Bitcoin Stumbles, Strategy Slips Even Faster — Is This the Signal?

As we are nearing the end of 2025, Bitcoin (BTC) has slipped below the 50-day moving average support, a rarity that occurred only four times in Bitcoin’s trading history. Year-to-date performance has all but stalled, with BTC barely afloat at 2.46%, while gold has surged 54%.

In a reversal of the usual trend where Michael Saylor’s Strategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) outperforms Bitcoin, the stock is now down 33.4% YTD. Yet, as recently as last Monday, Saylor again went on offense, purchasing 487 BTC for $49.9 million.

Strategy remains the world’s largest single-entity Bitcoin holder, with 641,692 BTC bought for an average price of $74,079 per BTC, to a total of $47.54 billion. For context, Bitcoin mining company MARA Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) is a distant second among publicly traded firms, holding only 53,250 BTC.The question is, for both investors of Bitcoin and MSTR, is it time to take the hit or to double-down?

Bitcoin’s ATH Rise Examined

President Trump’s second term represented a stark contrast for the crypto market. As a presidential candidate with one term already behind him, he broke the mold by attending the 2024 Bitcoin Conference in Nashville. After securing his second term, Trump then addressed the Blockworks Digital Asset Summit in March.

These shows of support, accompanied by the Bitcoin treasury narrative, made it even more apparent how hostile the Biden admin has been against crypto assets, with SEC Chair Gensler routinely targeting intermediaries, employing an enforcement-first posture and stretching out securities-law interpretation to its limit.

Consequently, it was not surprising to see Bitcoin breaking through the $100k threshold multiple times since late 2024. Late February was the beginning of the first major price correction, as BTC price plummeted as low as $76k by early April. Nonetheless, following the successful passing of the stablecoin-centric GENIUS Act in July, Bitcoin climbed to an all-time high of $126,198 in early October, now down 23% to the present price of $96.3K.

Clearly, the $100K mark has been an important psychological resistance level. It served both as a magnet for speculative momentum and a ceiling that tests the conviction of newer market entrants.

Each breakout above this zone invited heavy profit-taking, suggesting that while institutional demand has strengthened, the market has not yet established a stable valuation floor above six figures. With that in mind, what are Bitcoin’s sell pressure indicators telling us now?

Bitcoin’s Sell Pressure Examined

The higher the level of unrealized profits is, the greater the likelihood of selling. This is what the market value to realized value (MVRV) ratio signals. Historically, an MVRV ratio above 3 implies BTC holders sitting on large unrealized profits, while an MVRV ratio under 1 means holders are at a loss, implying reduced sell pressure.

Currently, Bitcoin’s MVRV ratio occupies the middle ground at 1.7. On a 50-day simple moving average (SMA(50)), it sits higher at a ratio of 2. With lost support for the weekly 50-day moving average, Bitcoin is now poised to test the 200-day MA, sitting at $55.3k.

At this time, it bears noticing that the market has been pricing the aforementioned Bitcoin treasury narrative, majorly contributing to its October ATH. However, as BTC treasury companies pushed their funding to the limit, the narrative deflated as well.

The most recent example of this deflation is Bitfarms’ (NASDAQ:BITF) announcement it would entirely abandon BTC mining in favor of AI server hosting, after reporting $46 million net loss in Q3.

However, with the end of this narrative, bringing $1.1 billion in recent liquidations, according to CoinGlass, Bitcoin’s funding rate is now relatively balanced.

Likewise, Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index (BVIV) has been declining over the week’s end, now going under 50, similar to its May level. In other words, it is unlikely that Bitcoin will suffer further significant sell pressure.

Conversely, given the fact that Strategy stock typically outperforms Bitcoin due to its debt-leveraging and premium, MSTR is now in the discounted zone, reverting to its late September 2024 price level of $204.86 per share. For comparison, against this current price, Wall Street Journal’s average price target is $501, while the low-end forecast is not far off at $175 per share.

The Bottom Line

Bitcoin is no stranger to narrative exhaustions that trigger weak hands giving up to strong hands. Yet, the underlying thesis remains the same:

• Mass democracy will continue to demand for the debt to be expanded.
• Central banking will continue to erode USD to monetize the ever-expanding debt.
• Gold may be the beneficiary of this inflationary erosion, but Bitcoin has even greater deterministic scarcity and is more suitable for the digital age.

With regulatory blocks removed and stablecoin rails set up, it is now even more pressing to double down on Bitcoin’s fundamentals. Michael Saylor made this clear with his recent statement during the Yahoo Finance Invest interview:

“The fundamentals of the industry are so much better today than they were 12 months ago.”

In this light, the current downturn is less a signal to retreat and more a reminder that scarcity compounds conviction for those investors willing to withstand the cycles.

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