Written by: Blockchain Knight
In Q4 2025, the Bitcoin price initially rose before falling. After hitting a new all-time high of $126,000 in October, it experienced a shock retreat due to a $20 billion large-scale deleveraging event, dropping below $90,000 by year-end, with its market capitalization shrinking by nearly a quarter.
However, regulatory filings show that institutional investment managers did not take the opportunity to exit. Instead, they viewed the pullback as a buying opportunity, increasing their holdings of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs against the trend, showing a significant divergence between rising share counts and declining asset values.
Analysis of Bitcoin ETF 13F filings reveals that 121 institutions net increased their holdings of various spot Bitcoin ETFs by 892,610 shares between Q3 and Q4 2025.
Specifically, the total institutional shareholding increased from 5,252,364 shares in Q3 to 6,144,974 shares in Q4, a rise of approximately 17%.
However, affected by the Bitcoin pullback, the total market value of holdings shrank from $317.8 million to $298.6 million, a decrease of $19.2 million. The implied average value per ETF share correspondingly fell from $60.50 to $48.60, a drop of 19.7%.
A typical case is Dartmouth College's $9 billion endowment fund, which newly purchased $15 million worth of BlackRock's IBIT fund and Grayscale's Ethereum fund during the period, confirming institutions' continued interest in crypto ETFs.
This divergence was particularly pronounced in BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT).
In 2025, despite incurring a 10% loss for clients, IBIT attracted $25.4 billion in new inflows, ranking as the sixth-highest net inflow ETF in the U.S. for the year, surpassing established products like the Invesco QQQ Trust and SPDR Gold Trust.
The Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise pointed out that 99% of advisors holding cryptocurrencies plan to maintain or increase their 2025 investment amounts this year, dispelling market concerns that "institutions would exit amid volatility."
It should be noted that not all institutional increases are for long-term allocation; they may imply arbitrage activities.
State Street data shows that the U.S. Bitcoin ETF market size reached $103 billion, with institutions holding nearly a quarter of the outstanding shares, and 60% of institutions prefer ETFs over physical Bitcoin.
However, 13F filings only disclose long positions, not short ones, concealing hedge funds' basis trading strategies. This involves buying ETFs while shorting Bitcoin futures to profit from the spot-futures price difference, without bearing Bitcoin's directional risk.
If the increase in holdings is driven by arbitrage, the capital may reverse as the price difference narrows or volatility intensifies; if it is for long-term allocation, it is more stable.
Regardless of the motivation, the core fact is very clear: during Bitcoin's significant Q4 pullback, Wall Street's holdings of Bitcoin-related ETFs actually expanded.
