Stephanie Douse 
According to CryptoQuant’s CEO, institutional investors like MicroStrategy that bought BTC via on-chain transactions appear to have not liquidated their holdings yet.
While some industry executives questioned if Bitcoin (BTC) is the digital gold in the wake of Thursday’s big market drop, other experts backed the digital gold narrative for the time being, or until whale investors like MicroStrategy cash out.
On Thursday, Ki Young Ju, the CEO of South Korean on-chain analytics resource CryptoQuant, took to Twitter to say that as of 11:00 a.m. UTC, his platform had not observed any “significant on-chain activities.”
“Institutions running algorithmic trading bots think BTC is a tech stock,” Ju wrote, adding that institutional investors who bought Bitcoin via on-chain transactions do not appear to have sold their holdings yet.
“I’d rather stay until Michael Saylor sells Bitcoin,” the CryptoQuant CEO said, adding that for the time being, he still believes in the digital gold narrative:
“I believe we can detect whale selling activity through on-chain preemptively. My point was that the digital gold narrative is still valid as long as these institutions hold Bitcoins.”
Vijay Ayyar, vice president of corporate development at Luno crypto exchange, questioned the accuracy of referring to Bitcoin as “digital gold” on Wednesday, claiming that it is still too early to conceive of BTC as such.
“Bitcoin is still too young in its maturation curve to be properly placed in the category of ‘digital gold,’” he said.
Bitcoin, according to Ayyar, needs to gain greater widespread adoption in order to compete more successfully with gold as a store of value.
MicroStrategy, as previously reported, is one of the world’s largest public Bitcoin investors, with over 120,000 BTC as of January 31, 2022.
Despite Bitcoin’s drop from a peak of over $69,000 in November 2021 to a current value of about $40,000, the corporation continues to buy it.
MicroStrategy isn’t planning on abandoning its Bitcoin treasury approach anytime soon.
The unpredictability created by nation-state wars, according to MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, only emphasizes the value of investing in “pure digital energy.”