CoinShares reported a 23% drop in institutional Bitcoin ETF exposure, which fell from $27.4 billion in Q4 of 2024 to $21.2 billion in Q1 of 2025. Price depreciation and active sell-offs both played a role. Interestingly, financial advisers slightly increased their holdings, but overall sentiment shifted toward corporate treasury adoption of Bitcoin. Additionally, BlackRock’s IBIT saw record outflows in late May, while treasury-focused firms like Strategy ramped up accumulation.
Meanwhile, Trump Media & Technology Group filed for a new Truth Social Bitcoin ETF with Crypto.com as custodian, but raised concerns over a clause allowing affiliated parties to front-run trades. In Romania, the postal service installed its first Bitcoin ATM. Despite positive momentum, only 4% of the global population owns Bitcoin, which means that there is still a lot of room for the crypto king to grow.
Bitcoin ETF Activity Dips
Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) managed by institutional investors experienced the first quarterly decline since the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States. A recent report from CoinShares revealed that institutional exposure to Bitcoin fell to $21.2 billion in Q1 of 2025, down from $27.4 billion in Q4 2024. This is a 23% drop.
Institutions decreased their Bitcoin exposure (Source: CoinShares)
While the majority of this decrease was attributed to an 11% decline in Bitcoin's price over the period, the report also revealed that many investors actively reduced their holdings. This indicates a combination of valuation loss and deliberate selling.
Interestingly, financial advisers emerged as an exception by modestly increasing their Bitcoin ETF holdings during the quarter. The broader trend, however, pointed to a shift away from ETF-driven strategies toward corporate-level adoption of Bitcoin for treasury reserves. This transition means that there is a growing preference for long-term savings and value preservation over short-term trading opportunities.
Financial advisers increased their Bitcoin holdings in Q1 2025 (Source: CoinShares)
This changing investment behavior was noticed with major developments in Q2 as well. On May 30, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) recorded its largest single-day outflow to date, with over $430 million withdrawn after a streak of 31 consecutive days of inflows.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin treasury companies increased their holdings considerably. CoinShares data indicates that these companies held over 1.98 million BTC by the end of Q1, an 18.6% increase year-to-date. Strategy, the leading corporate holder, acquired 15,355 BTC on April 28 alone and has been consistently buying in 17 of the past 20 weeks through June 2025, according to SaylorTracker.
ETF flows remained volatile during the first half of the year, and were heavily influenced by shifting macroeconomic narratives. While many institutional players looked for safety in US government bonds due to uncertain market conditions, rising bond yields suggest that confidence in these traditional havens may be diminishing. Analysts now speculate that Bitcoin's long-term growth may be fueled more by declining demand for US bonds than by continued inflows into ETFs.
Trump’s Truth Social Files for Bitcoin ETF
Despite these findings from CoinShares, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), the company majority-owned by US President Donald Trump and parent firm of the Truth Social platform, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a Bitcoin ETF. The proposed product is called the Truth Social Bitcoin ETF, and was formally introduced through an initial registration statement on Form S-1 filed on June 5. According to the company’s filing, the ETF will primarily hold Bitcoin through a custodian and is designed to reflect the performance of the cryptocurrency’s market price.
Announcement from TMTG
This move follows a separate submission by NYSE Arca, which proposed listing the ETF on its exchange on behalf of Yorkville America Digital, a crypto asset manager and partner of TMTG. The product, if approved, will enter the very competitive landscape of US-based Bitcoin ETFs seeking to capture institutional and retail investor interest in digital assets.
One key structural feature of the proposed ETF is its partnership with Crypto.com, which is set to serve as the exclusive custodian, prime execution agent, and liquidity provider for the trust. The filing shared that Crypto.com agreed to offer certain services exclusively to the ETF’s trust, although specific management and transaction fees for the fund have not been revealed yet.
The filing also contains a clause that raises eyebrows: it permits the ETF sponsor and related parties to potentially front-run the fund’s Bitcoin transactions. While such language is typically softened or accompanied by conflict-of-interest mitigation in other filings, the Truth Social Bitcoin ETF explicitly warns prospective shareholders that affiliated entities may take positions in Bitcoin that are ahead of or opposite to those of the fund, which could negatively impact the ETF’s performance.
Additionally, the filing confirms that shareholders will not receive the benefits of any new assets resulting from blockchain forks. In the event of such an event, the trust will forfeit the Incidental Rights and any corresponding forked assets, essentially removing any future claim for holders.
Romanian Post Installs First Bitcoin ATM
Meanwhile, Poșta Română, Romania’s national postal service, recently took a big step toward digital innovation by installing its first Bitcoin ATM in a branch located in the city of Tulcea. This initiative was launched in partnership with the local crypto exchange Bitcoin Romania (BTR), and it is the beginning of a broader plan to integrate cryptocurrency services across the country.
According to the official announcement, more Bitcoin ATMs are set to be deployed in other cities, including Alexandria, Piatra Neamț, Botoșani, and Nădlac. The move is part of a plan by the postal service to modernize its infrastructure and extend digital financial services to underserved and remote communities.
Despite the positive momentum, Bitcoin adoption worldwide is still relatively limited. While enthusiasm continues to grow, especially among retail users and businesses adopting BTC as a payment method or a treasury reserve asset, the total number of global Bitcoin holders is still a very small fraction of the population. According to a Q1 2025 report from Bitcoin financial services firm River, only about 4% of the world’s population currently owns Bitcoin. In the United States, the figure is a bit higher at an estimated 14%. Overall, these results show that adoption is progressing unevenly across regions.
River’s report also pointed out that the number of Bitcoin wallets holding more than $100 increased to almost 30 million in January, which was a 25% year-over-year rise. However, analysts warn that Bitcoin’s total addressable market remains under 1%, with limited retail penetration and institutional allocation.
BTC’s market cap compared to the global market (Source: River)
Assuming Bitcoin could eventually secure a 50% share of the global store-of-value market—an estimated $225 trillion in assets such as cash, real estate, equities, precious metals, and art—its current $2 trillion market cap suggests that there is still a lot of room for long-term growth.
