Bitcoin price going sideways for years could make Saylor’s STRC structure harder to sustain, CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju warns.
The future challenge for Bitcoin might be not so much in weathering another round of panic sell-off but rather maintaining investor interest in cryptocurrency once the market is no longer in motion.
In an X post, Ki Young Ju, founder and CEO of blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant, said Strategy’s STRC structure becomes more dangerous if Bitcoin spends years moving sideways.
Strategy, the Bitcoin treasury company led by Michael Saylor, uses capital markets to raise funds around its BTC▼$63,298.00 holdings. STRC, one of its preferred stock instruments, pays monthly cash dividends and is designed to trade around a $100 par value.
Bitcoin can withstand any price drawdown if investors believe that the next rally is coming, Ki said, noting that a long flat market is a completely different setup:
“Bitcoin’s biggest risk is not a crash. It is boredom. Saylor’s STRC structure becomes truly dangerous not when Bitcoin simply crashes, but when Bitcoin spends years moving sideways and the bear market drags on.”
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As the analyst added, a long period of stagnation could weaken demand and make Saylor’s capital-raising model harder to keep running:
“A sharp drawdown can be survived if the market still believes in the next leg up. But long stagnation kills the story. It weakens demand, compresses MSTR premium, and makes Saylor’s capital-raising machine much harder to sustain.”
At the same time, the CryptoQuant CEO emphasized that Bitcoin’s core “has not really changed.” Yet, the reasons people use to justify higher prices change from one market cycle to another, he noted, adding that many of those older stories are now irrelevant.
Bitcoin Needs a New Story
Nonetheless, Ki says he still believes capital can flow into Bitcoin over time. His main concern though is that the feeling of an obvious next catalyst is weaker than it was a decade ago.
He pointed to two narratives that have already played out.
- One was the approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
- The other was the idea that a U.S. president could openly support Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset. That technically happened, but not in a way the Bitcoin community expected it to be.
“When I founded CryptoQuant in 2018, I strongly believed a Bitcoin ETF would eventually be approved. I also thought a U.S. president openly supporting Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset would happen someday.”
The new story Saylor is pushing centers on Bitcoin banking and digital credit. Ki said those ideas may matter to institutions, but they are harder for regular people to understand than Bitcoin’s earlier message around freedom money.
While Ki didn’t state that Bitcoin was done, yet he did make it seem like it might be time for Bitcoin to get itself a fresh narrative before the next wave of liquidity kicks in.
Particularly because it has diluted its previous cypherpunk narrative due to institutional adoption, Ki concluded.
Read more: Strategy Buys $101M in Bitcoin After Small But Loud BTC Sale
