Bitcoin Strategies in 2025 and Beyond: The Future of Institutional Adoption

- Bitcoin as a reserve asset is becoming a reality and more corporates are likely to add the token onto their balance sheets

- The shift to public blockchains will take 10-20 years but corporates already hold 5% of available Bitcoin

- Digital property is an emerging concept that might replace self-custody

Corporates already hold 5% of available Bitcoin despite the process of financial services and public companies moving to public blockchains only just beginning, panelist moderated by Christopher Giancarlo, former Chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission said.

Fred Thiel, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of MARA, said he believes a period of great change is at hand, noting that, already, a million Bitcoin are held by corporate treasuries of US companies. This trend is set to accelerate further, he said.

“I believe that within the next 90 days, we will see two large US corporations announce that they’re going to start putting Bitcoin in the balance sheet. And if that happens the floodgates break,” said Thiel.

Microsoft and Meta are said to be considering corporate treasury Inclusion.

This is likely to accelerate as the US government ends its hostile stance towards digital assets, Vanessa Grellet, Managing Partner at Aglaé Ventures, said, while noting that the global shift is still in its infancy.

“Ending hostility is a big deal,” Giancarlo said. The result of this change in stance could see stockpiles being built-up not just by corporations but institutional investors and even US states, as well as the Federal government. This brings into scope the decentralization of mining and the potential for fiscal policy to impact Bitcoin’s value. Panelists also emphasized the growing adoption of Bitcoin in various sectors, including real estate and life insurance.

“I think we’re pretty excited about how that’s going to shift, because if all public companies, if all financial services shift to public blockchains, there’s going to be a huge adoption. I think it’s going to be like a 10 to 20 year shift. But we’re only at the beginning of that,” Grellet said.

Pascal Gauthier, CEO at Ledger, added that the potential changes are much more far-reaching than just finance.

“I think we are going to stop saying self custody, because it always triggers this notion of finance. And instead we’re going to talk about, you know, digital property, individual, digital property,” he said.