Grayscale CEO: Crypto winter has thawed—but market watchers are still missing the point

The winter chill that dragged digital assets down during most of the hot summer months is finally beginning to lift, with the price of Bitcoin surging about 20 percent last week, its strongest three-day rally since 2023. Suddenly, the obituaries of the last few months are turning into rebound stories, but both of these narratives obscure what’s really going on. Simply put, market watchers are failing to see the forest—the long-term rise of digital assets—and are instead fixated on the trees, which are represented by short-term price swings.

I spent 20 years at traditional asset and wealth management firms, including BlackRock, Apollo, and Goldman Sachs, before joining Grayscale two years ago. During that time, I observed a recurring pattern: new asset classes and related technologies are often dismissed before they are understood, debated before they are accepted, and then eventually incorporated into the financial system. When it comes to digital assets, that process is well underway.

To understand why this is the case, it is helpful to understand the true scale and potential of what we mean by digital assets.

To many, digital assets still mean crypto or, more precisely, Bitcoin. That’s understandable: Bitcoin remains the most popular digital asset by far, accounting for about 60% of the total market capitalization of digital assets. As such, it surely does—and will continue to—play a core role in many investors’ portfolios, despite the volatility inherent to market cycles, geopolitical risks, and monetary policy changes.

But we must not take Bitcoin—a crypto asset—for the whole of the digital asset universe. In fact, the primary forces propelling adoption and expansion of the asset class today are a result of two strong currents: first, higher institutional demand and second, wider corporate adoption of the blockchain-based technology that underlies it all.

Let’s tackle institutional interest first.

In 2025, the daily flows for Bitcoin-based ETPs—the net new cash added or withdrawn—regularly exceeded $500 million, an amount that is roughly 12 times the amount of new tokens added to the market every day by Bitcoin miners. This has transformed the old supply dynamics.

Even through this year’s selloff, that demand has reasserted itself: after eight straight weeks of outflows, US-listed spot Bitcoin ETPs posted three consecutive weeks of inflows into late July, even as the year stayed net negative. Recent drawdowns also have been materially shallower than the 70% to 80% declines that defined earlier “crypto winters.” Further, in a 2026 EY survey of over 350 institutional investors, 73%  said they planned to increase their allocations to digital assets.

All of this suggests that institutional capital appears to be playing a larger role in setting the marginal price for digital assets.

Concurrently, we are witnessing the gradual but steadily rising adoption of new technologies within corporate environments. Around 60 percent of Fortune 500 executives in 2025 reported that their companies are working on blockchain initiatives, while firms such as Fidelity, Visa, and Stripe are advancing stablecoin initiatives.

Most financial services firms are experimenting with digital assets technology in their own back office. These are infrastructure decisions by firms that deploy investment capital cautiously and over long horizons. That type of capital does not move on sentiment. It moves on conviction in underlying utility.

And let us not forget about artificial intelligence. There has been consternation about whether “the AI trade” is somehow in contradiction with that of digital assets. I don’t think anything could be further from the truth. Artificial intelligence and public blockchains are complementary technologies.

AI agents will make new demands on the financial system—e.g., machine-native micropayments, instant cross-border settlement—which blockchains are uniquely equipped to provide. Centralized AI development also introduces risks related to bias and control, which may be partly mitigated by decentralized alternatives and blockchain-based identity tools. The broader direction is increasingly clear: digital assets are moving into established regulatory frameworks rather than remaining outside them.

This trend will continue to accelerate as cautious investment allocation committees learn to incorporate digital assets into their governance framework. That process takes time. Over the past several years, regulatory clarity has improved, investment vehicles have matured, and governance frameworks have become more established. As a result, more institutions are now equipped to evaluate digital assets alongside other long-term portfolio exposures.

Despite all this, many in the financial press will no doubt continue to search for market blips that can serve as a pretext to write off digital assets. But focusing on short-term price volatility is missing the point. What truly matters is what is happening beneath the market’s surface, in institutional quarters, and in corporate IT departments across Wall Street and beyond.

That is the signal. The rest is noise.

Peter Mintzberg is CEO of Grayscale Investments, a leading digital asset-focused investment platform.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com