Cory Klippsten explains the specific mechanism behind institutional Bitcoin selling and why Wall Street’s involvement created a new kind of volatility, not less of it.
- Institutions sell Bitcoin first on weekends – it’s the only liquid asset available.
- Bitcoin is the least understood and most recently bought asset in institutional portfolios.
- GBTC lost $21B in outflows – the only US spot Bitcoin ETF with negative net flows.
- ETFs created cleaner top of funnel but pushed real Bitcoin to mid-funnel.
- Klippsten gives 20-25% chance of new ATH in 2026, up sharply if $100K hits by July.
Cory Klippsten, CEO and founder of Swan Bitcoin, one of the leading Bitcoin financial services companies in the US, has been in the space since 2017 and has watched every flavor of volatility this market has produced. Speaking in an interview with Cointelegraph, he raised a question that doesn’t get asked often enough, not whether institutions are good for Bitcoin, but what actually happens when they need to sell.
The answer is more specific than most people realize.
The weekend selling mechanic
The scenario Klippsten describes is straightforward but its implications get overlooked. A hedge fund runs a $100 billion portfolio. At the far end of their risk curve they allocate $500 million to Bitcoin. Then something bad happens in geopolitics on a Thursday or Friday. They need cash available to buy discounted assets when markets open Monday.
“The only thing they can sell over the weekend is Bitcoin,” Klippsten said. “It’s also out of all their assets, the thing they understand the least, and bought the most recently.”
That combination – 24/7 liquidity, lowest conviction, newest position – makes Bitcoin the first thing institutional portfolios reach for when they need to raise cash fast. The result is a specific pattern: macro stress events on Fridays producing Bitcoin selloffs over weekends, not because the thesis has changed but because it’s the only door that’s open.
“It also gets sold off not just because sometimes retail has weak hands, but also because institutions have weak hands too“, he says.
This reframes the narrative around institutional involvement entirely. The common assumption is that institutions bring stability, patient capital, long time horizons, sophisticated risk management. Klippsten’s point is that they bring a new flavor of volatility instead. Not worse necessarily, but different. And understanding the mechanism matters for anyone trying to read why Bitcoin drops when it does.
GBTC proves the mechanic is real
The clearest data point supporting Klippsten’s thesis is what happened to GBTC after it converted to a spot ETF in January 2024. The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust experienced over $21 billion in outflows according to Binance News, the only US spot Bitcoin ETF with negative net investment flows since launch, losing an average of approximately $89.9 million per day over its first eleven months as a spot product.
That $21 billion didn’t leave because Bitcoin’s fundamentals changed. It left because a specific category of holder, one that had been locked into GBTC’s closed-end structure for years, waiting for the ETF conversion to exit, did exactly that the moment the door opened. Institutional and semi-institutional money that wanted price exposure, not Bitcoin, walked out as soon as walking out became possible.
The GBTC bleed is the weekend selling mechanic in slow motion. Capital that was never committed to Bitcoin as an asset, only to Bitcoin as a trade, exits when exit conditions improve. The $21 billion figure makes that abstract point concrete.
The ETF paradox Klippsten is watching
Klippsten is clear that ETFs brought something genuinely valuable. “It pretty much put to bed the whole crypto versus Bitcoin thing,” he said. Six years of altcoin venture capital money arguing against Bitcoin, and the ETF launch ended that debate. BlackRock, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Schwab, Merrill Lynch, all now talking about Bitcoin and selling it to their clients. That’s a cleaner and bigger top of funnel than the industry had before.
But it came with a trade-off. “They brought us a ton of supply going into a paper wrapper that’s not on-chain Bitcoin,” Klippsten said. The ETF moved real Bitcoin to mid-funnel rather than the destination. Two thirds of Swan’s new customers already hold a Bitcoin ETF before they arrive at Swan. They came for price exposure first and are now starting to ask questions about what the real thing actually is.
“They start to understand the benefits of being self-sovereign and having some assets outside of the system,” Klippsten said. “It’s a different marketing challenge.”
The ETF created the largest Bitcoin awareness campaign in history. It also created the largest pool of Bitcoin holders who don’t actually hold Bitcoin. Klippsten sees both sides clearly and is more interested in figuring out how to reach the second group than in arguing about whether the first group should exist.
This cycle is different from 14, 18, and 22
On price, Klippsten is measured rather than promotional. He started 2026 giving roughly 50% odds of a new all-time high this year. With Bitcoin in the 70s after touching 60 earlier in the cycle, he’s revised that down to 20-25%.
But the number he keeps coming back to isn’t the ATH probability – it’s the drawdown comparison. Previous cycles went down 94%, 86%, and 77% from peak to trough. This cycle went down 50%. “I’ll take it,” he said. “If I was thinking anything less than a 70% drop from peak to trough would be a huge victory in the sense of just dampening volatility.”
His read is that Bitcoin is moving toward something closer to a random walk upward over time, less violent cycles, smaller drawdowns, more of the behavior you’d expect from a maturing asset class. The 50% drawdown versus 77-94% in previous cycles is the data point he’s pointing to.
What would change his ATH odds? “$100K in June or July and I’d give you a much better chance of getting to 130 by the end of the year. That’s all. It’s more likely if we get closer to the target.”
On quantum – manufactured controversy
Klippsten’s view on quantum computing as a Bitcoin threat is concise. “The shitcoin marketing. Like usual.” He’s been in the space long enough to have watched the quantum conversation cycle through multiple times over 12-13 years and sees the current urgency push, with some voices now claiming 2027 or 2028 as risk dates, as the same pattern repeating. People marketing altcoins and raising money off a manufactured threat narrative.
His technical read is that extracting a private key from a public key is decades away. The actual at-risk coins are early Satoshi-era addresses and coins in taproot addresses where the public key is public. Everything else is covered by moving to a non-public address. “The last thing you want to do is something rushed. And the last thing you want to do is break the social contract and confiscate coins.”
On the people pushing accelerated timelines: “It’s always the same people coalescing around – we must do something right now so that we can make money somehow off of Bitcoin.”
What Swan is actually doing
Klippsten’s focus hasn’t shifted. Getting people and companies to buy Bitcoin, not trade it, not wrap it, own it. The ETF changed the conversation he has to have but not the destination he’s pointing toward. Two thirds of new Swan customers already have ETF exposure. His job now is explaining what the real thing is to people who already have the paper version.
“You’re talking to a different set of people in a different way than you did before when we were just trying to say buy Bitcoin, not Ripple. That’s what we did for four years. And this is very different.”
On XRP specifically, asked directly at the end of the interview: “I have no thoughts. Don’t care.”
The question Klippsten is asking, what happens when Wall Street needs to sell, doesn’t have a bearish answer or a bullish answer. It has a structural answer. Bitcoin is the most liquid asset in institutional portfolios on weekends. That makes it the first thing sold when cash is needed fast. Understanding that mechanism explains a lot of the price action that gets attributed to retail panic, geopolitical fear, or market manipulation. Most of the time it’s simpler than that. It’s a hedge fund needing dollars by Monday morning.
The information provided in this article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. Coindoo.com does not endorse or recommend any specific investment strategy or cryptocurrency. Always conduct your own research and consult with a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
Kosta has reported on cryptocurrency markets and blockchain infrastructure since 2020, bringing over six years of hands-on experience in the crypto industry built through daily tracking of markets, trends, and emerging blockchain developments. Specializing in Bitcoin on-chain analysis, institutional ETF flows, and digital asset price action, his work at Coindoo has been cited by other news agencies and consistently covers market developments with a focus on data-driven reporting across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP.
Over the years, Kosta has contributed to multiple crypto media outlets in different regions, authoring over 6,000 articles across the sector. His reporting spans cryptocurrency markets and the broader fintech industry, tracking not only price action but also the technological and regulatory forces shaping the ecosystem.
To support his analysis, Kosta actively leverages on-chain data and metrics from leading platforms such as Santiment, Glassnode, and CryptoQuant, enabling deeper, evidence-based market insights. He believes in the power of transparency and the data that underpins the blockchain ecosystem.
His academic background in Marketing Management from Denmark further complements his analytical approach, adding a strong understanding of communication strategy and content positioning to his work.
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