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Investors still hold one dollar in Bitcoin for every three US$ they possess; Ether saw a 20% increase in holding % since our last report; XRP has become the third-largest non-stablecoin crypto asset.
Investors allocate stablecoins to SOL, XRP and other altcoins significantly in Q3 2025
Solana holdings surge to their highest levels in 2025, as investors anticipate the same treasury strategy will apply to SOL.
DEX tokens are the largest beneficiaries of falling stablecoin levels. Layer 1 tokens, Layer 2 tokens and real-world assets (RWA) follow. Meme tokens barely moved, while gold tokens are still a minority
As of August 2025, Bitcoin remains the largest single asset held by all users, accounting for 31.7% of their total assets in this leading cryptocurrency, up from 28.4% in January 2025. Since our last report in May 2025, the holding percentage in Bitcoin has barely moved (May 2025: 31.0% vs, August 2025: 31.7%) — speaking of investors’ stickiness toward the largest cryptocurrency.
Ether (ETH) has successfully staged a comeback, with a 20% increase in its holding percentage since our last report in May 2025, with the percentage of holding increasing from 8.4% in May 2025 to 10.1% in August 2025. The higher portfolio share of Ether is mostly due to investors’ deployment of stablecoin reserves in their wallets, instead of reallocation from other top tokens.
During the data period of this report, stablecoin holding percentage has decreased sharply from 42.7% in April 2025 and 35.42% in June 2025 to only 25.0% in August 2025.
This drop of more than 20% largely benefits altcoins. Only 4% is allocated to BTC and ETH, as the rest goes to altcoins with all different categories of tokens enjoying the rally.
Interestingly, institutions are more return-sensitive with clearly lower cash levels. As of August 2025, institutions hold only 17.2%, while retail traders hold a whopping 55.7% of their portfolios in stablecoins.
Institutions seem to be making a smart move by cutting their stablecoin holding percentage in half stepping into Q3 2025, which aligns with the market rally stemming from both the treasury strategies of institutions and whale accumulation of spot ETFs.
As mentioned previously, other than SOL and XRP, other altcoins benefit from stablecoin deployment by institutional investors. We’ve seen a broader increase in holding percentages across top categories since May 2025.
Among these, DEX token-holding percentage increased 4x, from only 0.4% in June 2025 to 1.8% in August 2025, becoming the best performing category in Q3 2025. This increase is a result of huge deployment of capital into this category by institutional investors, which increased the percentage of holding by 7x during the same period.
Layer 2 tokens are the second-largest beneficiary from this movement, with their percentage-holding surging by almost 3x from 0.8% in June 2025 to 2.1% in August 2025.
Gold’s price keeps pushing to new highs in traditional finance, yet gold crypto’s presence in investors’ whole portfolios is still barely noticeable.