Bitwise’s Rasmussen views Bitcoin as trading more like gold, while Ethereum, Solana and Hyperliquid trade more like technology stocks.
- Some are all about “bringing Bitcoin to billions,” said Michael Saylor, while Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan said the next wave of big adoption will be from Wall Street, not crypto social media.
- Hougan named Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, UBS and Merrill Lynch as major catalysts, citing their wealth management platforms that control some $20 trillion in client assets and could see outsized inflows with small allocations to crypto.
- He cited the adaptability of Bitcoin to negative headlines like the Coldcard hack, CLARITY Act delays, and Strategy-related concerns as evidence of a possible market bottom.
Strategy (MSTR) Executive Chairman Saylor said on X on Wednesday that "some are trying to bring Bitcoin to billions" while "others are trying to win arguments on the internet." His comments echo Bitwise Chief Investment Officer (CIO) Matt Hougan’s view that Bitcoin (BTC) may be nearing a market bottom.
Hougan said last week in an interview with The Rollup that “when you have a market that entirely stops reacting to bad news, that's often a sign that you actually have a bottom.”
He identified the roughly $20 trillion controlled by four major U.S. wealth-management platforms as the potential source of Bitcoin's next big wave of demand.
The Next Big Catalyst
According to Hougan, the biggest catalysts were in places that crypto Twitter wasn’t looking at. These included model portfolios at Morgan Stanley (MS), Wells Fargo (WFC), UBS and Merril Lynch. Those four platforms hold about $20 trillion in assets, Hougan said, and a 1% to 2% allocation to crypto across them would produce a "huge amount of inflows."
Hougan pointed out a pattern of Strategy’s ever-preferred stock, STRC, hitting $75, a major cold storage hack, and the Digital Market Asset Clarity Act, or CLARITY Act, stalling in the Senate, failing to pull Bitcoin down.
BTC's price was up 0.3% during the past 24 hours. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around BTC moved to ‘neutral’ from ‘bearish’ while chatter around it stayed at ‘normal’ levels over the past day.
Wall Street's $20 Trillion Pipeline
Hougan said these platforms were beginning to add Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) to their model portfolios, the standard allocation templates used by thousands of financial advisors.
Morgan Stanley launched its own Bitcoin ETF earlier this year, meanwhile Bank of America's Merrill Lynch began allowing advisors to recommend 1% to 4% crypto allocations in January. Wells Fargo has run small pilot programs by launching tokenized deposits for commercial and corporate clients, and UBS has gradually increased its bullish exposure on Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Like Gold, Crypto Like Tech
In the same interview, Ryan Rasmussen, Bitwise’s Director and Head of Research, said he expected Bitcoin to trade alongside gold as their correlation rises, while other crypto assets like Ethereum, Solana (SOL) and Hyperliquid (HYPE) would trade more like technology and software stocks, driven by earnings, revenue and developer activity rather than a monetary premium.
He also suggested watching for near-term catalysts, including a procedural vote on the CLARITY Act in September, the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole speech later this month, and how quickly wealth-management platforms open up access to model portfolios.
Read also: Fundstrat's Tom Lee Says Crypto 'More Relevant' In AI Era, Backs BlackRock's Bullish Bitcoin Call
For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.<
