Why 15 Big Investors Held Bitcoin Through a 50% Crash

All 15 major investors Bitwise interviewed kept their crypto positions as prices dropped by about half from October 2025 through April 2026. A number of them added to their holdings.

University endowments, pension funds, state investment funds, family offices and listed firms were among those taking part. All crypto owners in the group had Bitcoin (BTC).

What Kept Big Holders From Selling Bitcoin

The interviews were conducted by Bitwise, a crypto asset manager overseeing more than $9 billion in client assets, from late March into April 2026. None of the institutions are identified in the report; their assets span from hundreds of millions of dollars to tens of billions.

Price declines were not cited by any interviewee as a trigger for selling. The condition for selling, they said, was the investment thesis breaking down — through a reversal in regulation, for instance, or a scandal affecting the whole industry. Some had previously stayed put through similar 50% slumps, including in 2022.

Bitcoin is viewed by most as a store of value, frequently alongside gold. Ethereum and Solana appeared in portfolios more sparingly, treated as technology wagers that would be sold off if practical adoption did not materialise within a few years.

An excerpt in the Bitwise report quoted an investment consultant as saying: “If the thesis is right, given the S-curve of adoption, selling now would be selling too early.”

Holdings were modest, ranging from 0.5% to 13% of investable assets, and usually sat between 1% and 2%. Almost every participant already uses, or intends to use, spot Bitcoin ETFs — funds that directly hold the coin and trade on exchanges like shares.

Evidence From Regulatory Filings

The 15 participants were chosen by Bitwise, which markets crypto funds to those exact categories of investor.

Disclosure documents show that some big owners did sell. Harvard’s endowment trimmed its Bitcoin ETF position by 43% during the first quarter of 2026, per its 13F filing, which lists US holdings every quarter. Whether Harvard took part in the interviews is unclear.

Abu Dhabi’s two state funds, in contrast, did not sell a single IBIT share during the second-quarter downturn.

According to Bitwise, these filings do not capture the full extent of institutional ownership because some investors hold through vehicles that are not required to report. Governance, operations and reputation were cited as the biggest obstacles to bigger allocations.

Bitcoin was changing hands near $84,534 when this was written, and Bitwise predicts that most institutions will have crypto exposure within five years.