Bitcoin’s Most Important Moves Last Year Happened Off The Price Chart

In 2025, investors started treating BTC like infrastructure rather than a trade.

Crypto’s un-festive season is here, that time of cycle when investors store their coins away in hopes of locking up supply, farming points for future airdrops, or simply lying in wait for the next bull run to begin.

This time round, institutions are signalling the transition. BoA is advising wealth clients that up to 4% exposure to crypto could make sense. Not Bitcoin specifically, or Ether, or even risk-managed exposure through ETFs. Just “crypto.”

A few years ago, Wall Street was dismissive of digital assets. Banks don’t pivot away from traditional guidance unless they’re preparing for big changes.

Texas plants the flag

Late last year Texas moved $10 million of state capital into Bitcoin exposure: half into BlackRock’s spot ETF, half into IBIT. The amount wasn’t large, but state governments rarely take a directional position in volatile assets. When they do, it suggests a new policy is forming.

Once a state treasury gets involved in an asset, political incentives change. No governor or federal agency wants headlines about taxpayer losses on digital coins. Whether anyone admits it or not, state exposure creates a soft backstop. Sovereign losses make for very bad optics, so politicians are incentivized to avoid them by design

Wisconsin’s State Investment Board, which bought Bitcoin ETFs early and sold too soon, now looks like it left the table before the cards were even dealt. That, too, is a data point.

Ark’s $1.5M Call Started a Countdown

ARK’s Cathie Wood said last week that Bitcoin could reach $1.5 million over the next decade. Retail traders might roll their eyes given the recent slump, but institutions treat it like a scenario model. Wood is one of the few major fund managers who bought earlier, held longer, and won.

Her number implies a stop on the way — around the $200k–$250k zone — where Bitcoin historically flips investor psychology. It’s the level where people stop thinking about “exposure” and start thinking about “how to get one whole coin.”

Most late entrants repeat the same cycle: hesitation at $30k, disbelief at $60k, fear at $100k, FOMO at $200k. Then — when a full coin slips out of reach — they gravitate toward “next Bitcoin” narratives, overextended leverage, and illiquid tokens.

The setup doesn’t change, but the participants do.

When TradFi Blinked

Vanguard, the lodestar of conservative retirement money, quietly opened access to crypto ETFs. Surrender from the most risk-averse shop on the block is a signal in itself, especially for latecomers who need institutional cover before they make the leap.

At the same time, the IMF and BlackRock are publicly framing tokenization as the next phase of settlement infrastructure.

Remember: recent drawdowns hit ETFs, corporate treasuries, and risk funds simultaneously. Spreads widened, NAVs slipped, and models were stress tested. Retail wobbled for the same reason it always does: Main Street doesn’t have access to quants and sophisticated forecasting models. But institutional capital does. It stayed put, and re-positioned.

A Story Nobody Wants to Narrate — Yet

DeFi vaults are the natural successor to stablecoins. With stables hovering around $310B, it’s vital to track when their different liquidities start following similar patterns.

Last December, stablecoin supply and DeFi TVL briefly crossed at $136B. It barely registered in the headlines. But to anyone watching how crypto positions were evolving, it marked a rebalancing of on-chain liquidity, the slow migration of yield products into standardized vault frameworks, and the beginning of a new competition between passive and active crypto dollars.

The next 12 months will tell us whether that convergence was just noise, or an inflection point.

The Bigger Picture

Banks are preparing clients. States are dipping in. ETFs are normalizing access. Tokenization is moving from theory to project plans. And vaults are positioning as the next layer of on-chain financial plumbing.

So is it all presaging the next bull market, or a systemic re-build?

Institutions that used to dismiss crypto are now trying to arrive early — just without being seen as early. The window between those two positions is where the next cycle usually takes shape.

Quick Hits

Watchlist: Track upcoming flows into spot Bitcoin ETFs, particularly state-level allocations and pension-fund disclosures. Any shift in participation from Texas, Wisconsin, or emerging municipal programs could signal whether sovereign players are treating Bitcoin as policy ballast or short-term positioning.

Hot Take: The real stress test for U.S. crypto adoption will come when a major institution marks a Bitcoin position at a loss. Once public funds are involved, political incentives override market logic. The question is how far policymakers will go to avoid bad optics.

Pro Tip: When evaluating institutional interest, separate access from conviction. Vanguard enabling ETF trading isn’t the same as Vanguard endorsing the asset class. The delta between those two positions could reveal where the next wave of late-arrival capital will come from.

Disclaimer: Not financial advice. Always do your own research.

Bitcoin’s Most Important Moves Last Year Happened Off The Price Chart was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.