$BTC
Institutions have absorbed the market: ETFs and corporations now hold more BTC than all the exchanges in the world combined.
❗️ River analysts recorded a historic moment: for the first time, funds and public companies own a larger share of bitcoin than all centralized exchanges combined.
Back in 2020, the balance looked different:
— about 3 million BTC was held on exchanges,
— companies and future ETFs held less than 500 thousand BTC.
📈 By the end of 2025, funds and public companies hold over 2 million BTC.
Exchange reserves continue to decline, as they have in recent years.
The trend is similar in Ethereum:
🔷 the amount of ETH on exchanges has hit a new low since 2015 — the asset is moving into long-term storage rather than trading.
— liquidity is tightening,
— supply is falling,
— any influx of capital creates strong upward pressure.
📌 We are effectively entering an era of structural BTC shortage.
This has not happened before.
If demand in 2026 grows amid declining Fed rates and global institutionalization, the market could easily receive a new bullish impulse.
Not through retail — but because the supply is physically disappearing.
For the long-term investor, this is one of the strongest bullish signals of the cycle.