Who will win the race to reach 1 million BTC?

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

So here we discuss through a voting who will move forward to meet the goal of 10,00000 Bitcoins.

My vote will be Strategy...

You could be wrong with your vote because this not a competition, the two companies are not playing a competition game and it doesn't mean that since Strategy is holding more than Blackrock that it can easily arive at 1 million BTC, don't be surprise to see that Blackrock could get to that 1m before strategy, there's no competition here, anyone of them could accumulate to that number sooner or later if that is their target, so I don't see the reason why there should be a vote on it.

[d5000]

[...]maybe in next few months one of them will successfully acquire millions of Bitcoin and this will create lots of noise in crypto space.

Take into account that while there are lots of Bitcoins on the markets (around 100-900k per day are sold, although some of course are traded several times per day) the more BTC are in the hands of centralized entities, the less are available on the free market, i.e. on exchanges and OTC.

That means that if the rhythm of purchases is very high (e.g. >20.000 net inflows per month) eventually there would be a significant influence on the exchange holdings. This will lead to less and higher sell orders. That does not necessarily mean the price goes up (even if it's likely). It can also have the effect of reducing the exchange volume and thus slowing down both the ETF and MSTR acquisitions.

So I believe there will be some natural ceiling of the holdings both of ETFs and MSTR. I estimate it close to 5-7 million in total, if we take into account that about 3 million are assumed to be lost (including Satoshi's coins), 3 million are on exchanges, and currently there are about 1.5 million in ETFs and 1 million in company treasuries. 10-11 million are currently believed to be held by individuals. These 10 million may reduce to 8 or 7, but not much further, because many of these are believed to be long term hodlers.

We would then arrive at a structure with 4-5 million owned by ETFs and other derivatives, 2 million by MSTR, 3-4 million lost, 2-3 million (a little bit less than now) on exchanges, and 8 million held by private owners (total currently is ~20 million). But that is the maximum I can imagine, and hopefully we'll not get there.

[Joy- maker]

They are dissimilar and can't even be compared
BlackRock is an ETF
They are custodians that help investors manage their Bitcoin
They don't own it
Unlike Strategy that buys via DCA and it's added to their company portfolio.

So Strategy easily
Since BlackRock don't buy not to mention engage in DCA.

This is what i like about this forum, if you are type who reads through threads, not only the OP to see what others have said so fer before commenting, you will definitely get the real gist, and here is the real gist about Strategy and the BlackRock.

Before now, i use to think that BlackRock corporation was genuinely buying bitcoin to add to its company portfolio not knowing that they were doing it through ETFs. If this true, then there is no need comparing both corporations. strategy is the corporation that is genuinely buying bitcoin via DCA to add it to its company portfolio.

[Out of mind]

The two largest corporate holders of Bitcoin are Strategy and BlackRock. We see these two corporates holding the most Bitcoin and they have been investing in Bitcoin continuously through the DCA method. So far, Strategy has bought 843,738 Bitcoins and BlackRock has bought 817,138 Bitcoins. So here we discuss through a voting who will move forward to meet the goal of 10,00000 Bitcoins.

My vote will be Strategy...

Your vote???

Yes, the ten largest companies in the world, Strategy and BlackRock, have purchased the most Bitcoin and they are still continuing their investment. As we already know, Michael Saylor is leading in the number of Bitcoins, his investment in the DCA method makes it easier for him to hold more Bitcoins. Since Strategy is already leading by buying many Bitcoins, they will reach the goal of $1 million Bitcoins first and my vote will be in their favor. And later, BlackRock will meet their goal, since it will take a long time for the two companies to reach this stage, but they will definitely succeed. And since the largest companies in the world are currently holding Bitcoin, there are many more companies currently holding Bitcoins in their reserves so that they can improve financially in the future.

[Cookdata]

The two largest corporate holders of Bitcoin are Strategy and BlackRock. We see these two corporates holding the most Bitcoin and they have been investing in Bitcoin continuously through the DCA method. So far, Strategy has bought 843,738 Bitcoins and BlackRock has bought 817,138 Bitcoins. So here we discuss through a voting who will move forward to meet the goal of 10,00000 Bitcoins.

My vote will be Strategy...

Your vote???

This vote make no sense, they are not even the same. Strategy is a company own as control by Micheal Saylor, the aim is to buy Bitcoin and hold as reserve for the company Microstrategy while Blackrock is an ETF company, people buy shares equivalent to Bitcoin and blockrock buy and hold this Bitcoin, they act as intermediary for the investors and as they sell their ETF shares, Blackrock sell off the Bitcoin to balance their trade this is why you do see outflow of Bitcoin from reserve wallet, they sell anyt time but Strategy don't sell.

A time will come that strategy reserve will be bigger than Blackrock and if in the future there is high demand from investors that buy Bitcoin shares from Blackrock, there could be surge but one thing is important, the strategy don't have any plan of selling, at least not now while but Blackrock can have big inflow which means more interest from investors or big outflow which means less interest from investors, as they sell off their shares more Bitcoin will be sold by Blackrock.

[coinlary]

I also remember that 2028 was a date when MSTR could have to massively return money to investors (bonds from the 2024-25 bull run). And that could lead into more significant sales.

This one right here caught my attention. That means  strategy could contribute  to the blood moon after the 2028 bull run.  I also found this, MicroStrategy Completes $1.01 Billion Offering of 0.625% Convertible Senior Notes Due 2028.

He's also betting on bullish  BTC with a much higher price which affects MSTR positively and also positive for  conversion to shares == Win-win. Bitcoin underperforms , possibility of potential BTC seles  to cover up .

[Dogedegen]

With that condition, there is no reason for me not to choose them in this vote. Strategy is the one that will reach 1,000,000 BTC & will beat Blackrock in the accumulation race.

As we have explained the comparison is not really accurate, so them winning this race that does not exist does not really mean anything. It will even mean less if they are unable to keep that 1 million BTC and end up  having to sell some for whatever reason in the future. That would make the milestone of reaching 1 million BTC completely pointless.

Why do you think BlackRock will take over Strategy?  Although the asset managers keep increasing their stakes in Strategy, I don't see them taking over the company because they own just 5.37% of Strategy's common shares.

It is just a made up claim or misunderstanding, BlackRock does not even do things like that so there is almost zero chance of this happening. It is not worth mentioning.

In reality I hope none of both wins the race. I don't want to see any company with a million BTC (almost 5% of the total supply).

It is too much for individual companies, I would prefer that there are more companies involved competing for the same amount of supply. This decreases the risk for everyone involved and then also structurally for the Bitcoin market. The more supply is concentrated into a single company or institution the higher the risk is if or when something goes wrong.

But for me it depends on the price evolution in the next months,

If we retake bullish territory, then it's likely Saylor will be first, because MSTR acquires their BTC in bull markets and early bear markets in large chunks. In crypto winters they tend to reduce their purchases.
 
If the market instead moves sideways or we enter a real crypto winter with more bearish moves, BlackRock has advantages, because their BTC inflow is more steady.

Good view, I think this is an accurate description of what may happen regarding this in the future. Right now a lot of people are just doubtful, nobody really knows what is going to happen. As much as this cycle has been predictable as some claim, a lot of it was completely unpredictable.

Strategy doesn't generate all of the funds that are used to buy Bitcoin. Some of the funds are raised through issuing preferred stock and equity sales. So it could be said that Strategy doesn't own all the Bitcoin they are accumulating.

I believe you getting it wrong
Strategy is a treasury company
The Bitcoin is in their balance sheet
They own them.
What investors are buying are their stocks not Bitcoin.
The investors own stocks since that's what's offered especially one like STRC
While Strategy can do with what they want with the proceed
In this case buy more Bitcoin.

It is you who is getting it wrong. Let me do a little explanation. What are stockc:

A stock represents a share in the ownership of a company, including a claim on the company's earnings and assets. As such, stockholders are partial owners of the company. When the value of the business rises or falls, so does the value of the stock.

https://international.schwab.com/investment-products/stocks/understanding-stocks

So when you own a stock in a company, you become a partial owner of the company. Bitcoin can be in the balance sheet but it doesn't mean that it belongs to Michael Saylor. Many organisations, such as BlackRock, are shareholders in Strategy. 

You might be right that Michael and other management staff decide when the company accumulates Bitcoin. But you cannot write off the influence of major shareholders. Some of these shareholders could also have voting power during the major decision-making process.

Small shareholders are not regularly involved in the daily operations of a business, and big shareholders are only involved sometimes so Ambatman has written it more correctly. Once they get the money they can do whatever they want with it under existing governance structures. The money may not even come from the existing shareholders which means that someone new is buying into the company and since you are new and small you definitely have no say over what the money is being used for. A lot of this talk about shareholder involvement is theoretical here and in other parts of the forum, you will not find it coming from people who are actually sitting as board members in companies and that shows us one thing. Anyway a lot of the money raised does not necessarily have to be about shares with voting rights.

Most of the recent raises come with preferred shares and they usually have limited or no voting rights at all, so they are designed for a different type of investors that is chasing this kind of yield. They are not the kind of investor who would get involved in the voting process or daily operations of the business such as large shareholders would. Most of the recent or all of the recent products do not have voting rights.

BlackRock has bigger capital than Strategy, and if considering Bitcoin Spot ETFs will be the main forces to lead Bitcoin market in coming years, BlackRock is the leader among dozens of Bitcoin Spot ETFs.

I meant Strategy is not in the Bitcoin Spot ETF game and they will not lead it, and I believe so not only because BlackRock has been moving more nearly to Strategy in total bitcoin managed. Strategy had its leadership in previous years but in the future, their leadership will be changed to other entities with a best possible candidate is BlackRock.

That is completely different from what you wrote initially, to be taken over means that BlackRock would own Strategy. That is something else entirely! It does not mean that BlackRock will win the race against Strategy in the count of Bitcoin.

[ingiltere]

As far as I know BlackRock doesn't buy Bitcoin itself. In fact some users have already pointed this out. On the other hand Strategy makes regular purchases. If they have a goal of 1 million BTC, they'll probably achieve it. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing though. In my opinion the more decentralized Bitcoin is the better rather than being concentrated in a single entity. 10 companies each holding 100k Bitcoin create a healthier environment than a single company holding 1 million Bitcoin.

[Kavelj22]

I voted for Strategy in the pool because it is more logic that the chances of Strategy are beyond the expectations with blackrock. And this because of the nature of each company. Despite that Blackrock owns a huge liquidity, that possession depends fully on the desire of investors as individuals or companies, since Blackrock is just an intermediary which all his accounts increase or decrease based on the volume of flows in the investment markets.
Things are quite different with Strategy which adopts an offensive “treasury companies” strategy based on buying bitcoin as a permanent strategic asset that it does not plan to sell. Strategy uses innovative financing tools such as issuing bonds to buy huge and successive quantities of bitcoin.

The difference in the characteristic of activity for each company makes Strategy the closest to dominate the sector as a sovereign and direct owner of bitcoin and not just an investment intermediary like Blackrock.

[Ambatman]

Small shareholders are not regularly involved in the daily operations of a business, and big shareholders are only involved sometimes so Ambatman has written it more correctly. Once they get the money they can do whatever they want with it under existing governance structures.

Thanks.
I felt tired to respond when I saw the notification but your quote of me brought me back
So might as well add my biased two cents.

So when you own a stock in a company, you become a partial owner of the company. Bitcoin can be in the balance sheet but it doesn't mean that it belongs to Michael Saylor. Many organisations, such as BlackRock, are shareholders in Strategy. 

You would notice I never used Saylor but strategy
People that buy MSTR do because of the Mnav
The multiplier they would get rather than buying Bitcoin itself.
If strategy sells all their Bitcoin and buy Real Estate instead they can't individually redeem Btc.

So I believe there will be some natural ceiling of the holdings both of ETFs and MSTR. I estimate it close to 5-7 million in total, if we take into account that about 3 million are assumed to be lost (including Satoshi's coins), 3 million are on exchanges, and currently there are about 1.5 million in ETFs and 1 million in company treasuries. 10-11 million are currently believed to be held by individuals. These 10 million may reduce to 8 or 7, but not much further, because many of these are believed to be long term hodlers.

We would then arrive at a structure with 4-5 million owned by ETFs and other derivatives, 2 million by MSTR, 3-4 million lost, 2-3 million (a little bit less than now) on exchanges, and 8 million held by private owners (total currently is ~20 million). But that is the maximum I can imagine, and hopefully we'll not get there.

Well ETF are more liquid than MSTR so it's easier for them to affect the supply in circulation
Around exchanges since price tend to affect how people decide whether to sell or buy
They can't hold forever
A price would make them sell at the end since we don't really have much leeway on passive with Bitcoin.
And I didn't see you adding any percentage for government
If Bitcoin is operating at a price that MSTR would want to own such and exchange getting lower
It means it's not something some government would neglect not owning some.

[shinratensei_]

Strategy with their routine DCA and convertible debt structure will win. If the ETF market under blackrock which is IBIT requires more bitcoin and need to surpass 1 million BTC they would've done so.
Until IBIT trade on a premium above its NAV, there will be no authorized participant that will arbitrage and increase blackrock's holding.

[m2017]

The two largest corporate holders of Bitcoin are Strategy and BlackRock. We see these two corporates holding the most Bitcoin and they have been investing in Bitcoin continuously through the DCA method. So far, Strategy has bought 843,738 Bitcoins and BlackRock has bought 817,138 Bitcoins. So here we discuss through a voting who will move forward to meet the goal of 10,00000 Bitcoins.

My vote will be Strategy...

Your vote???

Well, at this moment, Strategy is in the lead with 843,738 BTC, so they have the advantage.

But, to be honest, this race will be won by the one with the best borrowing skills.

Also, I wouldn't want to vote for any of them, because I don't like the very idea that a large number of bitcoins are concentrated in a few "hands". It would be better if several smaller companies owned the same number of bitcoins (almost 2 mln.) that are concentrated in the hands of BlackRock and Strategy.

[retreat]

It's not even a "battle" at all because they both have different goals in accumulating Bitcoin. Strategy buys Bitcoin for their company, while BlackRock buys Bitcoin to meet user demand through their ETF products. They both have different goals. In my opinion, Strategy could reach 1 million Bitcoin more quickly because they consistently buy. However, BlackRock, because they are an ETF, likely sells to meet outflows when their users sell their ETFs. So Strategy with what they are doing makes more sense for them to get to that point faster.

[Cookdata]

I voted for Strategy in the pool because it is more logic that the chances of Strategy are beyond the expectations with blackrock. And this because of the nature of each company. Despite that Blackrock owns a huge liquidity, that possession depends fully on the desire of investors as individuals or companies, since Blackrock is just an intermediary which all his accounts increase or decrease based on the volume of flows in the investment markets.
Things are quite different with Strategy which adopts an offensive “treasury companies” strategy based on buying bitcoin as a permanent strategic asset that it does not plan to sell. Strategy uses innovative financing tools such as issuing bonds to buy huge and successive quantities of bitcoin.

The difference in the characteristic of activity for each company makes Strategy the closest to dominate the sector as a sovereign and direct owner of bitcoin and not just an investment intermediary like Blackrock.

It makes sense to say Blackrock has liquidity since they are exchange trusted fund, they have liquidity in abundance and not just for Bitcoin, they have for other assets but they can only absorb what they have, if suddenly they have a request for sell of Bitcoin ETF, they might have to look for another exchange to dump their Bitcoin reserve so they can settle ETF buyers, so when you hear the news outflow to coinbase and Kraken from Blackrock is to sell and withdraw usd to settle customers.

Blackrock comparison with strategy doesn't make any sense, it's like trying to compare Binance and strategy because they both buy and sell Bitcoin but the goal of the companies are different. One is buying to keep which is what they have been doing for years while the other is buying for may reasons but what they do mostly is they sell at the discretion of the customers, there is nothing else.

[Kavelj22]

I voted for Strategy in the pool because it is more logic that the chances of Strategy are beyond the expectations with blackrock. And this because of the nature of each company. Despite that Blackrock owns a huge liquidity, that possession depends fully on the desire of investors as individuals or companies, since Blackrock is just an intermediary which all his accounts increase or decrease based on the volume of flows in the investment markets.
Things are quite different with Strategy which adopts an offensive “treasury companies” strategy based on buying bitcoin as a permanent strategic asset that it does not plan to sell. Strategy uses innovative financing tools such as issuing bonds to buy huge and successive quantities of bitcoin.

The difference in the characteristic of activity for each company makes Strategy the closest to dominate the sector as a sovereign and direct owner of bitcoin and not just an investment intermediary like Blackrock.

It makes sense to say Blackrock has liquidity since they are exchange trusted fund, they have liquidity in abundance and not just for Bitcoin, they have for other assets but they can only absorb what they have, if suddenly they have a request for sell of Bitcoin ETF, they might have to look for another exchange to dump their Bitcoin reserve so they can settle ETF buyers, so when you hear the news outflow to coinbase and Kraken from Blackrock is to sell and withdraw usd to settle customers.

Blackrock comparison with strategy doesn't make any sense, it's like trying to compare Binance and strategy because they both buy and sell Bitcoin but the goal of the companies are different. One is buying to keep which is what they have been doing for years while the other is buying for may reasons but what they do mostly is they sell at the discretion of the customers, there is nothing else.

I agree with you that Blackrock comparison with strategy doesn't make any sense. Each company has its own strategy to buy/hold/sell assets in the way she thinks most beneficial. While Blackrock uses funds from investors to buy bitcoin as a part of its investment strategy, Microstrategy buy and hold bitcoin as its strategic reserve. The first has to sell/hold/buy bitcoin under the request of its client investors, the second takes decisions under the supervision of a board of directors with such a complex organization. At the end of the day, Blackrock can lose a large client base if the btc price drops significantly, while Microstrategy won't care that much because they know prices will increase again.

[BIT-BENDER]

The two largest corporate holders of Bitcoin are Strategy and BlackRock. We see these two corporates holding the most Bitcoin and they have been investing in Bitcoin continuously through the DCA method. So far, Strategy has bought 843,738 Bitcoins and BlackRock has bought 817,138 Bitcoins. So here we discuss through a voting who will move forward to meet the goal of 10,00000 Bitcoins.

My vote will be Strategy...

Your vote???

I don't know why you want us to talk about it, it's not a UFC fight and most likely they don't even see it as a competition so why would you want us to waste our precious time talking about it.
Vote? That's weird mate, very weird, you probably vote on which billionaires will buy the most yatch or airplane. It actually doesn't contribute anything creating this unnecessary competition.

[Dogedegen]

As far as I know BlackRock doesn't buy Bitcoin itself. In fact some users have already pointed this out. On the other hand Strategy makes regular purchases. If they have a goal of 1 million BTC, they'll probably achieve it. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing though. In my opinion the more decentralized Bitcoin is the better rather than being concentrated in a single entity. 10 companies each holding 100k Bitcoin create a healthier environment than a single company holding 1 million Bitcoin.

Yes that would be better and is something that I also advocate for, but whenever we bring that up we need to mention another thing because many people confuse what decentralization means. Often I see them questioning the decentralization of Bitcoin because some entity owns a lot like Strategy or they own a lot as a proxy or custodian for others like Blackrock. Users need to know that the decentralization of the network is not related at all to the distribution of the supply, so the supply could be concentrated more or concentrated less but the decentralization of the network would not be affected by this. The issuers with centralization of supply are more relating to the market and systemic risk creation, if Strategy would decide to exit or their custodian gets hacked we would have an issue. Hacking 10 companies like in your example is extremely harder compared to hacking a single company, that is also one of the reasons why we had massive damage from past exchange hacks. If exchanges didn't have massive supplies on them, the hacks would not have much an effect on the blockchains but only on the companies that got hacked.

You would notice I never used Saylor but strategy
People that buy MSTR do because of the Mnav
The multiplier they would get rather than buying Bitcoin itself.
If strategy sells all their Bitcoin and buy Real Estate instead they can't individually redeem Btc.

Small shareholders have no say at all really in most of these operations, and in particular with Strategy we have seen a lot of retail people buy it when it was hyped. They did not have any say into what financial products would come later. For big shareholders things work differently. Except in cases where there is something like a hostile takeover plan, a reasonable big investor will already have assurances and at least verbal agreements on where things are going before buying in. Of course they will have this, otherwise they expose themselves to extra risk if their ideas conflict directly with the governance of the company. Also since the investors are not exactly Bitcoin maxis then they are not going to have issues when Strategy changes their strategy for example by selling some Bitcoin if this is good in terms of traditional financial or business decision making. It might hurt some people here that believe that Saylor's statements are personal promises to them, so to them changing course is a contradiction or betrayal but that is not how businesses are run on this stage. Changing course is business adaption, and the ones that are successful do it all the time.

[Just Say]

My assessment is based on the purchases frequency, from what I see between the two institutions, Strategy is the one with the higher purchases frequency. They have been making regular monthly purchases, since 2026, they have always made 4 purchases every month, that means this month we will most likely see 2 more accumulations from them.



With that condition, there is no reason for me not to choose them in this vote. Strategy is the one that will reach 1,000,000 BTC & will beat Blackrock in the accumulation race.

Actually, based on the buying density, we can see that Strategy has a higher BTC buying rate because as of May 18, 2026, this company now owns 843,738 Bitcoin through regular Bitcoin purchases, this is a company that is systematically buying BTC regardless of the price difference, but we can see that the OP mentioned that BlackRock, one of the largest asset management companies in the world, has 817,138 Bitcoins, this difference suggests that BlackRock is temporarily lagging behind. Since these two companies now have a large amount of BTC in stock, it seems that they both have a chance to meet the goal of 1000,000 Bitcoins, but my vote is for Strategy because it has the potential to beat BlackRock in this accumulation competition.