Bitcoin closed the second quarter of 2026 mired in its deepest and longest decline since the last bear market, according to a report from Bitwise Asset Management. Newly released Cryptocurrency Market Review Q3 2026.
However, the $9 billion crypto-asset manager paints the pain as just a setup rather than a collapse, arguing that the industry has never been more subdued beneath the surface.
Bitcoin fell 13.4% in the second quarter, and is down 32.9% over the year, falling below $60,000 in June for the first time since 2024, and falling nearly 52% below its price in October. summit Valued at $126,080. This extends what Bitwise calls the “crypto winter” to nine months and marks the third straight quarter of negative returns for the broader Bitwise 10 Large Cap Crypto Index, its longest losing streak since 2022.
Chief Investment Officer Matt Hogan didn’t sugarcoat the matter, writing that “positive sentiment in crypto is among the worst I’ve seen in my eight years in the industry.”
However, Bitcoin has held up much better than most of its peers. Its 32.9% year-to-date decline was the smallest among large-cap tokens, easily beating Ethereum’s 46.9% decline, Solana’s 40.6%, and Cardano’s 56.5%.
Bitcoin now holds a 64.2% share of the roughly $1.88 trillion total cryptocurrency market and carries a 77.4% weighting within the Bitwise 10 index, cementing its position as a relative safe haven for the sector even in a broad sell-off.
Bitcoin ETF outflows have reached a record high
The most jarring statistics this quarter came from the pool of exchange-traded products that anchored Bitcoin’s institutional era. Bitcoin exchange-traded products in the United States lost $4.9 billion in the second quarter, their worst quarter since their launch in January 2024, according to Bitwise.
Assets under management remain at $72.4 billion, with cumulative net inflows of $53.4 billion since inception, but the reversal highlights how quickly professional sentiment can deteriorate.
Investment advisers own about 43% of professionally owned ETP shares and hedge fund managers another 28%, with Jane Street ($1.8 billion) and Millennium ($1.0 billion) the largest declared holders, filings show.
However, structural demand continued to outpace new releases. Bitwise noted in its report that spot ETFs and public companies have together bought roughly 3.6 times the amount of Bitcoin mined since the ETFs debuted — about 1.55 million BTC of demand versus just 455,416 BTC of new supply.
Treasury companies keep buying, but the strategy is flashing
Public corporate Bitcoin treasuries rose to 1.28 million BTC, up 11.3% quarter-on-quarter and equivalent to 6.11% of the 21 million cap, even as the number of companies holding BTC fell by three companies to 184. Companies added 130,467 BTC in the second quarter. strategy The company remains the runaway leader at 846,842 BTC, followed by XXI (43,514), Metaplanet (40,177), MARA Holdings (35,303), and Bitcoin Standard Treasure Company (30,021).
The most symbolic movement belonged to the strategy, which Bitcoin sold For the first time since 2022 — unloading $218 million late in the quarter to fund dividend obligations while maintaining $52.3 billion in assets and a cash reserve of $2.55 billion. The price decline has punished the stock hard: Strategy (MSTR) stock is down 30.3% in Q2 and 42.8% year-to-date, making it one of the worst performers among crypto stocks.
The report also touched on several developments that are reshaping the Bitcoin market. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has approved the first perpetual bitcoin futures contracts on the US-regulated exchange Calci, divesting the cryptocurrency’s dominant derivatives at home.
Charles Schwab Fired Retail BTC spot trading and E*Trade have expanded access to their 8.6 million users. On the regulatory front, the Market Structure Clarity Act has stalled in the Senate due to ethics rulings, with prediction markets estimating the odds of its passage in 2026 at only 20%, down from 75% in May.
Bitwise says that if CLARITY passes, it will likely represent a bottom, and if it fails the industry will continue to build under friendly regulators.
Hogan’s basic argument is one of progression in cycle upon cycle. Seasonal data for Bitcoin offers modest near-term hope, with July’s historical average gain of 10.7%.
The company’s portfolio work still shows a 5% Bitcoin allocation, in addition to the traditional 60/40 mix in 100% three-year rolling windows since 2014.
“The market is quoting bear market prices for an industry that is twice the size of what it was at the bottom of the last cycle,” Hogan writes, a basis that, he says, “determines what grows in the spring.”
Bitcoin is trading at less than $62,000 today.
