#BTC Morgan Stanley is quietly buying Bitcoin, while market makers are opening short positions—which side are you on?
On one side, traditional financial giants are adding to their Bitcoin holdings with real money; on the other, crypto market makers are aggressively opening short positions on-chain. The same market, two completely opposite bets.
On September 5, these two pieces of news emerged almost simultaneously, once again putting the question of whether institutions are actually bullish in the spotlight.
① Morgan Stanley: 355 BTC bought in 4 days According to on-chain monitoring, Morgan Stanley's MSBT Bitcoin ETF purchased and withdrew 94.56 BTC from the Coinb Prime platform, worth approximately $7.54 million. Over the past four days, the ETF has accumulated 355.33 BTC, worth approximately $28.3 million. The traditional asset management giant is expressing its position through real-money buying.
② Whales are scrambling to accumulate It is not just Morgan Stanley. In the final week of August, Strive bought 1,800 BTC, worth approximately $143 million, raising its total holdings to 23,156 BTC and making it the fifth-largest publicly listed company holder; Strategy added 4,603 BTC during the same period, bringing its total holdings to more than 845,000 BTC. On the Ethereum side, BitMine has increased its holdings for 65 consecutive weeks. Its latest holdings exceed 5.9 million ETH, accounting for 4.9% of the circulating supply and leaving it just one step short of its 5% target—despite the position currently carrying an unrealized loss of approximately $5.1 billion.
③ But market makers are betting the other way What is interesting is that on-chain market makers are taking the exact opposite direction. Galaxy Digital and Wintermute's positions on Hyperliquid are currently clearly skewed bearish: Wintermute holds approximately $99.82 million in shorts and $5.12 million in longs; Galaxy holds approximately $26.41 million in shorts and $6.21 million in longs. Together, the two have more than $126 million in short positions and only approximately $11.33 million in longs. Over the past 30 days, both sets of related addresses have lost money—Wintermute lost approximately $15.3 million, while Galaxy lost approximately $5.96 million.
④ Regulation is also advancing The National Sheriffs' Association (NSA) has withdrawn its opposition to the CLARITY Act crypto market structure bill and shifted to a “neutral” position, saying it would “take a step back and allow the legislative process to continue.” The Senate plans to hold a procedural vote on the bill on September 15. Meanwhile, market expectations of a September Federal Reserve rate hike are rising—CME data shows a 58.6% probability of a 25-basis-point rate hike in September.
Why are major institutions scrambling to accumulate on the spot market while market makers are opening shorts in derivatives? This is itself a reflection of the market's divergence. In the short term, market makers' bearish positioning combined with rate-hike expectations could weigh on prices; but over a longer horizon, the continued entry of traditional capital from Morgan Stanley, Strive, and Strategy is aligned with the long-term “digital gold” thesis. The real signal is not who is right or wrong, but that Bitcoin's buyer base is shifting from being dominated by retail investors to a relay of institutional and whale buying.
Market makers' short positions look more like hedging and short-term arbitrage than a declaration of bearishness; institutions' spot accumulation is the directional asset-allocation move. The CLARITY Act's procedural vote on September 15, September's CPI data, and the rate decision are the next three key milestones.
Before the direction becomes clear, do not use market makers' positions to give yourself false confidence and heavily short—don't forget that they have been losing money on their shorts over the past 30 days.
$BTC 
