2026 Sentiment Report

Good morning, Las Vegas, and thank you all for joining us for this early session. My name is Mason Foard, and I'm the director of Bitcoin strategy at Meliuz. I'm also part of the True North podcast platform. Today I'm hosting this panel on institutional sentiment, and we have three amazing panelists with us.

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We have Dylan LeClair, director of Bitcoin strategy at Metaplanet in Japan, currently the third-largest holder of Bitcoin in the world. We have Gui Gomes, founder and CEO of OranjeBTC, the largest Bitcoin treasury in Latin America and Brazil. And we have Nuri Chang from BitGo, which is known for institutional custody and infrastructure. They recently IPO'd, which is really exciting to see.

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So let's hop into it. Obviously, right now we are in a bear market, and price-wise we are in a very different regime from one year ago. Dylan, let's start with you. How would you say sentiment on the institutional or corporate side has changed from one year ago today?

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Bitcoin has been very much legitimized in the last two years. I think it is good that the Trump narrative has faded by the wayside, because that was the driving force and narrative for Bitcoin specifically in 2025. When markets can't go higher on good news, or they don't go lower on bad news, that is when you look for inflection points.

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Just last week, or two weeks ago, there were back-to-back headlines a half hour apart: Morgan Stanley launches an ETF, and then Iran's military tollbooth is accepting Bitcoin. That kind of covers the broad movement. This is not just suits on stage talking about fixed income. This is not just currency in the developing world. This is happening across the ecosystem in many different ways.

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From the institutional standpoint, I think sentiment is pretty good. We are all up here as diehard Bitcoiners with 100% of our balance sheets in Bitcoin, or close to it. But most institutions dip their toe in and take four to six quarters to really get comfortable with an allocation and add. So I think the sentiment is pretty good. It would obviously be better if Bitcoin was at new highs, but I think we have hit an inflection point, and I would wager the bottom is in.

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First of all, good morning everyone. Pleasure to be here. I would echo what Dylan just said. Institutions move at a much slower pace, but they do not change their minds as fast as retail. We have seen Bitcoin go all the way from 126 down to 60K, and many people within the Bitcoin community, people who have been around for many years, were questioning it. I think it was the first time we saw Bitcoin go into an important drawdown while gold was at all-time highs and stocks were at all-time highs, and many Bitcoiners were asking, what is going on?

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The sentiment on the retail side is much more volatile than when we are talking about institutions. We continue to see many positive and bullish news items. We mentioned the Morgan Stanley ETF. We had Citibank announce that they will be covering Bitcoin as one of their services. Bank of New York Mellon, one of the largest custodians, is doing so and will increase its services. We have seen Charles Schwab announce that they will be offering spot Bitcoin trading, and they are now educating the masses.

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When you talk about institutions, it is a much slower pace but way less volatile. If anything, I think the price action gave them even more appetite. Just think about Morgan Stanley. What timing for their launch. They launched an ETF, and Bitcoin moved maybe 5% to 8% in a single week. It is a great opportunity to call your clients and pitch a new product. So I think the drawdown is not impacting institutions as much. Sentiment is much more volatile on the retail side.

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You guys kind of said it, and I would love to echo that. BitGo focuses on institutions, so we can tell you that the pipeline of institutional banks and nation-states coming in and looking to do unique strategies, whether that is bonds like Strategy's products or derivative markets, is strong. They are coming in with both hands. They are just slow.

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I was talking to someone who heads up a crypto desk at a very large bank. I will leave them anonymous for now, but they were talking about Strategy, for example, and what it will take for them to start coming in at size, either for bonds or Bitcoin or recommending it to their clients. A lot of times they want to see the regulatory side work itself out. They want regulatory clarity, of course. But they are starting to get really interested at these price points, like he said.

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They continue to leg in through tiers or tranches, and they are nowhere close to the size they want to be at. I am really excited. We have said for years that retail was front-running the banks, and I think we were pretty right in that sense. But now that the banks and institutions are coming in, you are starting to see volatility depress a little bit, which is a good thing. The market is maturing. I am really excited for the next two to three years and what it is going to bring for the market in general.

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Amazing. I do not know about you guys, but I am on Twitter too much. I know Dylan is. There is a lot of fear and uncertainty and doubt going on online. When you look at what is happening online or with retail versus the institutional side, do you think there is a fundamental misalignment? If so, what are the real fundamentals in the Bitcoin market right now that back up a bullish price perspective or a bearish price perspective?

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I will start. I think it is just flows. That is the simplest metric to look at. There is a lot of on-chain data. You can also look at Strategy. If you are an analyst in the Bitcoin space and you are not watching Strategy right now, I think you are missing a lot.

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I like to look at the on-chain cost basis of the hot money, or fast money, versus the average on-chain cost basis of every Bitcoin. We almost nicked it. It was around $55,000 or $56,000 per coin. The short-term hot money cost basis is around $80,000 a coin. I think that is a logical place for Bitcoin to retest and chop around a bit. If it is a bull market, we will confirm and trend above that.

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In terms of what I am watching, right now you are seeing traders in perpetual futures being bearish and fading the move. Funding is negative. You can buy one Bitcoin, or you can get paid right now to long Bitcoin futures. I am not pitching people to buy Bitcoin futures. I am just saying that when Bitcoin is in a bull market, people are demanding to get long at 20%, 30%, or 40%. Right now it is slightly negative. That looks pretty similar to me to the end of the 2022 bear market, aside from the fact that, like you pointed out, this was sort of Bitcoin-specific.

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Before the Iran war, stocks were at all-time highs, gold was at all-time highs, and Bitcoin was down 50%. What is going on? I also think it is a little bit unfair to say, okay, the Iran war started and Bitcoin is outperforming the S&P. It is like, yes, but we already drew down 50%. Most of the wreckage, most of the sellers, and the forced selling by retail or leveraged players has come and gone. Now, if you made it through that without wavering, you are rock solid.

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I guess we are still talking about this early in the morning. First panel, folks, give us a break here a little bit. We are talking about the next 12 months and what could change in terms of Bitcoin and sentiment. This might sound silly, but it is another 12 months. For a new asset class that is around 17 years old, it really matters.

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It matters because the ETF from BlackRock will be more than a year old, which means most managers and financial advisors helping their underlying clients will have more confidence. The Morgan Stanley product will be one year old. Strategy will be almost two years further along from now. Every single month matters.

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Bitcoin is still a very early-stage innovation that many people do not understand. All of these new products, the ETFs, Bitcoin-backed loans, Strategy products, and Bitcoin treasury companies are still quite new. What happens over 12 months is that more people get comfortable. Bitcoin will keep moving along block after block. These new products will have more track record, which makes it easier for people to allocate.

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These banks and institutions that have been moving since the Trump administration, with new regulation coming out, will be more comfortable. I think it really matters. There are a lot of triggers. Twelve months for Bitcoin is a lot of time. For anyone who has worked in this industry, one year counts for about seven. I think there are a lot of new products and new Strategy-related solutions coming along that could really move sentiment and bring more flows into the asset class.

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Build in the bear. We have been saying that for four or five years now, and it could not be more true. What I am really excited about, like we said earlier, is Schwab now starting to introduce this to their clients and arming their sales team to go out and sell this. That is what is going to help drive retail sentiment, in my opinion, along with price action.

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Obviously more and more bonds are coming online. We talk about Strategy, but I think more will come behind that. One of the bigger things I am excited about is that certain countries have macroeconomic situations and war going on. Certain countries do not want to use USD. Certain countries do not want to use yuan, and so on.

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Then you look at all these hacks going on at some centralized exchanges. If no one can trust anyone else, what options do we have for a global settlement network around the world? In my opinion, it is Bitcoin. That is obviously good at the nation-state level and institutional level, but retail is involved there too. These next 12 months are going to be really big, particularly the next 24. I feel like we have bottomed. I feel confident saying that as well, to echo Dylan's sentiment. There is a lot going on in the next few months.

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If I could add one thing, I think the geopolitical point is very important. The war started in the Middle East, and this has been a theme for decades. Look what happened. The waterways are closed. The airports are closed. If you have ten tons of gold in a vault somewhere in the UAE and you are trying to get out, what do you do?

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At the same time, Bitcoin is this permissionless layer. You are simultaneously seeing USDC, Tether, and stablecoins getting frozen in the conflict. At the same time, the Trump administration is championing Bitcoin, and the sworn enemies of the Trump administration, the IRGC, are also using Bitcoin. There has been this trope for a while that Bitcoin is for enemies, and it is true.

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Another thing I would like to circle back to is that we are talking about products: Morgan Stanley's ETF, treasury companies, Strategy products. If you were a Bitcoiner from six years ago and you time-traveled into the present day, you might ask, what are they all talking about? Why does this matter?

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Something I did not understand six years ago is that Bitcoin winning does not look like it goes to infinite dollars and currencies collapse. Bitcoin winning means you have to meet the world and the money in the world where they are. The reality is that 99% of the money in the world cannot buy Bitcoin. They cannot buy Bitcoin ETFs. They cannot buy spot. They cannot self-custody.

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There is $10 trillion of private credit that can only buy private credit. There are $100 billion of convertible bonds. They can only buy convertible bonds, or they can only buy common equity. If you are a Bitcoin bull and you think this is the future, ultimately it is going to look like Bitcoin packaged and sliced into a bunch of different formats and styles to meet people where they are.

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When you talk to an institutional allocator who manages a $1 billion portfolio, they might be a Bitcoin bull and say, Dylan, we like your company because I am a Bitcoin bull, but I cannot buy Bitcoin in my day job. I manage companies in the Japanese stock market. There is a lot of capital in the world, and the Bitcoin ecosystem is meeting them where they are.

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That is another point. There is so much capital in the world. I do not think anyone here would bet against more liquidity coming into the market in the next 12 to 24 months and beyond. I do not think they have a choice. Add that to building in the bear, the additional products and services, and settlement layers coming online, and it is very exciting.

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Dylan, Metaplanet is obviously in Japan and OranjeBTC is in Brazil, so you have a global perspective. Can you talk a little bit about what is happening in your own region and how that might differ from the U.S.?

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Japan is at an interesting inflection point. The government is recognizing that this is important. Stablecoin regulation is improving. Bitcoin is going to become a regulated financial asset. Right now it is in this gray area. At the same time, there is a little bit of friction or pushback from the legacy incumbents.

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Metaplanet grew so fast, frankly, and it was a little unsettling. So we are positively engaged with the regulators and everybody who matters on the ground, explaining why Bitcoin is important for the future of Japan and important for the future of capital in the world, and pointing to the U.S. for that. Things are going really well. A year or two down the line, I think we are going to see a lot more. We are kind of in the 2023 moment for regulatory matters in Japan. In the U.S. in 2024, you had the accounting change, ETFs, and a flurry of positive events. I think we are setting the stage for the equivalent of that in Japan.

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Brazil is another interesting point as well. On one hand, we have a weak currency. We have the BRL, which is not hard money at all. Brazilians have dealt with inflation and currency devaluation for many years. Bitcoin is a little bit easier to grasp. We have seen meaningful retail adoption in the country, not only of Bitcoin but also stablecoins. There are a lot of research papers being published showing that Brazil is among the highest-adoption countries around the world.

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On the other hand, when you go to the institutional side, we are years behind. We have regulation, but it is not even regulation itself that is the main problem. Regulation is evolving. It is a very new concept in Brazil, as it is worldwide. Local institutional allocators have almost zero exposure to Bitcoin. You have to educate. There are a lot of concerns about it.

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From that perspective, I think we are back around 2020, when Strategy first launched in the U.S. market and was the first public company holding Bitcoin. There is a lot of work there, and we are happily doing it. Part of our mission as a company is to help drive Bitcoin adoption in Brazil, because it is a country that needs it the most, and Bitcoin can help solve a lot of the problems we have there.

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Just to add to that, I focus mostly on North America, but BitGo is a global company. One of the interesting things I have found is that there are bigger retail opportunities in some of these international markets. Some of you have probably heard that Bitcoin has two adoption curves. One is the store-of-value adoption curve, and the other is the medium-of-exchange curve.

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The medium-of-exchange curve would lag in North America. In international regions, it seems like they are going together. People do not only want to buy Bitcoin to save their purchasing power, but they also need to use it to go in and out of stablecoins or their local currency to pay bills or whatever it is. I actually think the medium-of-exchange adoption curve is going to start and really take off in these international regions, probably more than even in North America. That is just a guess, in my opinion, but the trend seems to be pointing that way. That is really exciting for Latin America and APAC, which I think are leading the pack compared to other regions.

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Amazing. We only have a few minutes left. Last question: what is one thing the audience should be paying attention to that most people in this space are not?

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I am going to hearken back to what I said earlier. I think people should pay close attention to what is going on in the global macroeconomic situation with global settlement layers. All it is going to take is for one of these G7 nations to decide, you know what, no more petrodollar, no more whatever. Bitcoin is now the settlement layer.

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Dylan mentioned that the Strait of Hormuz has already announced that, but I think they are not just accepting Bitcoin; they are accepting other things. Once a G7 nation fully embraces Bitcoin as the only settlement layer, because it is the only decentralized monetary exchange that anyone can trust with no central party, to me, that is the most exciting thing to pay attention to. Everything downstream from there will be impacted positively. That is where the omega candles come from, when and if that happens. That is what I would be paying attention to.

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I agree on that front. Not to be a Fed watcher or try to read the tea leaves, because I do not think there is much value in that, but the new Fed chair is an important step in the administration's stated goals. Fiscal policy and monetary policy in tandem over the next 18 months will be very positive for debasement trades like Bitcoin and gold.

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I agree with both points. I will bring something else: the strength of the community. I have been in the space for about 11 years at this point, and it is still surprising to see the size of this conference, the many companies around the globe, the amount of great talent building around Bitcoin, and the new solutions and innovations in the space.

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There are a lot of bears out there, and they are betting that this group of people, these minds, and the drive of these folks will not eventually win. I am pretty bullish that the power of the community will continue to take Bitcoin to different places, and eventually it will become a world reserve asset, as it should.

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Amazing. That is all the time we have. Can you please give a round of applause to the panel?

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Thank you. Thanks, Mason.