Is Strategy no longer the flagship of Bitcoin? Who can take over?

On one side, the former “Bitcoin will never be sold” advocates are beginning to loosen their stance, while on the other side, top global traditional financial institutions are accelerating their entry.

Strategy has publicly announced for the first time that selling Bitcoin will be included in their toolkit, while Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab are competing to bring spot crypto trading to millions of ordinary investors.

These two completely opposite actions precisely reveal the ongoing transformation in the crypto market.

At the early May earnings conference, Strategy management explicitly stated: We will sell Bitcoin when it is advantageous to the company.

Their CEO set a threshold of 1.22 times the net asset value, indicating that when the market value falls below this level, distributing dividends from BTC sales is more effective than issuing new shares.

Saylor even did the math: even if Bitcoin appreciates only 2.3% annually, the existing holdings can “permanently” support dividends.

That absolute slogan of “never sell” has officially given way to a more pragmatic treasury management framework.

Meanwhile, Sequans has been continuously selling BTC under operational pressures and debt maturities, and MARA has repurchased convertible bonds by selling tens of thousands of Bitcoin. Corporate treasuries are downgrading Bitcoin from reserves to liquidity tools.

Interestingly, as companies start calculating the most advantageous times to sell, traditional financial giants are entering at full speed.

Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab have chosen to compete in offering direct crypto trading at this moment. The logic is simple: clients have already voted with their feet.

Charles Schwab’s clients hold about 20% of US spot crypto ETFs, but these clients are trading on Coinbase or Robinhood instead.

Every outbound transaction means a loss of revenue and user behavior data. The ETF era has shown brokerages the demand but failed to retain trading relationships.

Now, with a series of regulatory hurdles removed, they can finally build their own crypto trading infrastructure legitimately.

These two forces seem contradictory but actually point to the same conclusion: Bitcoin is completing its transformation from a faith asset to a standardized financial instrument.

Strategy’s shift is rational: when debt, dividends, and buybacks become necessities, any asset must obey the principle of capital allocation efficiency.

And the entry of Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab is an inevitable part of institutionalization—as crypto assets are integrated into infrastructure similar to stocks and bonds, their volatility narrative will gradually be replaced by balance sheet logic.

Next, the market’s direction will depend on which force prevails. If Bitcoin’s price returns to Citibank’s $112k benchmark target, Strategy’s selling threshold will become meaningless, and the wave of client acquisition by brokerages will amplify incremental demand.

Conversely, if Bitcoin drops again to a pessimistic scenario of $60k, the value-driven sales by Strategy may turn into chain reactions of selling, and brokerages’ new business will become defensive tools to retain existing clients.

Strategy is the actuarial calculation of treasury managers, while Morgan Stanley reflects the anxiety of retail channels.

When the myth of “never sell” is shattered and Wall Street brokerages enter en masse, the remaining question is no longer how high Bitcoin will go, but who can endure the marathon of asset allocation without being crushed by leverage or abandoned by clients.