Bitwise’s CIO Matt Hougan says that recent bitcoin is being read differently within institutional circles than it is on crypto social media. In a March 2 interview with Scott Melker, Hougan said that many professional traders who missed the early stages of ETF adoption are now viewing low prices as an opening rather than a warning sign.
Bitcoin Dip Is Rushing From Institutional Buyers
The most glaring example was a potential client, who Hugan said he had been talking to Bitwise about two years before the $11 million payment. For Hougan, this was less a story about sudden convictions than about how institutions actually move. “The average Bitwise client has eight meetings before an allocation, which is brutal. But they meet every quarter. We’re almost two years into the ETF peak. So they’re ready to allocate now.”
Bitcoin Insider reveals why institutions are trying to buy the dip! | @Matt_Hougan pic.twitter.com/KUKndfw0mP
– Wolf of All Streets (@scottmelker) March 2, 2026
He argued that this lag is mistaken for hesitancy, when it is often just an institutional process. “They’re not surprised that crypto is volatile,” Hougan said. “Like, wow, crypto is volatile, right? They were expecting an entry point.” He noted that spot ETFs have seen net inflows during heavy weeks, which he sees as evidence that institutions remain the “end buyers” and are likely to enter the market.
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Hougan noted the difference between the crypto-native sentiment and the way wealth managers, RIAs and larger institutions are developing. Retail, he said, has fallen into a full bear market mentality, pointing out that the Cryptographic Index of Fear and Greed fell to 5. But institutions work on a different clock. “These people allocate funds for the next five or 10 years,” he said. “Even if you talk to the most pessimistic and pessimistic person on crypto Twitter and ask them where Bitcoin will be in 10 years, they will be very high.”
This helps explain why lower prices don’t necessarily slow adoption. In many cases, Hougan said, advisers will first buy Bitcoin personally, hold it for about a year, and then begin to allocate to a small group of clients before scaling up. “Usually what they do is they take their first 10 customers who have been asking about crypto for the last 10 years and they sort it out on their behalf,” he said. “The big game comes when they go from 10 to 100.”
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Distribution channels are also opening wider. Hougan said that in the fourth quarter, three of the four major cable houses can now actively discuss Bitcoin with customers, while the fourth is expected to lag behind. However, he estimated that about 20% to 25% of wealth managers remain closed to cryptographic exposure, stressing that institutional access is not fully replenished.
For Hogan, that’s why the market may be underestimating what’s next. “Eventually Bitcoin ETFs, I think, at some point will have a trillion dollars in assets,” he said. “They’re not going down from here, it’s just going to take time.”
He equally emphasized that this period is different from previous defeats. “In previous bear markets, in FTX, the bear market has felt its presence,” Hougan said. “This winter doesn’t feel like that. Most people look at this interesting entry point. They don’t see doom and gloom. They see the world becoming more digital, they see growing concern about fiat currencies, they see a four-year cycle that naturally means we’re in retreat.”
If this view is correct, the current decline may be less important as a test of faith than as a point of transfer: from fast-moving retail traders to slower, deeper pools of capital still in the process of distribution.
At press time, BTC was trading at $66,360.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
