Bitwise interviewed 15 major institutions about their Bitcoin holdings during the recent slide from $125,000 to $60,000. None of them sold. Many bought more. The firm published those findings as part of its first institutional crypto adoption report, covering pensions, endowments, foundations and sovereign wealth funds.
The takeaway is blunt: the investors Bitwise surveyed treated the drawdown as a buying window, not an exit signal.
Gold comparisons and currency hedges
According to the report, institutions now place Bitcoin in the same bucket as gold — a hedge against currency debasement rather than a speculative trade. That framing helps explain the absence of panic selling. If you bought Bitcoin for the same reason you buy gold, a 52% drawdown doesn't force a thesis change. It just changes the entry price.
Bitwise says the Bitcoin bottom was $60,000. Several of the surveyed institutions appear to agree, given that many added to positions on the way down.
Wells Fargo, Fidelity and BlackRock allocations
The report lists specific allocations. Wells Fargo has made a 2–3% Bitcoin allocation. Fidelity and BlackRock have made 2–8% allocations.
Those aren't hedge-fund-sized bets. They're portfolio line items — the kind of position an allocator can hold through a bad quarter without explaining it to a board. That's the shift Bitwise is documenting: Bitcoin moving from a trade to a small, permanent slice of a larger portfolio.
Sovereign funds selling gold for Bitcoin
One of the more specific findings: sovereign wealth funds are selling gold to buy Bitcoin. That's a direct rotation between two assets the report says institutions treat as serving the same purpose. It also suggests some large holders are willing to trade a centuries-old store of value for a fifteen-year-old one — a decision that would have been unusual a few years ago.
Bitwise's data also notes that Bitcoin isn't correlated to bonds, gold or stocks. For allocators, that's the whole pitch. An asset that doesn't move with anything else in the portfolio is useful even if it's volatile on its own.
Shallower drawdowns and the ETF bid
Bitwise argues ETFs have made this Bitcoin bear market shallower than previous ones. Weekly ETF inflows reached $2.5 billion, which the firm describes as signaling a new wave of capital.
That's a structural change from prior cycles. When the only buyers were retail and crypto-native funds, drawdowns ran deep and fast. With ETF flows in the mix, there's a persistent bid underneath the price — not enough to stop a decline, but enough to change its shape.
The report covers pensions, endowments, foundations and sovereign wealth funds. Bitwise plans to continue publishing the adoption research, with the next edition expected to track whether the allocations it documented hold through the current quarter.
