Institutions grabbed 2.47 million BTC! Bitcoin has completely changed. What is the last chance for ordinary people?

Nakamoto 2025-11-2 17:59 98842人围观 BTC

12.5% of Bitcoins were "collected" by institutions! The era of retail investors has come to an end, and the great transfer of wealth has entered a period of acceleration. Bitcoin is undergoing a silent but profound structural change - a great wealth mig

12.5% of Bitcoins were "collected" by institutions! The era of retail investors has come to an end, and the great transfer of wealth has entered a period of acceleration

Bitcoin is undergoing a silent but profound structural change - a great migration of wealth from "the home of geeks and retail investors" to "dominated by Wall Street and sovereign capital". The latest market report for the third quarter of 2025 released by Bitwise Asset Management, the world's leading crypto asset management company, shows that institutional investors already control about 12.5% of the total supply of Bitcoin, and this proportion is rising at an alarming rate.

This is by no means a simple digital change, but a clear signal of the times: Bitcoin’s “retail-dominated era” is coming to an end, and the wave of institutionalization is irreversible.

🔑 1. Who controls Bitcoin? Data debunks power shift
As of October 2025, the total circulation of Bitcoin is approximately 19.8 million, and the position pattern has tilted significantly:

- Institutional investors (including ETFs, listed companies, hedge funds, family offices, etc.): hold approximately 2.47 million BTC, accounting for 12.5%；
- Retail investors: still hold about 66% (about 13 million coins), but the vast majority are in "non-current" status；
- Only 14.5% of Bitcoins (approximately 2.87 million) are stored on exchanges, with real-time trading liquidity.

This means that there is an extreme scarcity of truly freely tradable Bitcoins in the market, and institutions are continuing to “acquire funds” through ETFs, balance sheet allocation, etc. Typical examples include BlackRock's IBIT ETF, which has become one of the world's largest Bitcoin holders, holding over 500,000 Bitcoins. ； MicroStrategy holds over 210,000 coins ； After seizing BTC at the auction, the U.S. government still holds more than 540,000 BTC.

📉 2. Has the halving “expired”? Macro factors become new market engines
In the past, the Bitcoin bull and bear cycle was generally attributed to the "halving" event every four years, but the Bitwise report pointed out a key change: in 2025, the annual demand for Bitcoin by institutions has reached more than 7 times the "supply gap caused by halving".

This means that supply-side changes can no longer dominate prices, and the core factors that really drive the market have become: the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy (expectations of interest rate cuts/rate increases), the degree of global liquidity easing, risk asset preferences (Risk-on/Risk-off), and the allocation decisions of sovereign wealth funds and pension funds.

Quantitative analysis shows that more than 80% of Bitcoin price fluctuations in the past six months have been driven by macro factors, while traditional encryption narratives such as “halving” and “on-chain indicators” have less than 5% impact. The conclusion is clear: Bitcoin has officially been promoted to a "macro asset" and competes with gold, US stocks, and US bonds.

🏦 3. Benchmarking traditional assets: Bitcoin institutionalization has just begun
Although 12.5% of institutional holdings seems substantial, it is still in its "infancy" compared with mature assets:

Asset class institutional holdings proportion
S&P 500 ETF (SPY) 58%
Gold ETF (GLD) 36%
20-Year U.S. Bond ETF (TLT) 79%
Bitcoin (BTC) 12.5%

What is even more noteworthy is that Bank of America survey data shows that global fund managers only allocate an average of 0.4% of their assets to cryptocurrencies. This means that even if the allocation ratio is increased to 1% to 2%, it will bring hundreds of billions of dollars in incremental funds to the market. And as giants such as Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo officially allow financial advisors to allocate Bitcoin ETFs to clients in Q4 of 2025, pent-up demand is about to explode.

💡 4. Why does the price have to be “higher”? The core logic of the liquidity dilemma
The current price of Bitcoin is about $110,000, but the psychological selling price of a large number of early holders (entering from 2010 to 2017) is much higher than this: "$1 million/BTC" has become the new consensus target； Many people regard BTC as a "once-in-a-lifetime wealth opportunity" and are unwilling to sell unless they have major financial goals such as buying a house or retirement. ； On-chain data shows that more than 70% of BTC has not moved for more than a year.

Therefore, in order to mobilize this "sleeping whale", prices must rise significantly. Only when there is a strong enough wealth effect in the market can long-term holders be encouraged to release liquidity and complete the next stage of wealth redistribution.

🌐 5. Future Outlook: Bitcoin’s “New Cycle” Core Logic
The Bitwise report concluded: “Bitcoin’s next phase is no longer ‘code vs belief’, but ‘capital vs macro’. The continued influx of institutions is reshaping it into a core alternative asset in the global financial system. ”

This means: the bull and bear cycles will be synchronized with the economic cycle (such as risk aversion during recessions and increased risk appetite during recovery)； ETFs will become the mainstream holding method, with retail investors participating indirectly through traditional securities firms. ； Companies and countries will regard BTC as a strategic reserve asset, similar to "digital gold."

✅ Written at the end: The transfer has just begun, the storm is still behind
12.5% is not the end, but the starting point of Bitcoin’s institutional era. When Wall Street, sovereign funds, billionaires and pension funds begin to take Bitcoin seriously, the scale of this wealth transfer may reshape the entire global financial landscape.

For ordinary investors, the real opportunity may not lie in speculating on short-term rises and falls, but in understanding a core fact: We are standing on the threshold of a new era - a more mature and ambitious Bitcoin cycle dominated by institutional capital.

“It’s not that Bitcoin needs institutions, it’s that institutions need Bitcoin. ”
—— Bitwise 2025 Q3 Report