Galaxy’s Alex Thorn Says Bitcoin Held Near $80,000 Because Hedge Funds Had Already Sold

Bitcoin has stayed close to $80,000 through a month of worry over the AI trade because the investors most likely to sell on that worry had already left, Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy Digital, said Thursday.

“People ask why Bitcoin’s been so resilient around 80 while everybody has a wall of worry meltdown about the AI trade the last month,” Thorn said on Unchained in a live episode recorded Thursday. “It’s ’cause none of the people freaking out about AI own Bitcoin.”

Bitcoin is “not in their inventory to sell” because they have “already gotten out of the trade,” he said.

Bitcoin’s lowest daily close over the past month was $80,009 on Oct. 26, with an intraday dip to $79,107 on Oct. 24, according to Coinbase data. It traded at $80,457 at 4:06 p.m. ET Thursday.

Thorn said some of the latest AI anxiety has eased, citing strong SK hynix earnings, a Kospi rebound, Oracle’s investor day and getting through the Federal Reserve’s meeting Wednesday, where it held rates. “We’re long-term bullish on Bitcoin. I don’t think that should surprise anyone,” he said.

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Thorn said “macro and multi-strat fast money hedge funds” did the spot bitcoin ETF selling. His evidence comes from quarterly 13F filings, where large money managers disclose their spot bitcoin ETF positions. In a Galaxy Research essay published Oct. 26 and sent to Galaxy clients Oct. 22, he named nine filers that cut their holdings by 29% to 100% each and together shed about 68,000 BTC: Goldman Sachs Group, Millennium Management, Capula Management and six other filers. Galaxy characterized the sellers as trading-driven money: macro and multistrategy hedge funds, firms running the ETF-futures basis trade and bank trading desks.

On the buying side, Galaxy pointed to Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi Investment Council it owns, and Morgan Stanley’s wealth-management unit. Thorn said wealth managers may “rebalance on a quarterly basis” and are “much longer term capital.”

Across all 2,200 filers, combined ETF holdings fell 14%, from the equivalent of 355,000 BTC as of Sept. 30, 2025, to 307,000 BTC by June 2026. That net drop of 48,000 BTC is less than the 68,000 BTC the nine sellers alone gave up.

Filings for the quarter that ended Sept. 30 are due Monday, Nov. 16, and Thorn noted that “the biggest filers all wait till the very last day.” They will show who held spot bitcoin ETFs three months later than the data in Galaxy’s essay.

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