Bitcoin is "Imprisoned": Why Isn't the Corporate Buying Wave Driving Prices Up?

In the latest episode of Coin Stories with host Nathalie Brunell, investor and podcaster Preston Pysh provided a structurally sound answer to the question that many Bitcoin holders have been wondering all summer: if institutional investment funds are continuously announcing large purchases, why does the price keep falling and fluctuating? Pysh's diagnosis is not related to long-term investors suddenly losing faith, but rather to the structural market dynamics created by sophisticated "quick money" companies, designed to curb volatility while extracting basis and funding premiums. Why hasn't the price of Bitcoin increased significantly? Brunell openly questioned why spot Bitcoin is stagnating despite momentum from the "Trump administration" and "all the corporate treasury companies buying in," and who "is really on the sell side" creating resistance to the targets of "$150,000 and $200,000" that people are still waiting for by the end of the year. Pysh starts with empathy for that discord: "I can totally feel the frustration and pain because it's like every day there's some announcement like, oh, this company just bought over ten thousand Bitcoin. The price fell that day or something." Since then, he pointed out the increase in volatility trading strategies, delta-neutral strategies operated by large trading firms on Wall Street. "If I had to guess what it is, I think there are Wall Street traders making quick money—like Jane Street, and many others—who... are trading by extracting volatility from the market and really have no risk at all, other than the fact that they are buying and selling simultaneously and they are profiting from the spread." In fact, these transactions combine spot contracts, futures contracts, and perpetual swaps, therefore, the exchange will flatten in one direction while cutting the spread. Pysh argues that the second-order effect can be clearly seen on the chart: "This will cause volatility to continue to gradually decrease as it rises... volatility will increasingly taper off in the process." He continued, the suppression changes the feeling of a bullish trend. Instead of the typical price explosion that usually disrupts the Bitcoin bull market, the price action is compressed into narrower bands, separated by mean reversals. "I think this will lead you to a scenario where the spring is winding up and it will bounce back one way or another," he said. In terms of direction, the multi-cycle trend is still trending upwards, but he opposes the lazy reasoning that a textbook volatility squeeze must be resolved vertically. "The market depends heavily on liquidity... They depend on all the other external factors... I'm not... saying that volatility is collapsing, it is increasing and we will... go to the moon. I'm not saying that." In the context of Pysh, liquidity is the gating variable that determines whether the spring actually pops up or not. He considers global risk representations as a tool to understand the liquidity of fiat money rather than limiting the analysis to cryptocurrency cash flows. "When I look at the liquidity metrics of global stocks, it’s a great way that I like to... assess... I will look at all the global stock markets and if they are all rising strongly, that tells me that the market is flooded with liquidity—fiat liquidity. And right now, that’s what we’re seeing… it’s all like an auction. So for me, that’s a healthy indicator that Bitcoin could go higher. But that also depends on whether that, regardless of its origin, can continue to hold or not." However, Pysh warns not to view the volatility compression as a certain countdown measure for the six-figure price target. "People just need to be careful... there is no guarantee that the market will continue to rise strongly or that the compression is signaling that we will reach $200,000 in the coming weeks." He also admitted that if anyone still believes in the four-year halving pace, this phase looks different from previous cycles. "Perhaps we've seen a bit of what we've seen, which is the weakening compared to what we've seen in history regarding price volatility... At this stage of the cycle... you will see a very strong move that has taken place and... to be honest, going back... to the Christmas timeframe, I had already guessed it," he admitted, his voice dropping as if acknowledging that the anticipated vertical expansion simply has not occurred on schedule.