Mek

How Strategy Turned Fixed-Income Capital Into Permanent Bitcoin Supply Removal
Yesterday, STRC recorded $1.16 billion in daily trading volume. That is four times its 30-day average. An estimated 7,800 BTC were purchased through the at-the-market programme in a single session.
Last week, Strategy disclosed it bought 13,927 BTC for $1 billion. The entire purchase was funded by STRC. Zero common shares were diluted. The company now holds 780,897 BTC, acquired for $59.02 billion at an average cost of $75,577.
That is 3.7% of all Bitcoin that will ever exist. Held by a single company. Funded by a financial instrument that most of the crypto market has never heard of.
I want to understand this mechanism properly, because I think it is the most consequential piece of financial infrastructure built in crypto in the past five years. And almost nobody is treating it that way.
HOW THE MACHINE WORKS
STRC is a Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock. It pays an 11.5% annual dividend, distributed monthly in cash. It trades at $100 par value on Nasdaq. The dividend rate is adjusted by Strategy’s board to keep the share price anchored near par. If it trades above $100, the dividend can be trimmed. If below, it can be raised.
The result is an instrument that behaves like a short-duration, high-yield credit product. Except the proceeds do not fund corporate operations. They fund Bitcoin purchases.
The mechanics are elegant and irreversible. A fixed-income investor buys STRC seeking 11.5% yield. Strategy takes that capital and buys Bitcoin. The Bitcoin goes into treasury. It does not come back. The investor gets their monthly dividend. Strategy gets permanent supply removal.
The yield-seeking capital of traditional finance is being converted, dollar by dollar, into a structural bid for Bitcoin. And the conversion only goes one direction.
THE SCALE IS NO LONGER MARGINAL
This is where the numbers start to matter in a way that changes how you model the market.
Miners produce 450 BTC per day. Strategy’s STRC-funded purchases have averaged over 1,400 BTC per day in April. Yesterday alone, the estimate was 7,800 BTC. That is 17 times the daily mining output absorbed by a single instrument in a single session.
In 2026 so far, Strategy has accumulated approximately 100,000 BTC. That figure already equals 40% of everything they bought in 2025 and ten times their total 2022 bear market accumulation. The pace is accelerating, not slowing.
STRC’s market cap has reached $6.4 billion, surpassing the combined value of Strategy’s other preferred instruments (STRD, STRK, STRF). The company still has $21.6 billion in available STRC issuance capacity. If deployed at current pace, that represents another 300,000+ BTC of potential structural demand.
Read that number again. 300,000 BTC. From a single company. Funded by fixed-income investors who may not even know they are participating in Bitcoin’s supply compression.
THE REPLICATION RISK
I want to be honest about the counterargument, because it deserves consideration.
Strategy is running a single-asset leveraged treasury. If Bitcoin drops significantly below their $75,577 average cost basis for an extended period, the preferred stock dividends become a cash drain without a corresponding asset appreciation. The Q1 2026 filing already disclosed $14.46 billion in unrealised losses. The model works beautifully in a flat or rising market. In a sustained downturn, the obligations remain while the collateral shrinks.
That said, the mechanism is spreading regardless. Strive has raised over $250 million via a similar vehicle. Binance Research identified this as the potential emergence of a “sector-wide structural bid for Bitcoin.” If three or four companies replicate the STRC model at scale, the daily structural demand could exceed ten times the mining output. Permanently.
The question I keep returning to: is this the financialisation of Bitcoin’s scarcity? Or is it the weaponisation of it?
Possibly both.
WHY THIS IS AN INFRASTRUCTURE STORY
Most people categorise Strategy’s purchases as “institutional accumulation.” That framing misses the point.
Accumulation implies you could stop. Infrastructure implies you have built something that continues to operate regardless of whether you press a button.
STRC is infrastructure. It runs on its own. As long as fixed-income investors want 11.5% yield, capital flows in. As long as capital flows in, Bitcoin gets purchased. As long as Bitcoin gets purchased, supply compresses. The machine does not require conviction. It requires yield-seeking behaviour. And that behaviour is one of the most reliable forces in all of finance.
This is the first time in Bitcoin’s history that a mechanism exists to convert passive fixed-income demand into active supply removal. That is new. That is structural. And it is not going away because the Fear and Greed Index says 8.
780,897 BTC. $59 billion deployed. $21.6 billion still available to issue.
The machine does not sleep. It does not check sentiment. It does not watch the VIX.
It converts yield into scarcity. That is all it does. And it does it every single day.

- Mek

59 dienas ekstrēmas bailes. Zemākie apmaiņas rezervi septiņu gadu laikā. Abi nevar būt pareizi.
Ir pretruna, kas redzama acīmredzami, un es domāju, ka tā atklāj vairāk par šo tirgu nekā jebkura diagramma vai makro prognoze.
Bailes un alkatības indekss ir bijis "ekstrēmās bailēs" 59 nepārtrauktas dienas. Tas ir garākais ilgtspējīgais bailes rādījums Bitcoin pēcpārdošanas ETF laikmetā. Sociālā attieksme ir dziļi pesimistiska. CME Bitcoin nākotnes darījumu aktivitāte sasniedza 14 mēnešu zemāko līmeni. Narratīvs ir skaidrs: tirgus ir nobijies.

Oil Above $100. CPI at 3.3%. Rate Cuts Fading. Why Is Bitcoin Still at US$ 71,000?
Something does not add up, and I want to think through it in public.
As of this morning, Brent crude is above $100 for the first time since early March. The U.S. Navy is expected to blockade the Strait of Hormuz tonight. The third round of U.S.-Iran negotiations collapsed without resolution. March CPI came in at 3.3%, the highest since May 2024. The Fed’s dot plot now signals one rate cut in 2026, not three. The VIX spiked to 35 earlier this month. CME Bitcoin futures activity just hit a 14-month low.
By every traditional macro framework, Bitcoin should be at $55,000. Maybe lower.
It is at $71,000.
Last week, crypto funds pulled in $1.1 billion in net inflows; the strongest week since January. That is not a number that belongs in the same sentence as a collapsing ceasefire and $100 oil.
So either the market is wrong, or my framework is.
I think it is the framework.
THE MODEL THAT STOPPED WORKING
For most of Bitcoin’s existence, the macro playbook was simple. Low rates, loose liquidity, risk-on: Bitcoin goes up. High rates, tight liquidity, risk-off: Bitcoin goes down. It traded like a leveraged tech bet. When the Nasdaq moved, Bitcoin moved harder.
That model worked in 2020, 2021, and most of 2022. If you understood the Fed’s direction, you understood Bitcoin’s direction.
But something broke in late 2025.

Bitcoin hit $126,198 in October while the Fed was already cutting. Then it fell 46% into Q1 2026, not because of monetary tightening, but because of geopolitical shock and forced liquidations. And now it is holding $71,000 through conditions that should, by the old model, destroy it. Oil above $100. Inflation re-accelerating. Rate cut expectations collapsing. Global risk sentiment deeply negative.
The old model says sell. The price says otherwise.
What changed?
THE STRUCTURAL BID
I think the answer is not in the macro data. It is in the market structure data.
Morgan Stanley launched MSBT five days ago. Strategy bought 4,871 BTC last week. Public companies hold 1.7 million BTC. Spot ETFs collectively hold over $85 billion. Long-term holder supply has been rising since mid-February. March was the first positive month of ETF flows in 2026, at $1.2 billion.
These are not momentum flows. They are structural positions. And structural positions do not respond to the VIX the way speculative leverage does.
When a wealth advisor at Morgan Stanley allocates 2% of a client portfolio to MSBT, that position does not get liquidated because oil crosses $100. When Strategy converts STRC dividends into BTC, that supply does not re-enter the market when CPI prints hot. When a corporate treasury holds Bitcoin as a reserve asset, it does not sell on a ceasefire headline.
This is the difference between a market driven by leverage and a market anchored by allocation.
Leverage amplifies volatility. Allocation dampens it.
And the market has shifted, gradually and without announcement, from the first regime to the second.
THE PARADOX OF BORING BITCOIN
Here is what struck me when I was mapping this out.

Bitcoin at $71,000, barely moving during a geopolitical crisis, is the most bullish signal in this market. Not because of the price. Because of what the price reveals about the holder composition.
In previous cycles, a Strait of Hormuz blockade would have triggered cascading liquidations. Leveraged longs would get wiped. Panic selling would push Bitcoin to whatever level it needed to reach to clear the weak hands. The recovery would be sharp, but the damage would be real.
Today, the liquidation was $284 million. Significant in isolation. Trivial relative to a $1.4 trillion market cap. The reason is not that leverage has disappeared. It is that the proportion of the market held by structural buyers has grown large enough to absorb the shock.
The floor is not a price level. It is a holder composition.
And that composition has changed irreversibly over the past 18 months. ETFs, corporate treasuries, DAT companies, sovereign adjacents. These entities do not sell Bitcoin because CPI printed 3.3%.
In fact, some of them buy more. Because an environment of persistent inflation, fiscal dominance, and fiat uncertainty is precisely the environment that validates their thesis.
THE MACRO MAP FOR THIS WEEK
So what actually matters this week? Not CPI. That number is already priced. Not the Strait of Hormuz deadline. Markets have been pricing that uncertainty for weeks.
What matters is whether the structural bid continues to absorb supply at this level.
Watch these three things:
First, ETF flow data. Last week was $1.1 billion in net inflows. If that pace holds through geopolitical escalation, it confirms the regime shift. Structural buyers are treating dips as allocation opportunities, not exit signals.
Second, MSBT’s second week of flows. Day one was $34 million. The real test is whether Morgan Stanley’s advisor network begins directing meaningful capital after the initial launch excitement fades. Sustained inflows would signal that distribution power, not just fee competition, drives ETF adoption.
Third, Strategy’s next 8-K filing. Expected any day. If they continue buying through $100 oil and hot CPI, it validates the thesis that preferred stock-funded BTC accumulation is macro-agnostic.
These are the real indicators. Not the price chart. Not the VIX. The structural flows.
I started this week looking for a reason why Bitcoin should be lower.
Every macro indicator gave me one.
The market ignored all of them.
That is not irrational. It is structural.
The floor is no longer set by sentiment. It is set by who holds the supply.
And the people who hold the supply do not read the VIX. They read the 8-K.

- Mek

What Happens to Bitcoin When It Stops Behaving Like Bitcoin?
I have been thinking about something that I cannot resolve, and I want to work through it here.
Bitcoin was designed to be the opposite of the financial system. Permissionless. Decentralised. A tool for individuals to hold value outside the reach of institutions. Satoshi’s whitepaper did not mention ETFs. It did not anticipate Morgan Stanley.
And yet, here we are.
On April 8, Morgan Stanley listed MSBT on NYSE Arca; the first spot Bitcoin ETF issued by a major U.S. bank. Their 16,000 wealth advisors can now allocate client capital to Bitcoin with the same ease as recommending a bond fund. Strategy holds 766,000+ BTC and is converting preferred stock dividends into permanent supply removal. Public companies collectively hold 1.7 million BTC; roughly 8% of total supply. BlackRock’s BUIDL fund tokenises treasuries on-chain. New Hampshire issued the first Moody’s-rated Bitcoin-backed municipal bond.
Bitcoin is becoming the thing it was built to replace.
Or is it?
That question has been bothering me all week. And I think the answer is more nuanced than either the maximalists or the sceptics want to admit.
THE PARADOX OF INSTITUTIONAL ADOPTION
Here is the tension.
Every institutional milestone makes Bitcoin more legitimate, more liquid, and more accessible. Morgan Stanley’s MSBT at 0.14% fee gives millions of people frictionless exposure. ETF options create yield strategies that incentivise holding. Corporate treasuries create a structural floor under the price. All of this is objectively good for anyone who holds Bitcoin.
But each of these milestones also concentrates ownership. BlackRock, Strategy, Fidelity, and a handful of corporate treasuries now control an outsized share of supply. The average holding period for Bitcoin ETFs has extended to 127 days; buy-and-hold institutional behaviour. The volatility is compressing. The asset is becoming, as one WisdomTree report put it, “something that can be held, monitored, and rebalanced within a broader portfolio framework.”
Read that sentence again. That is the language of bonds. Not revolution.
Bitcoin’s realised volatility has been declining as ownership consolidates among longer-term, institutionally aligned holders. Its correlation to equities has increased. It is increasingly traded as a macro asset, sensitive to liquidity conditions and real yields. When the Fed speaks, Bitcoin moves. When geopolitical risk spikes, Bitcoin’s response now resembles that of a risk-on allocation, not a hedge.
So the question sharpens: if Bitcoin trades like an institutional asset, is governed by institutional flows, and is held primarily by institutional players, what exactly distinguishes it from the system it was supposed to displace?
WHAT THE MAXIMALISTS GET RIGHT
I spent some time with this objection, and it deserves an honest hearing.
The maximalist response is straightforward: the protocol does not care who holds it. Bitcoin’s monetary policy is fixed. 21 million. No board of directors. No central bank. No matter how many ETFs are built on top, the base layer remains permissionless. A person in Lagos can still hold Bitcoin without Morgan Stanley’s permission.
This is true. And it matters more than most institutional analysts acknowledge.
When traditional safe havens failed during the 2026 Middle East conflict; gold down 13%, silver down 22%; Bitcoin returned +1% from day zero to day 32. The Binance Research team described this as validation of the “supra-sovereign asset” narrative. The rare simultaneous decline in gold and silver highlighted something that is genuinely new: an asset class with 24/7 liquidity, no sovereign counterparty risk, and a fixed supply schedule.

No bond offers that. No equity offers that. No commodity offers that.
The maximalists are correct that Bitcoin’s properties have not changed. The protocol is indifferent to the identity of its holders.
But properties and behaviour are different things. And behaviour is what markets price.
THE THIRD THING
I think what is actually happening is neither what the maximalists nor the sceptics describe. Bitcoin is not being captured by institutions. And it is not remaining the cypherpunk tool of its origin story. It is becoming a third thing.
Consider the mechanics that now exist:
Strategy converts fixed-income investor capital into permanent Bitcoin supply removal through STRC. That is a one-way mechanism. Those coins do not come back to market. The STRC model is being replicated; Strive raised $250 million via a similar vehicle. If this becomes the standard DAT playbook, we have a structural bid for Bitcoin funded by traditional yield-seeking capital. That has never existed before in any asset class.
Morgan Stanley’s OCC charter application covers custody, fiduciary staking, and token transfers. When a bank builds staking infrastructure for a decentralised network, you are witnessing something new: the financial system embedding itself into the protocol layer, not the other way around.
New Hampshire’s Bitcoin-backed municipal bond means a U.S. state is using Bitcoin as collateral for public infrastructure. Moody’s rated it. That is not adoption. That is integration.
The distinction matters.
Adoption means: institutions buy Bitcoin. That happened in 2024.
Integration means: institutions build their infrastructure on Bitcoin. That is happening now.
And integration is not something you can reverse with a policy change or a sell-off. Once a bank builds a custody charter around digital assets, once a state issues bonds backed by Bitcoin, once a preferred stock program permanently removes supply, those are structural commitments. One-way doors.

SO WHAT IS BITCOIN NOW?
This is where I arrived after sitting with this for a week, and I am not certain I am right.
Bitcoin is becoming what the internet became. The internet was built to be decentralised, censorship-resistant, permissionless. It still is, at the protocol level. But the user experience of the internet is dominated by five companies. Most people access it through centralized platforms. The underlying architecture remains open. The practical reality is concentrated.
Bitcoin’s base layer remains fixed-supply, permissionless, sovereign. But the access layer is increasingly institutional. Most new capital enters through ETFs, not wallets. Most large holdings are in custodial structures, not cold storage. The protocol is decentralised. The ownership is consolidating.
And here is what I think most people miss: that might be fine.
Not ideal. Not what Satoshi envisioned. But fine in the way that matters for capital.
Because the base layer properties; fixed supply, no counterparty risk, 24/7 settlement, censorship resistance; are the reason institutions are integrating. They are not building on Bitcoin despite its decentralisation. They are building on it because of it. If Bitcoin could be inflated, seized, or shut down, there would be no reason for Morgan Stanley to issue its own ETF. There would be no reason for New Hampshire to back bonds with it.
The protocol’s resistance to capture is precisely what makes it attractive to the institutions that appear to be capturing it.
That paradox is not a contradiction. It is the thesis.

I started writing this essay believing that institutional adoption was slowly killing Bitcoin’s original identity.
I am ending it believing something different: Bitcoin’s identity is what makes institutional adoption irreversible.

The question was never whether institutions would change Bitcoin. It was whether Bitcoin would change institutions.
I think it already has. Most people have not noticed yet.

- Mek

Morgan Stanley Just Launched Its Own Bitcoin ETF. The Banks Are No Longer Watching.
Two years ago, Wall Street debated whether Bitcoin deserved a seat at the table. This week, Morgan Stanley built its own chair.
On April 8, Morgan Stanley listed the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT) on NYSE Arca; the first spot Bitcoin ETF issued by a major U.S. bank under its own name. The fee: 0.14%, undercutting BlackRock’s IBIT by nearly half. Day-one inflows: $34 million. Day-one volume: over 1.6 million shares traded.
This is not a press release. It is a structural shift in how institutional capital accesses Bitcoin. And it happened while most of crypto Twitter was arguing about whether the bull market is over.
WHY THIS IS NOT JUST ANOTHER ETF
The distinction matters. BlackRock, Fidelity, and Ark are asset managers. They built Bitcoin ETFs because the market demanded them. Morgan Stanley is a bank. It built MSBT because its 16,000 wealth management advisors, overseeing $9.3 trillion in client assets, needed a product they could recommend under their own roof.
Since 2024, Morgan Stanley advisors have been allowed to recommend third-party Bitcoin ETFs to clients. Now they can recommend one that keeps the management fee in-house and gives the bank direct control over product positioning. The economics shift from distribution to ownership.
But MSBT is only one piece. In January, Morgan Stanley filed S-1 registrations for both an Ethereum trust and a Solana trust. In February, it applied to the OCC for a National Trust Bank Charter covering digital asset custody, fiduciary staking, and token transfers. It plans to launch retail crypto spot trading for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana through E*Trade in the first half of 2026.
Read that sequence again. ETF. Custody charter. Spot trading. Staking. This is not experimentation. This is infrastructure.

THE CONVERGENCE ACCELERATES
Morgan Stanley’s move does not exist in isolation. It sits within a broader institutional convergence that is reshaping Bitcoin’s market structure.
Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) purchased 4,871 BTC between April 1 and April 5 alone; $330 million funded primarily through its STRC preferred stock issuance. In 2026, Strategy has accumulated approximately 90,000 BTC worth $7.25 billion. That figure already equals 40% of its total 2025 purchases and represents ten times the BTC it accumulated during the entire 2022 bear market. The company now holds over 766,000 BTC.
The STRC model is spreading. Strive has raised over $250 million via a similar preferred stock vehicle. Binance Research describes this as the emergence of a potential “sector-wide structural bid for Bitcoin”; a mechanism where fixed-income capital is converted into permanent BTC demand.
Meanwhile, the SEC approved additional Bitcoin ETF options trading on April 4, enabling covered call strategies on IBIT and GBTC with potential yields of 8-12% annualised. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs collectively hold over $85 billion in assets. Total cumulative inflows since January 2024 have exceeded $57 billion.
Public companies worldwide now hold over 1.7 million BTC; approximately 8% of total supply. In several quarters of 2025, corporate purchases exceeded ETF inflows.
THE FRAMEWORK SHIFT
There is a pattern here that most market participants are missing because they are looking at the wrong metrics.
The question is no longer “will institutions adopt Bitcoin?” That question was settled in January 2024 with the first spot ETF approvals. The question is no longer “will banks participate?” Morgan Stanley answered that on Tuesday.
The question now is: at what point does institutional infrastructure become so embedded that Bitcoin’s floor is structurally higher than the market assumes?
Consider the mechanics. Morgan Stanley’s 16,000 advisors can now allocate client capital to Bitcoin with a single trade. Strategy converts preferred stock dividends into permanent BTC supply removal. ETF options create new yield strategies that incentivise holding over trading. Corporate treasuries treat BTC as a reserve asset, not a speculation.
Each of these is a one-way door. Banks do not build custody infrastructure to use it for one quarter. Preferred stock programs are not designed for a single cycle. OCC charter applications are not filed on a whim.
The capital is not asking for permission anymore. It is building the plumbing.

Two years ago, the conversation was: “Will Bitcoin survive?”
One year ago: “Will institutions buy?”
Today: “Which bank moves next?”
The frame changed. Most people have not noticed yet.

- Mek

Kāpēc lielākā vaļu uzkrāšana kopš 2013. gada notiek pie $68K, nevis $126K

Bitcoin šodien ir $68,200, samazinājies par 46% no tā 2025. gada oktobra visu laiku augstākā līmeņa $126,198. Komentārs ir paredzams: lāču tirgus, makro virzieni, cikla beigas. Bet on-chain realitāte stāsta fundamentāli citu stāstu. Lielākā kapitāla grupa šajā tirgū nepamet. Tā pārkārtojas.

DATI, KO TIRGUS IGNORĒ
2026. gada 1. ceturksnī adreses, kas tur 100 līdz 10,000 BTC, piedzīvoja vidēji dienā realizētu zaudējumu aptuveni $337 miljoni; sliktākā ceturkšņa snieguma pieredze lielajiem turētājiem kopš 2022. gada lāču tirgus. Neto Bitcoin ETF izplūdes ceturksnī sasniedza $496.5 miljonus, ar $1.8 miljardiem, kas aizplūda janvārī un februārī vien.

Ir iespaidīgi, kā BNB Chain demonstrē spēcīgu ekosistēmas izaugsmi, paplašinot stabilās monētas, tīkla dominanci un institucionālo pieņemšanu reālās pasaules aktīviem (RWA), ko atbalsta BNB deflācijas tokenomika.
Tas pārsniedz skaitļus un stāstus, tas ietver pieņemšanu un rezultātus, kas ātri ietekmē gan iekšējo, gan ārējo Web3.

Šeit ir nedēļas ieskati:

1. BNB Chain stabilās monētas piedāvājums vairāk nekā divkāršojās no gada uz gadu, pieaugot no 7,2 miljardiem ASV dolāru līdz 15,8 miljardiem ASV dolāru (~119% YoY), ko virza tīkla uzlabojumi un nulles maksas akcijas, pārspējot konkurentus un ierindojoties starp labākajām blokķēdēm.