Rumors Of MicroStrategy Selling Bitcoin Grow With Tesla’s Disclosure

Bitcoin and the crypto market have been losing momentum in the last 24 hours after experiencing a relief rally. Yesterday, the Elon Musk-led car manufacturer Tesla announced that it sold 75% of its BTC holdings to convert them into fiat currency.

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This has thrown fuel on speculations about other big BTC holders unloading their assets into the market. MicroStrategy and its CEO Michael Saylor have been the target of a majority of these speculations.

Over the past week, Bitcoin’s third wealthiest address identified as 1P5ZEDWTKTFGxQjZphgWPQUpe554WKDfHQ, has transferred 29,200 BTC to exchange platforms. Crypto users believe this is MicroStrategy’s BTC address.

Therefore, they speculate the software company sent their BTC to crypto exchange Coinbase. Over the past week, this address transferred 132,800 BTC to this platform which is roughly the amount held by the Saylor-led company.

Research firm Jarvis Labs questioned the rumors claiming the address most likely belongs to a “top trader”. The wallet has been accumulating Bitcoin since January 2019.

MicroStrategy and Saylor disclosed that their first BTC purchase took place in 2020. The software company is a publicly-traded company in the U.S. and must be transparent about its treasury strategy or risk facing legal consequences.

Jarvis Labs highlighted the complexity of labeling BTC addresses and dismissed the rumors with the following statement:

Wallet labels are incredibly complex and a sensitive topic. As they lack confirmations from the concerned party most of the time. So take such noise with a grain of salt. Relax, he has not been selling yet, even if assumed it was Saylor’s MSTR wallet.

CEO at CryptoQuant Ki Young Ju claimed the rumors about the wallet unloading their Bitcoin into the market are “FUD”. The executive said the transactions associated to address 1P5Z are part of an internal transfer.

In that sense, Young Ju said the BTC might have been sent to a cold or custodian wallet potentially owned by crypto exchange Gemini. Young Ju said:

For the record, “1FzW…” has closer ties to hot wallets like “1NYA…” and “bc1quq…” and these are not Coinbase or OKx. These are Gemini hot wallets.Lots of on-chain data providers mislabeled them. See this tweet for more details.

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Replying to all these rumors and speculation, Saylor tweeted with two emojis representing “diamond hands”. In the past, the executive said their plans are to hold Bitcoin “forever” dismissing any idea of dumping their BTC.

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) July 21, 2022