Data & Insights: BTC ETF Buyer Exhaustion; Peak ZEC Privacy

Bitcoin’s ETF Exhaustion

• Spot Bitcoin ETF volumes have compressed significantly over the last three weeks, with daily volumes throughout December largely struggling to break the $5 billion mark.
  • This signals a potential shift in market participant behavior as the year draws to a close, settling into a lower range of activity reminiscent of this year’s summer lull rather than last year’s Q4 breakout.
  • This also represents a sharp deviation from the high-velocity flows seen throughout October and November, where volumes routinely surged past $7.5 billion.
  • Similar to open interest in Bitcoin futures, which we covered last week, spot ETFs have also seen a similar pattern of "muted" activity over the past three weeks, likely driven by a combination of seasonality and positioning fatigue.
  • If historical trends hold, this low-volume regime may persist into early January before capital deployment strategies reset for Q1 2026.
• More notably, the speed and magnitude at which volumes dropped is also notable.
  • In the last week of November 2025, average daily spot Bitcoin ETF volumes dropped by nearly half and have remained in that range since.
  • In comparison, previous correction cycles this year, such as the one seen in Q2-Q3, saw a much more gradual decline in volume throughout the weeks.

Tom Lee’s Pre-Christmas Shopping

• While the broader crypto market has experienced chops and corrections in recent weeks, public treasury accumulation of ETH has accelerated aggressively, driven by a single corporate whale.
  • The total balance held by public companies increased from 4.5 million ETH at the beginning of the month to 5.09 million at the time of writing.
• Taking a more granular look at the data, this recent buying spree of 590K ETH can be attributed entirely to Tom Lee’s Bitmine Immersion Tech (BMNR).
  • While the holdings of other notable ETH DATs, such as SharpLink Gaming or Bit Digital, have flatlined, Bitmine’s holdings have continued to expand this month.
  • This purchasing power is derived from Bitmine’s aggressive At-the-Market (ATM) equity strategy, which allows the company to issue new shares to fund its ETH acquisitions as long as its stock trades at a premium to its NAV.
• Out of the 590K ETH that Bitmine has accumulated in December, over 90% of that was executed in a brief period during the first week of the month, in which the price of ETH simultaneously rose by over 10%.
  • The price of ETH has since retraced that entire appreciation.
  • Moreover, the sheer scale of this single-entity accumulation, worth roughly $1.5 billion in notional exposure during a quiet month, indicates that Bitmine is effectively acting as the "buyer of last resort" for corporate ETH treasury flows.

How Do You ETF?

• Bitcoin has been the clear institutional favorite in 2025. It maintained overwhelming dominance, consistently capturing 70-85% of total market share across the year. 
  • This concentration reflects how institutional investors have approached cryptocurrency exposure, treating Bitcoin as the primary entry point while remaining cautious about broader digital asset allocation.
• Bitcoin's dominance in ETF market share has remained remarkably stable despite the launch of multiple alternative asset products. The $31 billion in combined flows to Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs during 2025 demonstrates substantial institutional demand, though the distribution heavily favored Bitcoin.
  • This institutional buying through ETFs and other investment vehicles has provided consistent price support for Bitcoin throughout 2025, contributing to its relative outperformance compared to the broader cryptocurrency market.
  • The concentration of flows suggests institutional portfolios are treating Bitcoin as distinct from other digital assets, viewing it more as a macro hedge or digital commodity rather than grouping it with the wider crypto sector.
• Ethereum has captured approximately 15-30% of ETF market share throughout 2025, representing the second-largest institutional allocation. This positioning makes ETH market share a useful gauge for broader altcoin sentiment relative to Bitcoin.
  • The gradual expansion of Ethereum's share from early 2025 to December indicates growing institutional comfort with the second-largest cryptocurrency, though it remains significantly overshadowed by Bitcoin allocation.
• Long-tail assets, including XRP, SOL, LINK, LTC, and DOGE, appear negligible in the current market share. However, many of these ETF products only received approval late in 2025, making them extremely early in their lifecycle.

Changing Regulatory Tides

• The volume of blockchain-related mentions in SEC filings surged throughout 2025, reaching approximately 8,000 mentions by August and maintaining elevated levels through November. 
  • Bitcoin-related mentions have dominated the increase, accounting for the largest share of filing activity. This concentration reflects the proliferation of spot Bitcoin ETF filings and amendments following the successful launch of multiple products in early 2024, as traditional asset managers continued to expand their cryptocurrency offerings throughout 2025.
• The sustained elevation in Bitcoin mentions contrasts with more cyclical patterns seen in categories like ICOs and general cryptocurrency references, suggesting institutional focus has coalesced around Bitcoin as the primary regulatory pathway for traditional finance entry.
• The filing surge coincided with meaningful legislative progress that provided clearer operational frameworks for market participants. The GENIUS Act in the US established comprehensive stablecoin regulation in early 2025. The Act detailed 100% reserve backing requirements, strict AML compliance, monthly disclosures, and dual regulatory pathways through federal oversight for larger issuers and state options for those under $10 billion.
• Following this, the House passed the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act in July, building on the FIT21 framework from 2024 to establish broader market structure guidelines. These legislative developments have created more predictable compliance pathways, encouraging firms to formalize their operations through proper registration.

Peak Privacy

• Zcash's shielded supply market share has held steady around 23% after a notable climb from approximately 8% at the start of 2025. While hype around ZEC has normalized, privacy adoption metrics have stabilized rather than reversed, indicating sustained interest in privacy-preserving transactions.
• This stabilization follows a period of sharp growth earlier in the year, when privacy solutions captured significant mindshare across the cryptocurrency community. The current levels suggest users who adopted privacy features have largely remained engaged with them.
• Privacy development has expanded beyond Zcash, with other projects capturing renewed attention and price performance. Projects like Monero have seen notable gains, indicating that interest in privacy solutions is distributing across multiple implementations rather than concentrating in a single protocol.
  • Development activity also accelerated across different ecosystems and blockchains, with various teams working on privacy-enhancing features tailored to their specific platforms.
• The privacy narrative appears positioned for continued relevance into 2026, driven by practical adoption needs rather than speculative momentum. As stablecoin payments and mainstream onchain transactions increase, privacy requirements become more apparent.
  • The transparency of public blockchains creates friction for everyday payments. Using an onchain wallet for transactions exposes your complete wallet balance and transaction history to counterparties, creating obvious privacy concerns in commercial and personal contexts.
• This fundamental tension between blockchain transparency and user privacy suggests privacy solutions will remain relevant as cryptocurrency moves toward practical payment applications, even if speculative attention cycles through other narratives.