On December 16th, 2025 Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan was on the Bankless podcast and he said something that we think could be a herald for the 2026 being the biggest year for Bitcoin yet and keeping us going to the Million Dollar Bitcoin.
”TradFi is just slow. The average investor on the TradFi side allocates after 8 meetings with us. If you started those meetings when the Bitcoin ETF launched, January 2024 and you did them quarterly. Guess when your eighth meeting was? This quarter… so we’re right in the sweet spot.”
And remember how I talked about in a previous post about how “Blackrock, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Fidelity and More Are Telling You To Buy Bitcoin”
The big entities have had their 8 meetings and read the writing on the wall - 2026 is when they put that writing into practice.
Now here’s the other thing, even without all of the big banks and financial institutions making allocations into Bitcoin and doing their 1 - 7.5% recommendations, ETF’s bought more than 100% of the newly mined Bitcoin supply.
They absorbed more than 100% of the newly mined supply.
And if history is any guide, 2026 is about to get even more interesting.
The $100,000 Sell Wall
In 2025 the Bitcoin network mined 450 Bitcoin every day. Times that by 365 and you get 164,250 Bitcoin produced that year.
Those ETF’s and all the other institutions that bought Bitcoin now own 1.3 Million Bitcoin.
That means that the ETF’s bought the supply of Bitcoin for the next 8 YEARS.
Technically it’s longer because by 2028 Bitcoin will go through another halving and the Bitcoin produced will be 225 a day but hey let’s cross that bridge once we get there.
Yet Bitcoin didn’t go parabolic in 2025.
Price hit $126,000 in October, then pulled back and Bitcoin ended the year around $88,000.
Why?
Well throughout the history of Bitcoin you’ve had the “laser eyes” meme.
(Pictured Above: Michael Saylor, Senator Cynthia Lummis and Paris Hilton)
Now many people have eyed the $100,000 Bitcoin price point as when they would sell their Bitcoin and take profits for lifestyle, some of them ended up selling because they wanted to do something different and even some people left because Bitcoin is getting institutional adoption now and that’s not what they signed up for.
So $100,000 was always going to be a place where things would rearrange and is where we’d start the new paradigm and the new laser eyes (like us) are on the $1,000,000 Bitcoin.
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The Gold Playbook Nobody Remembers
Want to know what could be happening next to Bitcoin in 2026?
Gold may hold the answer.
When gold ETFs first launched in 2004 with GLD, something similar happened. Institutional demand started absorbing supply yet prices didn’t explode immediately.
And the reason is exactly the same as why Bitcoin didn’t explode even higher in price.
Early holders who’d accumulated gold in the 1970s and 1980s were happy to sell into institutional demand and then private holdings got redistributed. The supply absorbed the buying pressure for a while.
Gold rose just 2% in 2022 after central banks doubled their purchases. Then 13% in 2023. Then 27% in 2024. Then it surged 65% in 2025.
In fact, listened to another fact from Matt Hougan, who by the way used to run ETF.com where he said that typically for new ETF’s they see 7 YEARS of growth.
Bitcoin is following the same script.
Long-term holders and early adopters have been distributing coins into ETF demand throughout 2024 and 2025. That’s kept price appreciation “relatively orderly” despite unprecedented institutional inflows.
But supply dynamics are shifting.
Long-term holders flipped to net accumulation in late December 2025 for the first time since July. They added 10,700 BTC. Whales added 56,227 BTC since mid-December.
The sellers are tired boss.
Year Two For ETF’s Is When Things Get Real
Here’s the kicker... and this is what almost nobody’s discussing...
ETFs don’t just grow in their first year. Historically, year two is when adoption accelerates.
Why?
Because institutional allocation doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time for:
Investment committees to approve new asset classes (We are here by the way)
Financial advisors to get trained on the products
401(k) plans to add new options
Pension funds to complete due diligence
Sovereign wealth funds to establish positions
The first year of an ETF is about awareness. The second year is about implementation.
And we’re entering Bitcoin ETF year two.
Consider what’s already happening:
99% of financial advisors who allocated to crypto in 2025 plan to increase or maintain their exposure in 2026
68% of institutional investors have already allocated or plan to allocate to Bitcoin ETF’s and ETP’s.
Morgan Stanley just filed to launch their own Bitcoin ETF (moving from distributor to originator)
Multiple state governments have established Bitcoin strategic reserves
Major banks are preparing to offer or have started offering Bitcoin-backed lending products
Institutional adoption and building is already here a bit and it’s only going to accelerate into the future.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas noted about recent flows: “The boomers are not tourists. Which is smart IMO. If you’re going to buy BTC, data shows you should commit to at least a four-year holding period, like a self-imposed lock-up period.”
These aren’t traders. They’re allocated capital. They’re locked up. They’re removing supply from the market permanently.
And there’s still only 450 new Bitcoins created every day.
Supply and Demand… It’s That Simple
Let’s link it all together.
Supply side:
450 BTC mined per day
That’s ~164,000 BTC for all of 2026
3-4 million BTC permanently lost
Roughly 65% of supply held by long-term holders who you’ll have to pry their Bitcoin from.
Effective liquid supply getting tighter by the day
Demand side:
ETFs already buying 100%+ of annual issuance
Institutional adoption entering implementation phase (Year two)
Financial advisor allocations increasing
Corporate treasuries accumulating (172 public companies in the United State holding BTC and growing)
Potential sovereign wealth fund announcements
The Math: If ETF inflows in 2026 even match 2025’s $46.7 billion... that’s still buying pressure exceeding the entire annual production of new Bitcoin by a heck of a lot.
If inflows increase in year two (as historical ETF patterns suggest)... do the math on what happens when you’re trying to buy 200,000+ BTC in a year when only 164,000 are created.
The only way that equation balances is through price.
The Bottom Of The Math…
Wall Street has a math problem.
They want more Bitcoin than the network can produce.
In 2025, they proved they’ll buy whatever’s available... and then keep buying.
In 2026, awareness grows.
The long term distribution phase has ended and the allocators have taken over.
New infrastructure around Bitcoin leads to new wealth building strategies being implemented.
So far it looks like we’ve made it through a pretty big curve in the road and now 2026 is looking like another straightaway on the path to the Million Dollar Bitcoin.
Not a meme-driven pump. Not retail FOMO.
Just math. Supply and demand. Institutional capital competing for a fixed supply that gets scarcer every year.
The Bitcoin ETFs bought more than every mined Bitcoin in 2025.
In 2026, they’re probably going to do it bigger.
But this time, there might not be enough willing sellers to meet them.
That’s when price discovery gets interesting.
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