Key Takeaways
- Lookonchain tracked 3 whales opening $148.7M in longs, including a 40x position on 1,000 BTC worth $63.8M.
- Bitcoin rebounded to $64,312 earlier today after falling to $61,246 on Strategy’s $216 million sale disclosure.
- Bernstein said BTC’s 54% drawdown remains far milder than the 75%-90% declines of past cycle bottoms.
Big Money Leans Long Into the Fear
While much of the market was still digesting the first major bitcoin sale by Strategy Inc. (Nasdaq: MSTR), a handful of deep-pocketed traders were positioning for a bounce. Onchain analytics firm Lookonchain flagged the activity on Tuesday, writing:
“Despite Strategy selling BTC, whales still seem bullish on the market.”
The firm identified three wallets making outsized bets. A wallet tagged 0x15a4 opened a 40x leveraged long on 1,000 BTC worth $63.8 million. A second address, 0x7fba, went 10x long on 30,627 ether ( ETH) valued at $54.9 million, while a third, 0xe069, opened a 20x long on 470.4 BTC worth $30 million. Together, the three positions total roughly $148.7 million in notional exposure.
The whales’ timing tracks bitcoin’s rebound as the cryptocurrency slid to a Monday low of $61,246 after Strategy disclosed it had sold 3,588 BTC for roughly $216 million to fund preferred dividends and rebuild its cash reserves to $2.55 billion. By early Tuesday, bitcoin had pumped to $64,390, recovering the entire dip in less than a day.
The episode challenged one of the market’s long-standing fears, that the first meaningful sale by the largest corporate holder would trigger a cascade. Instead, the market absorbed the coins quickly. Grayscale Research argued the sale may actually reduce financing risk and support price stability, since it rebuilt Strategy’s dollar reserves to cover about 17 months of dividend payments.
Other buyers stepped in too, with Bitmine continuing to build an $11.1 billion crypto treasury, revealing the extent to which corporate demand has broadened beyond a single firm.
Wall Street Sees a Milder Bear
Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani noted that bitcoin’s roughly 54% decline from its October 2025 high near $125,000 remains far smaller than the 75% to 90% drawdowns often seen near the end of previous cycles, and the Wall Street research firm maintained a constructive long-term view.
That reading postures the current market as painful but not historically extreme. Bitcoin traded around $64,000 on Tuesday, roughly half its peak, yet still well above the levels where prior bear markets bottomed relative to their highs. For leveraged longs opened near $60,000 support, it now appears as though the worst of the forced selling (be it Strategy’s disposal or the recent exchange-traded fund (ETF) outflows) has already been priced in.
Even then, highly leveraged positions near a contested support level can accelerate a decline if they unwind, turning bullish conviction into forced selling. Therefore, if the whales are right, their nine-figure bets mark the start of a durable bottom, but on the flip side, the same leverage that expresses their confidence could make the next leg down faster. Only time will tell.