Bitcoin was trading near $64,135 on 18 August, roughly 36 percent below the $100,000 threshold that Scaramucci described as the trigger point for mass profit-taking by long-term holders. On-chain analysis from Glassnode characterises those sellers as a specific cohort: people who had accumulated Bitcoin during the 2017 to 2020 era and chose to exit when prices finally crossed a number they had been waiting years to see.

"As the halving cycle comes in again, and we cut the supply of coins again, it will tighten price, and I think you'll see the thing move back up over 100,000," Scaramucci said.

John Darsie, CEO of SALT and a partner at SkyBridge, framed the same period more structurally in comments reported by The Block on 19 August 2026. He described the shift in Bitcoin's ownership base as part of a maturation process, arguing that as early adopters sell at price thresholds, institutional buyers and newer retail participants absorb the supply, creating more durable price floors over time.

What the on-chain data actually shows

Glassnode data reported by CoinDesk in June 2026 puts numbers to that thesis. Long-term holders, defined as wallets that have held Bitcoin for at least 155 days, were selling at a peak rate of approximately 100,000 BTC per week, worth roughly $9.62 billion, when prices were above $100,000 in late 2024 and early 2025. By mid-2026, that figure had dropped to around 12,800 BTC per week, an 87 percent decline.

At the same time, long-term holder supply reached a fresh all-time high of 16.64 million BTC in July 2026, representing approximately 83 percent of circulating supply. The interpretation: the holders most likely to sell at $100,000 largely have. What remains is concentrated in wallets that are committed to holding further.

The short-term holder cost basis, meaning the average price paid by wallets that acquired Bitcoin within the past 155 days, sits near $99,100. That figure matters for newer retail participants. Many are currently underwater relative to their entry price.

What Scaramucci and Darsie flagged about AI

Separately, Scaramucci pointed to the convergence of artificial intelligence and blockchain infrastructure as a structural theme for institutional capital, citing AI-native blockchains and decentralised compute networks as the next significant area of deployment. Darsie made similar remarks in comments reported by The Block. FinanceFeeds data shows that active AI agent deployments across blockchain networks exceeded 20,000 by February 2026, a 300 percent increase from Q4 2025, and the combined market capitalisation of AI-focused crypto tokens crossed $20.94 billion by May 2026.

Venture funding reflects the same shift. For every dollar invested in crypto companies in 2025, approximately 40 cents went to firms also developing AI products, more than double the 18 cents recorded a year earlier, according to KuCoin research.

A different story in South Asia and Africa

The OG seller narrative is largely a Western and East Asian story. Sub-Saharan Africa received more than $205 billion in on-chain crypto value between July 2024 and June 2025, a 52 percent year-on-year increase, according to Chainalysis. The region's activity is retail-dominant, with over 8 percent of transferred value coming in transactions under $10,000, compared with 6 percent globally. Participants in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa who entered the market in recent years were not the ones selling at $100,000. They may be sitting among the newer cohort now holding at an unrealised loss, though entry prices varied widely across the 2022 to 2026 window.

South Asia tells a similar story. The region recorded an 80 percent year-on-year increase in crypto adoption in the period from January to July 2025, generating roughly $300 billion in transaction volume, with India leading regional growth. Most participants entered well after Bitcoin's early accumulation phase.

If Scaramucci's supply maturation argument holds, the practical beneficiaries of the next repricing cycle are not the early adopters who already exited. They are the participants who accumulated between 2022 and 2026 at lower price points, a group that includes a significant and growing share of emerging market participants. The AI-blockchain thesis also carries direct relevance for South Asian and African developers already building on decentralised compute networks such as Akash, Render, and Bittensor, the exact infrastructure category that institutional investors are beginning to price in.

Standard Chartered maintained a $100,000 year-end 2026 price target for Bitcoin in a July research note, though Polymarket, a prediction market platform, currently assigns only an 8 percent probability to that outcome before December. The 2028 halving remains the next hard deadline for the supply-side argument to be tested. If those odds shift, the cohort best placed to benefit is the one that was not selling at $100,000: the newer retail participants in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa who accumulated through the most recent cycle and are still holding.