“MicroStrategy has just bought so and so millions of Bitcoin adding to their massive portfolio!”
This is what usually greets me whenever I open my X account to take a look at whats going on around the world. And as a crypto enthusiast, I have been recently seeing a lot of such headlines and crypto posts from crypto influencers. My X feed is filled with Bitcoin bullish accumulation posts, yet the price of Bitcoin has been falling for some days now and sometimes it even falls sharply. So, I have been wondering, why does this disconnect exist? If many people and institutions are accumulating Bitcoin, then who is selling? And why is it that the price keeps falling and crashing? Let us explore my thoughts on this matter.
Its not literally everyone who is buying
Before we dig deep, let me just say the term “everyone” in the heading does not mean everyone in the sense of the entire market. The thing is that the X algorithm is designed to show you content that you usually engage with. So, since I engage a lot with crypto content, this is the first thing that I see when I open my feed. Now, “everyone” means the content that is being sent to my feed is about this matter because I interact with such posts.
You may need to note that this feed creates a confirmation bias as you start believing that the dominant sentiment in the market is bullish and buying Bitcoin. But usually the reality is that it may be just a few KOLs and crypto influence screaming the same thing for likes and visibility. However, we should not only take the word of these people and believe it. The crypo markets ae global and diverse, so it includes some very influential participants that may not be on crypto twitter. These are people have real sway on how the market moves, so nomatter how the KOLs scream, at the end of the day, all they can do is scream the information from the people and entities who actually matter.
The silent sellers
One thing that we should always understand is that for every buyer, there must be a seller. The dominant faction between the buyers and sellers in terms of volume dictates the direction to which price goes. Usually sellers are often silent, but who are they?
Sellers are formed from different groups. The main and most frequent sellers are usually Bitcoin miners. These people and entities have constant operational costs like electricity, hardware and salaries which need to be paid in fiat currencies So, for them to cover these operational expenses, they constantly create sell pressures monthly regardless of where the sentiment lies. Their operations survive on selling their mining rewards and sentiment does not matter.
Large institutional funds and corporations that bought Bitcoin at lower prices may take profit or derisk their portfolios when prices reach certain ranges. Such entities usually sell their holdings quitely without mentioning anything on social media. On chain transactions trackers may sniff out such transactions, but their accuracy is questionable because they may flag custodial transfers or portifolio rebalancing as net sales.
Long term holders also sale part of their holdings at certain times to fund major life purchases or to diversify their investment portfolios. And crypto treasuries can also sell their holdings to fund development or their operations.
So, all these sellers can sell their holdings at any time which adds to the sell pressure on the market and causing volatility.
Its not about the number of buyers, its all about volume
The volume provided by sellers or buyers deermines the impact of the buys or sells on the market, it does not depend on the number of sellers and buyers. If there are 1000 investors buying $500 Bitcoin each, that is a total of $500,000, this can be completely negated by someone who is selling 20 Bitcoin at once.
The price of Bitcoin drops when large sell orders are placed on exchanges and they absorb all available buy orders at specific price levels. This forces the price of the asset to move down in search of the next batch of buyers. These large sell orders create large sell walls that cannot be broken by the fragmented retail buying pressure. This means that for price to break this sell wall, the markets will need equally strong buy orders.
The cascade effect involving leverage and liquidations.
When price starts moving down after large sell orders, there is usually forced sell orders from leveraged positions and this accelerates the price crash. Many traders use leverage with borrowed funds to open large long positions, betting that the price will go up. This is only good if price moves their way, but when it moves against them, their positions become under collateralized.
Now in this case, if a trader is not able to add more margin, the exchange automatically force their assets on the open market to cover the loan. This is what we call liquidation and this sudden forced selling adds a lot of selling pressure, pushing the price further down. This selling pressure will cause a chain of forced liquidations as price quickly drops from one tier of leveraged traders to another. This creates a domino effect known as a long squeeze or liquidation cascade. This often results in sharp, sudden price drops, that have nothing to do with fundamental sentiment.
Other drivers of price drops
These may also be the reason why the price of Bitcoin keeps falling even when there are sizeable buy orders.
- When exchange order books are thin a sizeable sell order can amplify downsides even when “everyone” is buying small clips.
- It is also important to note that when whales are synthetically short while retail spot buys; net delta will remain zero and price can still fall.
- Prices can also fall when there is selling pressure generated by insitutions derisking at certain price points.
- Until derivative shorts cover or macro tides turn, spot bids are insufficient to absorb institutional liquidations. This paradox only dissolves when funding neutralised and basis turn positive.
- Price may also drop due to outflows in Bitcoin spot ETFs as the issuers hve to sell underlying assets for customers to redeem their investments.
Final thoughts and conclusion
The accumulation we see on social media is usually a misleading signal from different groups of influencers seeking clout. The reality is that price crashes are usually driven by a combination of silent large volume sellers, structural sell pressure from miners, macroeconomic factors causing derisking and the brutal mechanics of leveraged liquidations at key levels.
For clearer analyses we must look at the data beyond the sentiment. Useful data is found by analysing exchange order books as well as on chain data showing whale and miner movements.
My Affiliate links
For crypto trading I use Okx and Kucoin:
https://www.kucoin.com/r/rf/QBSY1VX3
For forex trading I use justmarkets and FBS
https://fbs.partners?ibl=1028825&ibp=33282156
https://one.justmarkets.link/a/97t6p07ht2
For synthetics trading 24/7 markets I use deriv and Weltrade
https://track.gowt.me/visit/?bta=52354&brand=weltrade
References
Glassnode Weekly On-Chain Report (17 Nov 2025) – https://insights.glassnode.com
CoinGlass Bitcoin Futures Open Interest (14 Nov 2025 snapshot) – https://coinglass.com
Kaiko Tick-level Liquidity Report (15 Nov 2025) – https://kaiko.com/research
FRED 10-Year Real Yield Series (15 Nov 2025) – https://fred.stlouisfed.org
CoinShares Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly (12 Nov 2025) – https://coinshares.com
