Crypto Sector Suffers Exodus of Reliable Retail Investors

Retail investors are reportedly leaving the cryptocurrency sector, robbing the industry of a dependable driver.

That’s according to a report Sunday (March 1) from Bloomberg News, which says the speculative demand that once centered around crypto has shifted into stocks.

Since late 2024, retail investors have steadily shifted toward equities, a trend that sped up following the crypto crash last October, the report said, citing a new report from market-maker Wintermute which itself drew from JPMorgan Chase data.

Bloomberg characterizes the shift as striking at something key to the crypto’s market structure, which has long relied on investor mood as a key demand driver. If that demand is moving to other trades, it goes against the belief that digital assets can recover without something to draw back retail investors.

“In prior cycles, excess retail risk appetite tended to concentrate in crypto,” said Evgeny Gaevoy, CEO of Wintermute, who added that crypto is now “one of many risky-asset classes with similar volatility profile that retail can use to invest and speculate on.”

More than $19 billion in positions were wiped out in October — $7 billion of them in less than an hour — liquidating more than 1.6 million traders, the report added.

Since then, there’s been “a near-complete pivot into equities that is still ongoing,” the Wintermute said. Bitcoin has fallen from its record high of around $126,000 down to $66,000 amid reports of American and Israeli strikes against Iran, the report added.

In other digital assets news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the significance of Morgan Stanley’s application before the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a charter for a digital asset-focused national trust bank.

As that report said, a trust bank, as opposed to a traditional commercial bank, does not offer loans or deposits, but rather focuses on custody, fiduciary services and asset administration, basically acting as a highly regulated vault/legal steward. This structure, PYMNTS added, could be ideally suited to digital assets.

“The trust bank charter offers a solution,” the report added. “It allows a firm to handle digital assets under the supervision of the OCC while avoiding the capital and liquidity requirements associated with deposit-taking institutions. In regulatory terms, it is a bridge. In strategic terms, it could be an on-ramp for traditional finance to take over functions once dominated by crypto-native firms.”