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As some industry executives have questioned Bitcoin (BTC) as being the digital gold amid a massive market crash on Thursday, other experts continued to support the digital gold narrative for now, or until whale investors like MicroStrategy cash out.

Ki Young Ju, CEO of South Korean on-chain analytics resource CryptoQuant, took to Twitter on Thursday to report that his platform has not observed any “significant on-chain activities” as of 11:00 AM UTC.

Institutional investors who bought Bitcoin via on-chain transactions seem to have not sold their holdings yet, Ju wrote, adding that “institutions running algorithmic trading bots think BTC is a tech stock.”

“I’d rather stay until Michael Saylor sells Bitcoin,” the CryptoQuant CEO stated, adding that he still supports the digital gold narrative for now:

“I believe we can detect whale selling activity through on-chain preemptively. My point was that the digital gold narrative is still valid as long as these institutions hold Bitcoins.”

On Wednesday, Vijay Ayyar, vice president of corporate development at Luno crypto exchange, questioned the accuracy of referring to Bitcoin as digital gold, suggesting that it’s too premature to think of BTC as digital gold yet.

“Bitcoin is still early in its maturity curve to be firmly placed in the category of ‘digital gold,’” he said. In order to compete more effectively with gold as a store of value, Bitcoin needs to achieve more widespread adoption, Ayyar noted.

As previously reported, ​​MicroStrategy is one of the world’s largest public Bitcoin investors, owning more than 120,000 BTC as of Jan. 31, 2022. The company continues to buy Bitcoin despite the cryptocurrency plummeting from its November 2021 high above $69,000 to its current value below $40,000. 

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MicroStrategy is showing no signs that it will abandon its Bitcoin treasury strategy anytime soon. MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor on Wednesday argued that the uncertainty caused by nation-state conflicts only underscores the benefit of investing in “pure digital energy.”