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The State of Digital Asset Investing 2026

BAM's annual research report. From speculation to allocation: where institutional capital, regulation and market infrastructure stand after the first full drawdown of the ETF era — and what it means for professional investors. 53 pages, with 68 numbered sources, in English and Spanish.

Manuel Ernesto De Luque MuntanerFounder & CEO
29 September 20265 min read · 53-page report

Key takeaways

  • The regulated bid is structural. The US spot Bitcoin ETF complex sold in the first half of 2026 and bought back in the second; the report puts cumulative net inflows since launch at $57.6 billion.
  • Bitcoin's risk profile is changing: realised volatility at cycle lows, and a 120-day correlation with gold in the 99.5th percentile of readings since 2020.
  • Europe has the more bankable regime. MiCA is fully in force and its transitional period has closed, the CSSF has clarified how funds may hold crypto-assets and the UK's authorisation gateway is opening — while US market-structure legislation stalled.
  • Tokenisation and stablecoins are the growth engines: $31–34 billion of tokenised real-world assets on rwa.xyz's count (May 2026), and a stablecoin base of about $310 billion.
  • Strategy dispersion was the defining feature of the cycle. For most allocators the next step is diversification across strategies and managers, not more beta.

The full report

The State of Digital Asset Investing 2026

53 pages · PDF · 3.8 MB

For professional and well-informed investors. The report is a research publication; it does not describe or offer any investment product.

Download the report (PDF)Also available in Spanish

What the report covers

The report asks a harder question than the one the asset class spent the last decade answering. Access has largely been solved: an institution can now hold a spot ETF, tokenised Treasuries or a Luxembourg fund under rules its regulator has clarified. What 2026 tested was what happens to institutional capital when the asset class falls by half inside a regulated wrapper.

It is organised in three parts.

  • Where the market stands — prices, fund flows, what allocators said in the year's surveys, who now owns the asset class, and how its risk profile is changing.
  • The structural forces shaping the next phase — renewed inflation and rate increases, the regulatory map on both sides of the Atlantic, the product universe, tokenisation, stablecoins, and nine years of Swiss bank adoption as a guide for the rest of Europe.
  • How professional investors should access the asset class — the lessons of the 2026 drawdown, what unlocks each stage of institutional integration, and five operating principles.

The BAM Allocation Maturity Curve

The report introduces a framework for a distinction that ownership statistics no longer capture: owning digital assets and being allocated to them are not the same thing. A pension fund with a small spot ETF position, a family office with a diversified fund of funds and a corporate treasury holding Bitcoin as a reserve asset all 'own crypto'; they are not at the same stage, and different things move them forward.

The curve has five stages — Observer, Explorer, Allocator, Diversifier and Integrator — each with its own dominant constraint. It is a conceptual framework, not a measured index: the placement of investor groups on it is BAM's reading of third-party evidence. In that reading, most institutional capital that arrived through ETFs in 2024–25 sits at the Allocator stage, where a single-asset beta position offers no protection in a drawdown.

The conclusion: access is solved, construction is next

Digital assets passed their first full institutional stress test in 2026: a drawdown of about half, absorbed by a holder base of ETFs, corporates, hedge funds, family offices and sovereigns. What separates allocators now is not whether they hold the asset class but how — position sizing, rebalancing discipline, strategy diversification and the quality of the structure through which exposure is held.

The report's answer is a set of principles rather than a forecast: diversify across strategies, managers and counterparties; operate inside recognised European fund frameworks with independent custody, administration and audit; diligence managers to a mature-market standard; match liquidity to strategy; and control risk systematically rather than in the moment.

How to read it

The report synthesises publicly available market, flow, regulatory and survey data as at 29 September 2026. It is not based on a proprietary BAM survey, and every figure that is not BAM's own analysis carries a numbered reference so that readers can check the underlying data. The figures on this page are the report's, as at that date; prices, flows and market capitalisations will have moved since.

It does not publish price targets or trading recommendations, and it does not describe or offer any investment product. BAM's frameworks and views are identified as such.

Block Asset Management

How Block Asset Management approaches this

The principles in the report are not a reaction to 2026. They are the operating rules BAM adopted when it structured its first fund of funds in 2017–18, and the drawdown tested them rather than changed them.

Diversification across strategies and managers

No single manager, strategy or venue should be able to determine the outcome. A passive sleeve can sit inside a diversified portfolio; it should not be the whole of it.

Recognised European structures

Luxembourg and Malta vehicles within the AIFMD framework, each with an independent depositary, administrator and auditor.

Mature-market due diligence

Strategy, operations, custody, counterparties, key-person risk and regulatory status are assessed before allocation and monitored after it.

Liquidity matched to strategy

Dealing terms aligned with the liquidity of what is held, because mismatched liquidity is how good strategies produce bad outcomes in stress.

The report's argument fits in one sentence: the market's centre of gravity has moved from access to construction, and construction is a question of diversification, structure and discipline rather than conviction.

To discuss any of the themes in the report, our investor relations team would be glad to hear from you.

Important information

This page introduces a research publication by Block Asset Management S.à r.l., a Luxembourg alternative investment fund manager registered with the CSSF as a sub-threshold alternative investment fund manager. It is provided for information purposes only and is intended for professional and well-informed investors. It does not describe, promote or offer any investment product and is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation, nor investment, legal or tax advice. Figures are those reported in the publication and its cited sources as at 29 September 2026; they are point-in-time observations and may since have changed. Frameworks and views are BAM's and are not forecasts. Digital assets are highly volatile and carry the risk of total loss. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

Related research

Further reading on the same theme.

Definitions for the terms used across this research are collected in the digital asset glossary. Digital asset glossary

Terms used in this note

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This note is part of Block Asset Management's research on institutional digital asset investing. Explore the wider library, or read how we assess managers and structures before any allocation is made.

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