The smart money can’t agree on Bitcoin. While hedge funds were sprinting for the exits in Q1, dumping 31,400 BTC worth of spot Bitcoin ETF holdings, banks were doing the exact opposite, adding 7,800 BTC and more than doubling their positions.
The data comes from CoinShares’ analysis of Q1 2026 13F filings, the mandatory quarterly disclosures that professional investors with over $100 million in assets under management must file with the SEC.
The great institutional divide
Total professional-investor holdings in US spot Bitcoin ETFs fell from 313,000 BTC to 261,000 BTC during the quarter. That’s a 17% decline, or roughly 52,500 BTC walking out the door.
In dollar terms, the damage looked even worse. The total value of these positions dropped 35%, landing at $17.8 billion. Part of that was the selling itself, and part was Bitcoin’s price falling around 22% over the same period.
Almost all of the net selling came from just two categories. Hedge funds shed 31,400 BTC, a 39% reduction in their positions. Brokerages trimmed another 18,800 BTC, cutting their stakes by 53%. Together, those two groups accounted for roughly 96% of the total institutional sell-off.
Investment advisors, the largest single category by holdings, barely flinched. They reduced positions by just 5.9%, maintaining a base of 150,300 BTC.
And then there were the banks. JPMorgan added approximately 3,000 BTC to its ETF holdings. Wells Fargo went bigger, picking up around 4,000 BTC. Across the banking sector, total positions climbed past 15,200 BTC, more than double where they started the quarter.
Why the split matters
CoinShares analyst Matt Kimmell offered a straightforward explanation for the divergence. During downturns, leveraged strategies tend to unwind. The assets don’t vanish. They migrate from risk-seeking hands into more stable ones, like banks and investment advisors.
Many hedge funds aren’t making directional bets on Bitcoin going up. They’re running basis trades, buying spot ETFs while shorting Bitcoin futures to capture the spread between the two. When volatility spikes and that spread compresses, the trade stops working. So they close it.
The 35% decline in the dollar value of institutional ETF holdings, from roughly $27.4 billion to $17.8 billion, also deserves context. A significant chunk of that drop was simply Bitcoin’s price falling, not institutions actively dumping. The actual BTC reduction was 17%, meaning the price decline amplified the optics considerably.