This last rally Leg has been also bought by retail?

[SquallLeonhart]

Interesting numbers, who would say that retail lead compared to institutions in Q1 2021, but all thanks to 3 times less investment when it comes to funds if we compare Q4 2020 with Q1 2021. I have to admit that this definitely breaks the theories that ordinary people stopped buying BTC because of its high price, obviously in this case we can apply the old saying "Vires in numeris".

We can assume that the share of retail will now increase even more due to stimulus checks, of course assuming that part of these funds will spill over into crypto as has been the case in the past.

Retail is always the bigger one, but companies end up doing it all together at once and that is why it looks like they lead. Normally, every single day, we lead as retail and they are behind, nearly every single day, but then one day they come in and spend a billion dollars and get out so it looks like they beat us that day.

On top of that, they just buy and hold, which means they are not helping the market long term, sure when they buy it the price goes up but after that the market is again retail buyer and retail seller so we could end up having more retail sellers since price is higher and everyone wants that money, so they are not helping long term neither. Long story short, companies are a good thing for us, but they are not a great thing, they are just decent, sure it helps but it is not as big of a deal as people make it out to be.

[fillippone]

On top of that, they just buy and hold, which means they are not helping the market long term, sure when they buy it the price goes up but after that the market is again retail buyer and retail seller so we could end up having more retail sellers since price is higher and everyone wants that money, so they are not helping long term neither. Long story short, companies are a good thing for us, but they are not a great thing, they are just decent, sure it helps but it is not as big of a deal as people make it out to be.

Interesting point.
There has been recently a huge debate about exchange balances going down. Of course less BTC available for sale means prices going up. But I do hodling is not good per se.
If Laszlo, Hal and the hothead had only hodled, instead of spending Bitcoin to spread the Satoshi Gospel, today we wouldn’t be here.

[Lucius]

There has been recently a huge debate about exchange balances going down. Of course less BTC available for sale means prices going up.

Someone buys all these BTCs, through OTC or on the open market, and the fact is that these coins do not return to the exchange as was once the case in the past. While the average Joe is probably investing now to sell when the price reaches a magical $100k, big investors obviously have some other plans - but again, we know their coins are stored in custodial cold storage.

We can conclude that the liquidity of crypto exchanges is lower than before, but again we should not forget that we are currently at 18.66 million mined BTC, and even that 20% is lost (3.72 million) and 50% of what is available is saved as a long-term investment (7.47 million), we have at least as much BTC (7.47 million) left on the market. I may be wrong, but I think that no matter what, there is still a fairly large amount of BTC available at all times - at least I haven't read anywhere that anyone complained that they couldn't buy as much BTC as they wanted.