CONFIRMED: The quarter’s reported quantities are sourced. They do not establish an inevitable price squeeze.
Here is a number Bitcoin bulls can fairly enjoy: US spot ETFs added 79,800 BTC in the third quarter, against 41,300 BTC newly mined. The figures come from 21shares’ November 2 report and were examined by CryptoSlate. Funds bought close to twice the new issuance. That is a meaningful demand comparison.
Here is the less convenient number: two buying windows accounted for 91% of the quarter’s ETF inflows measured in Bitcoin. Those periods were August 17–27 and September 21–25. The picture is not a uniform institutional vacuum cleaner operating every day. It is a quarter whose net demand was heavily concentrated in a few stretches.
Existing holders still exist
Mining output is not all the supply available to buyers. Coins held for years can move. 21shares reported a 248,000 BTC reduction in long-term-holder balances during the same quarter. CryptoSlate correctly cautioned that this is a cohort balance change, not an independently measured total of executed market sales. Coins aging into a cohort and spending out of it complicate the bookkeeping.
Nor can the long-term-holder change simply be added to mining supply and subtracted from ETF purchases to produce a tidy market deficit. The classifications can overlap, and the measurement methods differ. That calculation would look satisfyingly precise while claiming more than the data establishes. Crypto already has enough fake certainty without a spreadsheet helping it along.
The useful version of the scarcity argument is conditional: sustained new demand can pressure a limited pool of willing sellers. The weak version declares the result inevitable because one quarter’s ETF purchases exceeded fresh mining. Keep watching the daily flow pattern and the behavior of existing holders, especially between the big buying bursts. The confirmed numbers give the supply-squeeze story a foundation. They do not finish the argument, set a guaranteed price target or tell us that yesterday’s institutional buyers will be back tomorrow.
Source: 21shares. Also checked: CryptoSlate.
Also reported by: CryptoSlate
