Binance Research: Crypto enters the second wave of institutional adoption led by Morgan Stanley

Despite the digital asset market ending 2025 with less positive developments, the entire industry is showing signs of a structural shift: moving away from momentum-driven trading models led by retail investors to a phase increasingly shaped by institutional capital and long-term holding strategies.

This is the main insight in Binance Research’s latest weekly macro report. According to the report, the digital asset market is undergoing a “structural turning point,” with potential drivers including government accumulation activities in emerging markets and legislative efforts in the US to build strategic digital asset reserve funds.

After US spot Bitcoin ETFs were approved in early 2024, Binance Research believes the market has entered the “second wave” of institutional acceptance. This phase is characterized by deeper participation from traditional financial institutions, beyond the role of intermediaries.

As evidence of this trend, Binance cites recent S-1 filings by Morgan Stanley for Bitcoin and Solana ETFs. This move indicates that major Wall Street financial firms are beginning to act as both distributors and product creators in the digital asset market.

According to Binance Research, early positioning could pressure competitors like Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan to quickly join in, in order to avoid falling behind in a growing asset management segment.

The report also mentions risks that could cast a shadow over companies holding digital assets in corporate treasury (DAT), as this group risks being excluded from the MSCI index, a scenario that could lead to approximately $10 billion in forced sales. However, this concern has temporarily eased after MSCI announced it would not remove DAT companies from its market indices.

MSCI continues to include digital asset management companies in its global indices. From a macro perspective, Binance Research assesses that the current environment could support the digital asset market in 2026. Specifically, the trend of diversification, moving away from excessive concentration in large-cap tech stocks, could propel digital assets to play a larger role in diversified portfolios.

The basis of this argument lies in the prolonged high valuation of the “Magnificent Seven,” where the excitement around artificial intelligence has concentrated market gains. In 2025 alone, the top 10 S&P 500 companies contributed about 53% of the index’s total gains, raising growing concerns about “crowd” risks in the traditional stock market.

This level of concentration could motivate investors to seek diversification channels outside of mega-cap stocks, with digital assets potentially benefiting from increasing capital accumulation step by step.

Additionally, some market opinions question the sustainability of Bitcoin’s four-year cycle. On social media platform X, an investor proposed the following scenario:

“This is how I view the 4-year cycles.

Common view: many believe in the 4-year cycle and think 2026 will be a down year for BTC.

Primary impact: therefore, they sell in 2025 to avoid a recession year.

Secondary impact: the selling pressure in 2025 makes 2025 a bearish year, breaking the 4-year cycle.

Tertiary impact: 2026 becomes a ‘free-for-all’. The 4-year cycle no longer applies.

(BTC has increased 2.5% from the beginning of 2025 to date).”

This assessment suggests that collective market expectations can create structural changes, overshadowing models of cycles once considered standard for Bitcoin.

Shach Sanh