Institutions View Bitcoin as Digital Gold but Approach Investments Like Technology: Bitwise

The survey included endowments, foundations, public pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, multi-family offices, investment consultants and public companies managing from hundreds of millions to tens of billions of dollars in assets.

The interviews, conducted between late March and April 2026, when BTC was trading around $75,000, revealed that “most” respondents who own crypto assets frame bitcoin as “a store of value with asymmetric upside, often paired with gold as a fiat debasement hedge.” The report did not specify how many respondents “most” represents or how frequently they “often” pair bitcoin with gold.

Bitcoin Is a ‘Central Part of the Equation’

“For most institutions we interviewed, bitcoin and gold now travel together. Especially for those concerned about fiat debasement, bitcoin is a central part of the equation,” the report, co-authored by Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan and Head of Research Ryan Rasmussen said.

Moreover, one unidentified institution said it keeps bitcoin in its portfolio’s “gold bucket.” However, other findings in the research show that crypto assets are mostly held in venture, innovation, and technology investment buckets.

One foundation, an outlier whose crypto asset position has at times exceeded 10%, said that it treats “crypto as a growth and disruption bet.” A pension fund positioned “crypto as part of a broader innovation allocation including AI, life sciences, space, and other innovative tech,” while a sovereign wealth fund described its crypto asset allocation, in Bitwise’s words, as a multi-year bet on achieving global recognition rather than near-term return.

“One foundation rejected the ‘digital gold’ framing entirely, categorizing all crypto as disruptive technology rather than a store of value,” the report noted. Meanwhile, the correlation between BTC and gold has been volatile this year, per Coinglass data.

Both Digital Gold and ‘Venture-Style Bet’

An endowment’s responses also highlighted the mixed view on bitcoin. It calls BTC an “emerging-to-established store-of-value” play and “a venture-style bet” at the same time.

Therefore, the report largely reflects bitcoin’s still-fluid identity as both a multipurpose asset and a multipurpose technology, with constantly changing narratives. In either case, this evolving view of bitcoin, along with its longer-term price performance, has helped it become “the universal conviction asset,” while ether and solana have not yet attained similar status among surveyed institutions.

“Every institution we interviewed that owns crypto owns bitcoin,” the report said, adding that “most” own BTC as a standalone position. Among the surveyed institutions, crypto asset allocations range from 0.5% to 13% of investable assets, with most between 1% and 2%.

The Barrier of Committees

These mixed messages might also reflect how institutions make decisions about bitcoin and crypto allocations.

“Where one person can decide, crypto gets allocated. Where a committee must agree, it often stalls,” Bitwise wrote. That might also affect how these assets are positioned in portfolios.

Despite these mixed messages, bitcoin and the broader crypto asset sector are moving deeper into the portfolios of even the most conservative institutions.

As reported by Bitcoin.com News in March 2026, the central bank of Kazakhstan even announced plans to use gold and foreign exchange reserves to invest up to $350 million in a portfolio of crypto asset proxies for diversification purposes.

Bitcoin Price and Other Criteria for Exit

Another finding in the report is that interviewed institutions did not reduce their crypto asset allocations during the broader market sell-off between October 2025 and April 2026, while several bought more. However, as also reported, multiple large institutional investors cut their bitcoin exposure during that time, including Harvard University. Some investors, such as banks, governments, private equity firms, family offices and insurers, increased their allocations, according to CoinShares data.

In either case, when asked by Bitwise what would prompt them to exit, none of the institutions named price. Bitcoin-only holders said they would reconsider their positioning if ether or solana showed clear value accrual. Investors would consider exiting ETH and SOL positions if these tokens failed to show real utility. Sovereigns also named a regulatory reversal or an industry-wide credibility crisis as reasons to exit.