This week, Wintermute said institutional investors made up 72% of its spot OTC crypto flow in the first half of 2026, versus 59% a year ago.
Professional investors are changing crypto markets by concentrating on fewer assets, utilizing derivatives, and muting the extreme price swings once associated with retail trading, the firm says.
Institutions Are Reshaping Crypto Trading Patterns
Wintermute’s 1H26 OTC report found that institutional counterparties, including hedge funds, digital asset treasuries, asset managers, and family offices, accounted for 72% of spot flow on its desk between January and June, with the figure rising from 61% in the second half of 2025 and 59% in the first half of 2025.
The company pointed out that institutional activity had become large enough to influence market direction and token performance. It wrote that “institutions are now the clear drivers of Wintermute’s OTC flow,” adding that their trading habits are changing how liquidity is distributed across crypto.
One major shift is that institutions are staying focused on a smaller group of tokens. Between the first half of 2024 and the first half of 2026, the number of unique tokens traded by institutional counterparties increased by just 24%, while among retail traders, the number expanded 76% during the same period.
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.
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.
