Institutional investors showed “diamond hands” through bitcoin’s latest 50% rout, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan says — and ETF flow data backs it up.
Hougan told CoinDesk that the best evidence of institutional resilience is in spot-BTC ETF flows. From their launch in January 2024 through October 2025, bitcoin ETFs accumulated roughly $60 billion in net inflows. Since October 2025, despite a roughly 50% drop in bitcoin’s price, ETFs have recorded less than $10 billion in outflows. “In other words, despite a punishing bear market, professional investors have proven to be ‘diamond hands’ in bitcoin,” Hougan said.
Those flows matter because they contradict a common critique: that institutional investors, supposedly more sensitive to macro shocks and liquidity cycles, would quickly sell bitcoin exposure in a downturn. Hougan argues the opposite is happening. Because bitcoin remains a non‑consensus asset, allocating to it still carries career risk — so the institutions that do take positions tend to have unusually strong conviction. “They are not 51% convinced bitcoin is a good idea; they are 80% or 90% convinced. Otherwise, they wouldn't take the risk,” he said.
Bitwise, which offers the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB), manages just under $3 billion in BITB and has more than $15 billion in client assets overall. By contrast, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) sits above $55 billion in AUM, underscoring how large-scale institutional interest is concentrated in a few flagship products.
That high conviction, Hougan believes, makes institutional capital “very sticky” even through volatile market cycles — a state of affairs he expects to persist “for the foreseeable future.” This resilience underpins his bullish long-term view: he doubled down on his $1 million bitcoin prediction in the interview, arguing it’s far from outlandish. “All you need for bitcoin to get to $1 million is for the global store of value market to continue to grow as it has for the past 20 years and for bitcoin to become a minor but material part of that market,” Hougan said. “It just needs what's been happening for the past 10‑20 years to keep happening for the next 10 years, and we'll get there.”
Bottom line: ETF flow data suggests institutions haven’t fled bitcoin amid the selloff. Instead, a smaller pool of highly convicted institutional allocators may be helping stabilize demand, adding a potentially important layer of durability to the market as it matures.
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