All news is rigorously fact-checked and reviewed by leading blockchain experts and seasoned industry insiders. - None of Bitwise’s 15 institutions cut crypto exposure during the 2025–26 drawdown.
- Most crypto allocations remain modest at between 1% and 2% of investable assets.
- Bitcoin has gained roughly 37% against gold from its August ratio low.
Bitcoin’s rivalry with gold is starting to show up where it matters most: in the source of institutional capital.
One sovereign wealth fund interviewed by Bitwise said it was funding its crypto allocation by selling foreign-exchange and gold reserves. The fund was not identified, and the finding comes from a relatively small sample of 15 large institutions. Still, it offers a rare look at Bitcoin competing directly for capital previously assigned to traditional monetary reserves.
The portfolio signal is appearing alongside a sharp recovery in Bitcoin relative to gold. The BTC/gold ratio in the TradingView chart climbed from roughly 14.4 in August to 19.79 on September 30, a gain of about 37% from the trough.
Bitcoin Is Moving Into a Different Portfolio Conversation
Every crypto-owning institution interviewed by Bitwise held Bitcoin. For almost all of them, BTC was the first crypto asset purchased, the largest position and the one held for the longest period. Institutions also frequently framed Bitcoin alongside gold as a store of value and hedge against fiat-currency debasement.
That creates a more complicated picture than the familiar idea of institutions treating Bitcoin simply as a high-risk technology investment.
The source of an allocation can reveal how an investment committee thinks about an asset. Funding Bitcoin from a venture, technology or alternatives bucket places it alongside other growth-oriented investments. Funding it from gold or foreign-exchange reserves puts it into competition with assets held for monetary protection.
Bitwise’s research does not establish that this second approach is widespread. Fifteen institutions are not representative of the entire institutional market, and Bitwise itself manages crypto investment products.
But the sovereign example demonstrates that the portfolio transition is no longer entirely theoretical.
Bitcoin Has Recovered Sharply Against Gold
The BTC/gold ratio provides another way to examine that competition without relying on their separate dollar prices.
On the daily TradingView chart, one Bitcoin is worth approximately 19.79 ounces of gold on September 30.
The ratio had fallen to around 14.4 in August before reversing. It climbed through 17 in late August, approached 18.5 in September and then broke sharply toward 20. After briefly trading above that threshold, it consolidated just below it.
From the August low to September 30, Bitcoin gained roughly 37% in gold terms.
That distinction is useful because Bitcoin and gold can appreciate simultaneously against a weakening currency.
The ratio asks a narrower question: which asset is gaining purchasing power against the other?
Recently, the answer has been Bitcoin.
The chart does not tell us why the move occurred, and there is no evidence that the sovereign allocation identified by Bitwise caused it. What it does show is that Bitcoin’s recent recovery has not been limited to dollar appreciation.
BTC has also materially outperformed the asset most commonly used as its monetary benchmark.
The Drawdown Tested Institutional Conviction
Bitwise’s interviews were conducted after crypto markets had fallen roughly 50% between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026.
Not one of the 15 institutions reduced its crypto allocation during that period. Several increased their positions instead. More strikingly, none identified a falling market price itself as a reason it would sell.
Their stated exit conditions were more fundamental: failure of the investment thesis, a regulatory reversal or an industry-wide credibility crisis.
That behavior helps separate strategic allocation from price momentum.
Ryan Rasmussen has separately argued that Bitcoin’s decline to around $60,000 marked the bottom. That is Rasmussen’s market view, not a conclusion established by Bitwise’s institutional survey.
The survey provides a different piece of evidence: regardless of whether $60,000 ultimately proves to have been the cycle low, the institutions interviewed did not use the decline as an exit signal.
Conviction Is Rising Faster Than Allocation Size
Institutional interest should not be confused with enormous portfolio exposure.
Crypto represented between 0.5% and 13% of investable assets among the institutions Bitwise interviewed, but most allocations clustered between just 1% and 2%. Family offices reported the largest positions, while sovereign wealth funds had the smallest. Bitwise also found that allocation size tended to fall as the number of internal approvals required increased.
That creates an important tension.
Bitcoin can become an accepted institutional asset without immediately becoming a large institutional position. A pension fund or sovereign investor does not need to replace a substantial part of its gold exposure for the portfolio framework to change. Even a small Bitcoin allocation matters differently if it begins competing with monetary hedges rather than only with other alternative investments.
Spot ETFs have also reduced some of the operational friction. Almost every institution Bitwise interviewed either uses them or plans to, citing costs, operational simplicity and familiarity for back-office systems.
The More Useful Metric May Be Bitcoin Priced in Gold
Whether Bitcoin eventually captures meaningful capital from gold cannot be established from one anonymous sovereign fund.
The next evidence will come from allocation decisions across a much larger set of institutions, particularly through future drawdowns and changes in monetary conditions.
Until then, the BTC/gold ratio offers a cleaner market measure of the competition.
Dollar prices show whether Bitcoin and gold are appreciating. BTC priced in gold shows whether Bitcoin is actually gaining ground against the monetary asset it increasingly sits beside in institutional portfolios.
