Wintermute said the increase has created a market where liquidity is increasingly concentrated in fewer assets. Institutional investors have also moved more exposure into derivatives. Altcoin options notional volume on Wintermute’s desk grew 3.4 times between the second half of 2025 and the first half of 2026, as investors used options strategies to generate yield.

The report also linked institutional participation to lower volatility, with Bitcoin’s realized volatility dropping from near 70% in 2025 to about 45% now.

You may also like:

Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy told Bloomberg Crypto that institutions are changing the way crypto behaves as they become a larger part of trading activity. The firm wrote, “As the patient cohort grows, it is draining crypto of the volatility that once made the asset class so compelling to retail.”

BTC’s Bear Market Looks Different

While the prolonged BTC downturn has seen it drop roughly 49% from its October peak above $126,000 last year, unlike previous crypto winters, the decline has been relatively steady, with fewer sudden and extreme price plunges. The OG cryptocurrency was trading near $65,000 at the time of writing, with data from CoinGecko showing it had barely moved in 24 hours and was up just 1% across seven days.

The report’s findings track with a broader pattern of banks building out crypto infrastructure this year, including Morgan Stanley, which earlier this year announced it would be introducing crypto trading on its E*Trade Platform. The asset management firm also recently launched America’s cheapest ETH and SOL ETFs.