Institutional investors are increasingly treating cryptocurrencies as a portfolio diversification tool rather than speculative trading, according to a quarterly survey published by CoinShares Research on May 6.
The survey included 26 fund managers who oversee a total of $1.3 trillion in assets under management (AUM). It found that diversification and client demand now account for 63% of the reasons institutions are allocating funds to digital assets.
Just two years ago, this percentage reached 36%.
Two years ago, speculation was the main reason fund managers held digital assets. Today it is 15%.
– CoinShares Head of Research, James Butterville.
The report shows institutional discipline
The average allocation to digital assets remained at 1%, with a weighted average of 0.1% (skewed downward due to larger institutions in the participant pool).
Apply across Surveyed $1.3 trillion in assets under management, an average position of 1% means nearly $13 billion of exposure to underlying cryptocurrencies across this group alone.
Bitcoin and Ethereum together accounted for 58% of wallet responses. Older alternatives like Cardano and Polkadot have lost ground, while DeFi-related tokens, including Aave, Sui, and Tron, have attracted more attention.
In a Research note Published May 2026 CFRA Research Analyst Nathan Schmidt noted that Coinbase’s assets under custody rose to $516 billion, up 95% year over year, with stablecoins and cryptocurrency derivatives driving institutional adoption.
Cryptopolitan mentioned earlier The Bitwise/VettaFi Advisor Benchmark Survey found that 99% of financial advisors with exposure to cryptocurrencies plan to maintain or increase allocations in 2026, with 64% of them holding more than 2% of client portfolios in cryptocurrencies.
The CoinShares report confirms that institutional behavior at the asset management level mirrors the pattern observed at the advisor level.
Saylor launches first Bitcoin sales as leverage model soars
The fund manager’s pivot toward discipline comes in the same week that the leveraged corporate treasury model shows pressure.
On May 5, Michael Saylor said on Strategy’s Q1 2026 earnings call that the company may sell some of its 818,334 BTC holdings to fund its dividend obligations.
In Saylor’s words:
We will probably sell some bitcoin to pay a dividend just to stake the market and send a message that we did it.
This comment broke Saylor’s old mantra of “never sell out.”
As mentioned by Cryptopolitan On Tuesday, Saylor placed Strategy’s Bitcoin pile in the same bucket as all of the company’s other assets for the first time, framing potential sales as part of a leveraged credit model rather than panic.
The strategy reported a record net loss of $12.54 billion for the first quarter, driven almost entirely by an unrealized write-down of $14.46 billion on its Bitcoin position. The company has $1.5 billion in annual dividend obligations and about 18 months of cash coverage.
Two avenues of exposure to cryptocurrencies show how eroded and wise they are in the same week.
The strategy’s leveraged treasury model takes into account what happens when you withdraw Bitcoin by 25% over the course of a quarter. Fund managers with $1.3 trillion in assets under management are doing the opposite: smaller positions, more diversification, and less speculation.
Internal compliance constraints, not regulatory uncertainty, now constitute the greatest barrier to customization.
The institutional axis documented by the survey is not an abstract trend. It’s the discipline that comes when leverage stops working.
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