- Bitwise Head of Research Ryan Rasmussen says sovereign wealth funds and pension funds bought bitcoin during a drawdown from roughly $125,000 to $60,000.
- Rasmussen frames the buying as a structural shift in how large institutions allocate, not a short-term trade.
- He argues some sovereigns are rotating out of gold and into bitcoin, a claim that remains contested and hard to verify from public disclosures.
- Bitcoin traded near $83,004 on September 30, 2026, down about 0.60% on the day, while gold changed hands around $4,214, up roughly 0.82%.
- Spot bitcoin ETFs such as BlackRock’s IBIT have become the primary regulated access point for institutions seeking exposure.
The more provocative part of Rasmussen’s argument is that some sovereigns are selling gold to fund bitcoin purchases. If accurate, that would represent a genuine shift in reserve management thinking, since gold has served as the default non-sovereign store of value for central banks for decades. The claim should be treated with caution. Sovereign reserve composition is disclosed slowly and incompletely, and no major central bank has publicly announced a bitcoin allocation of the kind Rasmussen describes. What is verifiable is that the two assets are moving in different directions right now: gold traded near $4,214 on September 30, 2026, up about 0.82%, while bitcoin sat near $83,004, down roughly 0.60% on the day.
Why the Dip Was Different This Time
The mechanics of institutional access have changed materially since earlier cycles. A pension fund or sovereign wealth fund that wants bitcoin exposure no longer needs to custody coins directly, negotiate with exchanges, or explain a crypto wallet to a board. It can buy a spot bitcoin ETF, hold it in a standard brokerage account, and report it alongside equities and bonds. BlackRock’s IBIT and comparable products have compressed the operational friction that once kept conservative allocators on the sidelines. That structural change helps explain why a drawdown of the magnitude Rasmussen describes might attract buyers rather than trigger capitulation.
There is also a portfolio construction argument. For an institution with a large, gold-heavy reserve book, a small bitcoin allocation is not a bet-the-fund decision. It is a diversification trade with an asymmetric payoff profile. If bitcoin works, a 1% position can contribute meaningfully to returns. If it fails, the loss is contained. That math is precisely what makes the sovereign rotation thesis plausible in theory, even where the evidence remains thin.
The Skeptic’s Case
Rasmussen is not a neutral observer. He works for Bitwise, an asset manager whose business depends on institutional adoption of crypto, and his comments come from a promotional interview. That does not make him wrong, but it does mean his claims deserve independent verification that is not currently available. Public reserve data does not show a wave of sovereign gold liquidation into bitcoin. Gold’s price near $4,214, up on the day, is not the behavior of an asset being aggressively abandoned by its largest holders.
What investors can reasonably take from the interview is narrower than the headline. Institutional infrastructure for bitcoin has matured, and drawdowns now occur in a market with regulated, liquid access points that did not exist in prior cycles. Whether sovereigns are truly selling gold to buy bitcoin is a claim that will be settled by disclosure, not by commentary. Until then, the price spread tells its own story: bitcoin near $83,004 and gold near $4,214, two assets that institutions increasingly treat as separate tools rather than substitutes.
Comments are closed.