the same structural dynamic on the ETH side.

The company bought 71,252 ETH last week, its largest single-week purchase since December 2025, and now holds 4.8 million tokens worth roughly $10 billion.

Chairman Tom Lee called the stock market bottom this week while his company was actively spending hundreds of millions accumulating the asset he was publicly talking up.

The discretionary sellers

Everyone with a choice is running for the exit.

Whales holding 1,000 to 10,000 BTC have turned from the market's largest buyers into its largest sellers. The one-year change in whale holdings has swung from roughly positive 200,000 BTC at the 2024 bull market peak to negative 188,000 BTC, a nearly 400,000 BTC reversal that CryptoQuant described as one of the most aggressive large-holder distribution cycles on record. The 365-day moving average continues to decline, confirming the selling is structural rather than reactive to any single event.

Mid-tier holders, wallets with 100 to 1,000 BTC, are still technically accumulating but the pace has collapsed more than 60% since October 2025, from nearly 1 million BTC in annual additions to 429,000. They have not flipped to selling yet, but the trajectory points that direction.

Listed bitcoin miners are liquidating treasury. Riot Platforms, MARA Holdings, and Genius Group disclosed selling more than 19,000 BTC from their treasuries in a single week earlier this month.

Some are facing operational strains, with bitcoin near $70,000 and difficulty at all-time highs and rising energy costs. The likes of Core Scientific, Iris Energy, and Hut 8, are pivoting capacity to AI hosting where contracted revenue replaces the volatility of mining income.

Bhutan, the only sovereign nation that built a bitcoin position through its own hydropower-backed mining operation, has sold 70% of its holdings since October 2024, from roughly 13,000 BTC to 3,954. The kingdom moved another 319.7 BTC to exchange-linked wallets this week. Its last mining inflow exceeding $100,000 was recorded over a year ago, suggesting the operation may have stopped entirely. Strategy now buys more bitcoin in a typical week than Bhutan has left.

The sentiment gap

The gap between what mandated buyers are doing and what the rest of the market feels is historically unusual.

The Fear and Greed Index spent over a month pinned between 8 and 14, the most sustained period in extreme fear territory since the 2022 bottom. It only climbed out of single digits this week after the ceasefire was announced.

Santiment data showed five bearish social media posts for every four bullish ones last weekend, the most negative skew since the war began.

Yet through all of that, ETFs were buying 50,000 BTC a month, Strategy was buying 44,000, and bitcoin never broke below $65,000. The floor held because the mandated buyers were absorbing what the discretionary sellers were dumping. The question is whether that absorption is sustainable.

What the ceasefire changed and what it didn't

The ceasefire announcement Tuesday produced the sharpest single-day rally in over a month, with bitcoin surging past $72,000 and $427 million in shorts getting liquidated. Open interest in BTC and ETH perpetuals expanding by $2.1 billion and $2.2 billion respectively in 24 hours, with coin-denominated OI also rising, confirming net new long positions rather than just short liquidations.

The Coinbase Premium turned positive for both bitcoin and ether for the first time since October's all-time high, reversing months of persistent negative readings. If it holds, that is the first sign of genuine U.S. buyer re-engagement since the war began.

But the ceasefire has not changed the structural dynamics underneath. Whether it converts into a trend reversal depends on whether the two-week truce becomes permanent, and whether the institutional flows that held the floor through the war can push through the $73,000 ceiling that has rejected every rally since late February.

In conclusion, a read across all of the data is that bitcoin's buyer base has been narrowing for months.

The number of entities providing sustained buying pressure can be counted on one hand. Strategy, ETFs, and to a lesser extent Morgan Stanley's new channel. Everyone else is either selling, slowing down, or leaving.