The Big Whale Market Call - February 2026

Speakers:

• Matthew Hougan - Chief Investment Officer, Bitwise Asset Management
• Adrian Fritz - Chief Investment Strategist, 21Shares
• Aleksandar Bukovski - Senior Research Analyst, The Big Whale

Topics discussed

Spot ETFs provide an important structural buffer during the current crypto winter. The opening of Wall Street's legacy platforms to Bitcoin represents a massive long-term tailwind. Native crypto issuers retain a decisive advantage thanks to their deep expertise, ongoing client education, operational excellence and innovation in staking, vaults, real-world assets, active strategies and AI-blockchain integration.

The sector is still at the beginning of a multi-year adoption cycle. Bear market & ETFs as volatility buffers

• Long-horizon institutional allocators (advisers, family offices, foundations) act slowly, allocate persistently and sell rarely - creating stable demand that reduces the severity of declines.
• Matt Hougan: "It won't be an 80% decline, more like 50-60%. It's really a solid buffer for this market."
• BTC & ETH ETF outstandings have fallen far less than spot exchange platform balances → visual evidence of institutional stability.
• Adrian Fritz (on the slow and educational nature): "We really take the time to meet with them eight times in a row to walk them through their digital asset journey... we respond 24/7. "

The arrival of traditional players = massive net positive

• Morgan Stanley (~$10 trillion in assets under management), Wells Fargo, Merrill Lynch and their peers have recently enabled exposure to Bitcoin → unlocking trillions over 5-10 years.
• Matt Hougan: "We haven't felt even 1% of what Morgan Stanley is going to mean... take $20 trillion and multiply by 5%. That's a very big number."
• Adrian Fritz: "It's a net positive that they're entering the market... the pie has so much more room to grow. It just legitimises the space as a whole. At times, it's even made conversations with some traditional investors easier for us."

The competitive advantage of native crypto issuers

• The specialists win thanks to more than 8 years of experience, 24/7 customer service, dedicated capital markets teams and an operational mastery of crypto-specific mechanisms (forks, airdrops, staking, etc.).
• Advanced crypto issuers have a competitive advantage.Adrian Fritz: "If there's a blockchain fork, if there's an airdrop... all that has to be handled on the back-end. That's where an eight-year history really comes into play."
• Matt Hougan: "If you want to call someone and talk to them about what Vitalik's return to Ethereum means... companies like Bitwise and 21Shares have people who have lived this market for eight years. "
• The two note that while the generalists are capturing flows via their brand, the specialists are gaining market share in altcoins, thematic/software products, staking, vaults and on-chain innovation.
• Matt Hougan: "Since BlackRock came in... my assets have grown 15-fold."

Product Innovation - Staking, vaults, RWA, active & AI-driven strategies

• Staking ETPs (already available in Europe) accumulate yield directly → often offsetting fees → very attractive to traditional yield seekers.
• Adrian Fritz: "Very often, the staking return you receive actually offsets the management fees. So you get a net positive... they generally found it very attractive from the start."
• On-chain safes offer a low-volatility, over-collateralised return → distinct from long-only spot exposure.
• Adrian Fritz: "Being a native crypto player, there are a lot of different avenues we see to be more innovative... I'm pretty sure we're going to see a lot of different products over the next 12 months. "
• Matt Hougan (on vaults): "A lot of these vaults are actually extraordinarily low risk... doing over-collateralised lending against extremely liquid assets like Bitcoin and ETH... can yield 50% more than traditional money market funds. "
• The two expect rapid growth in active ETFs, thematic/index exposures, real-world asset-linked vehicles, euro-based safes/stablecoins, and efficiencies from AI agents (rebalancing, liquidity management, stablecoin volume, simplification of user experience).
• Adrian Fritz (on AI agents): "The majority of trading volume for stablecoins will be done via AI agents... the blockchain provides the perfect rails for them to live on... AI can also help improve the user experience. "

Institutional adoption pace and training

• Most allocatees remain in the learning phase on tokenisation/real-world assets → typical 18-24 month journey.
• Adrian Fritz: "It's no longer an existential question... They're really trying to understand how to communicate it to their end clients... how to implement it in a holistic multi-asset portfolio. "
• Matt Hougan: "99% [of advisers who owned crypto in 2025] said increase or maintain."
• The significant gap between perception and reality (stablecoin growth, tokenisation, DeFi maturity) continues to be a major source of alpha.

Confidentiality & on-chain migration from traditional finance

• Fully transparent rails are unlikely to support large-scale institutional flows → privacy-preserving solutions (ZK-AML/KYC hybrids) are seen as essential.
• Adrian Fritz: "We saw private blockchains many years ago... it never took off. Liquidity was completely siloed... I would say we will see some sort of hybrid version in the future."
• Matt Hougan: "My assumption is that it can be open and managed with privacy... we will end up solving AML/KYC with privacy and that will be a huge breakthrough."

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