Bitcoin is down 50% from all-time highs, but adoption is compounding in ways that aren’t affecting the price, yet.
You might be surprised by these 8 adoption trends.
1. Institutions are buying record amounts of bitcoin
Institutions accumulated 829,000 bitcoin in 2025. This includes purchases by businesses, governments, funds, and ETFs.
Importantly, these institutions represent millions of underlying individuals gaining exposure to bitcoin for the first time through brokerage accounts, retirement plans, sovereign funds, and corporate balance sheets.
Who is selling to them?
In 2025, much of the selling came from long-term holders and large individual whales. These are early adopters who accumulated years ago and are now distributing supply into a deeper, more liquid market.
While institutions may own a majority of bitcoin within a decade if this trend continues, individuals still control roughly two-thirds of the total supply today.
They ultimately set the marginal price at which institutions can accumulate.
Institutional access doesn’t replace individual ownership. Instead, it expands the top of the funnel. Many ETF holders today are future self-custody users tomorrow.
2. Investment advisors have been net buying for 8 quarters in a row
Registered investment advisors (RIAs) are the largest investor class in the world, overseeing approximately $146 trillion in client assets.
RIAs have only recently begun allocating to bitcoin ETFs, following their launch in 2024.
Even at this early stage, their behavior towards bitcoin is extremely encouraging. Here’s what the data shows:
RIAs have invested roughly $1.5 billion in bitcoin ETFs per quarter over the past two years, without recording a single net-selling quarter.
RIA adoption is widespread: 29 of the top 30 U.S. RIAs already own bitcoin, but their allocations are still very small. The average investment advisor has a bitcoin allocation of just 0.008%.
3. 60% top U.S. banks are building bitcoin products
With a favorable regulatory environment in the US, banks can now custody bitcoin and offer bitcoin products to their customers.
4. Adoption by public companies grew by 2.5X in 2025
Businesses were the largest buyers of bitcoin in 2025, with a majority of these purchases driven by bitcoin treasury companies.
Beyond treasury companies, many large corporations are quietly accumulating bitcoin in more modest sizes.
This is the type of business adoption we expect to scale across the S&P 500 in the coming years.
5. Merchant Adoption grew by 74% in 2025
The number of businesses in the U.S. accepting bitcoin for payments tripled, while global usage grew by 74%. Companies like @ SteaknShake have shown that using bitcoin cuts transaction costs and improves their bottom line.
Many of these businesses are smaller in size, and don’t publicly report their bitcoin strategies.
At River, we serve over 3,000 businesses from all industries. We see firsthand how business adoption is strongest among small private companies.
6. The Lightning Network grew by 300% in 2025
According to our estimations, the Lightning Network is now processing over $1.1 billion in monthly transaction volume.
This is largely driven by organic adoption from exchanges and businesses that are accepting bitcoin payments.
@ sdwouters gives a full breakdown in this article.
7. Five additional nation-states hold bitcoin
5 nations became new bitcoin owners in 2025. This includes purchases from two sovereign wealth funds (Luxembourg and Saudi Arabia), and one central bank (the Czech Republic).
These nations have accumulated bitcoin through state-backed mining, purchases of bitcoin and ETFs by central banks and sovereign wealth funds, donations, seizures, and hacking.
In addition, it has been 4 years since any country has banned bitcoin, with Afghanistan in 2022 being the last.
It’s now clear that embracing Bitcoin is in their best interest.
8. Bitcoin is no longer “too volatile”
Bitcoin is continuing a decade-long trend of declining volatility, nearing that of gold and the S&P 500.
Why does this matter?
It signals that bitcoin is increasingly viewed as a mature asset class. As volatility falls, the hurdle for more risk-averse investors declines.
Over time, that opens the door to larger pools of capital.
The most recent bull market is evidence of this: bitcoin attracted more investment in three years than in the rest of its history.
Looking to 2026 and beyond
While bitcoin’s price has underperformed over the past year, adoption is telling a very different story.
The adoption we’re seeing is not the kind that will cause the price to 10X overnight, but in many ways it’s more meaningful.
Each year, trust in Bitcoin grows from individuals, businesses, institutions, and nation-states. That’s because it continues to prove itself as the world’s only scarce and incorruptible form of digital money.
We expect that in the coming years, bitcoin adoption will not only continue its current trend, but meaningfully accelerate.
You can find our full report on Bitcoin Adoption at River.com/research.
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