Institutions held through 50% crypto drop: Bitwise — SkimNews
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- Bitwise interviewed 15 institutional investors — including endowments, public pensions, sovereign wealth funds, multi-family offices and public companies — during late March and April and found none had cut crypto allocations through the ~50% drawdown that began October 2025.
- Bitcoin was every institution's first, largest and longest-held crypto asset, typically treated as a store of value and often held alongside gold.
- Ether and Solana were smaller, shorter-horizon bets, with several institutions saying they would exit if growth in stablecoins, DeFi or tokenization failed to translate into value accruing to the underlying tokens.
- When asked what could prompt them to sell, no institution cited falling prices; respondents named a regulatory reversal, an industry-wide credibility crisis, or a failure of their investment thesis.
- Crypto allocations across the group ranged from 0.5% to 13% of investable assets, with most between 1% and 2%, and almost every institution either used or planned to use spot crypto ETFs, with some shifting from direct custody or private placements.
- A separate CoinShares 13F data report found professional investors' reported US spot Bitcoin ETF exposure fell 17% in Q1, with hedge funds and brokerages accounting for roughly 96% of the reduction while banks added exposure.
Why it matters: Zero of 15 institutions sold through a 50% drawdown, which points to conviction held by long-horizon allocators treating Bitcoin as a store of value rather than by momentum traders — while the CoinShares data showing hedge funds and brokerages cutting ETF exposure by 17% in Q1 shows the recent Bitcoin ETF selling came from a different, more tactical cohort than the institutions in Bitwise's study.
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