Institutional Adoption Q4

Institutional ETF Holdings from 13F Filings

Dear Bitcoiners,

Institutional adoption has been the most important source of capital allocating to Bitcoin this cycle. In this newsletter we’ll discuss the latest institutional insights!

At Bitcoin Strategy we’ve been right on track. For the past months we’ve been treating Bitcoin as being in a bear market, warned about the potential drop, and been able to take profit before the major downturn.

Today we’ll focus on the institutional share of ETF holdings. ETFs are the most approachable gateway for institutions and are the best proxy for understanding institutional capital flows. The data is based on the latest 13F filings.

Note that 13F filings are a conservative estimate of institutional ownership, as they only include institutions with over $100M in assets under management (AUM) that are required to report. There may also be many smaller institutional allocators not reflected in this data.

Let’s jump right in!

Institutional ETF Holdings Remain Above Half a Million BTC

After a drop from 532k BTC in Q3, institutions still hold over 513k BTC through ETFs. With a decrease of 19k BTC, this is the second-largest drop after Q1 2025.

👉 Key insight: In Q4 2025, while Bitcoin’s price dropped sharply by about 23%, reported institutional holdings declined only modestly by roughly 3.5%, indicating institutions largely held through the drawdown.

Note that Bitcoin entered bear-market territory during the current quarter, making the upcoming quarter particularly important for assessing institutional positioning and market direction.

Institutional Share of ETF Holdings

Since the launch of ETFs, we’ve seen a growing trend of institutional capital. Since Q4 that trend has stagnated, but large capital allocators still hold nearly 40% of total ETF holdings.

👉 Key insight: The percentage of total U.S. Bitcoin ETF holdings owned by institutions remained nearly unchanged, with less than a one-percentage-point difference.

Number of Institutions

👉 Key insight: During this period, the number of institutions reporting Bitcoin holdings via 13F filings declined from 2,173 to 1,867, a drop of roughly 14%.

New Institutions

The table above shows the most prominent new entrants with first-time allocations:

• Intesa Sanpaolo: Italy’s largest bank by total assets, with a substantial allocation.

• Laurore: possibly capital flight from China. More info here.

• Galaxy Group Investments: a different legal entity of Galaxy Digital, the crypto-focused investment firm associated with Mike Novogratz. Former filings were under Galaxy Digital Capital Management, but their current filing places them in the top 25.

• The rest are mainly asset/wealth managers, investment managers, trading firms, and hedge funds.

Top 25 Largest ETF Holders

Let’s now look at the top 25 largest institutional Bitcoin ETF holders.

👉 Key insight: 17 out of 25 increased their positions in Q4, including major banks and the state-owned sovereign wealth fund Mubadala of Abu Dhabi.

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Wrap Up

Q4 2025 saw stagnation in total holdings but they remain above half a million BTC, still higher than two quarters ago. While the total number of reporting institutions declined, we saw significant allocations from major players. Considering we were already dealing with a major downturn in price, overall institutional interest remained relatively strong.

However, the deeper phase of the bear market only began this quarter, therefore the results of Q1 2026 will be of major importance!

Note that there’s a 45-day reporting window, so the next results will only become available by mid-May. I’ll keep you updated! 👊🫡

As always, your thoughts are appreciated. 🧡

Until next week,

-Root