15 Institutions Reveal Why They Refused to Sell Bitcoin During a 50% Crash

None of the 15 large investors interviewed by crypto fund manager Bitwise cut their crypto holdings as the market fell roughly 50% between October 2025 and April 2026. Several bought more.

The group included university endowments, pension funds, state-owned investment funds, family offices and public companies. Every one that owned crypto held Bitcoin (BTC).

Why the Institutions Refused to Sell Bitcoin

Bitwise, which manages more than $9 billion in client assets, ran the interviews between late March and April 2026. Its report does not name the institutions, whose assets range from hundreds of millions to tens of billions of dollars.

No respondent named falling prices as a reason to sell. Instead, they said they would exit only if the case for owning crypto broke, such as a regulatory reversal or an industry-wide scandal. Some had already held through earlier 50% drops, including in 2022.

Most treat Bitcoin as a store of value, often paired with gold. Ethereum and Solana were held more selectively, as technology bets they would drop if real-world use fails to appear within a few years.

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

Positions stayed small, from 0.5% to 13% of investable assets, with most between 1% and 2%. Nearly all respondents use or plan to use spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which hold the coin directly and trade like a stock.

What Public Filings Show

Bitwise picked the 15 interviewees, and it sells crypto funds to the same types of institutions.

Public filings show not every large holder stood firm. Harvard’s endowment cut its Bitcoin ETF stake by 43% in the first quarter of 2026, according to its 13F, a quarterly report of US holdings. It is not known whether Harvard was among the interviewees.

Abu Dhabi’s two state funds, by contrast, kept every IBIT share through the second-quarter slide.

Bitwise said such filings understate institutional ownership, since some investors use vehicles that avoid disclosure. It named governance, operations and reputation as the main barriers to larger positions.

With Bitcoin trading near $84,534 at press time, Bitwise expects most institutions to hold crypto within five years.