The cryptocurrency market has recently experienced sharp volatility once again. Bitcoin has dropped over 50% from its peak last October, and this week fell below $66,000, hitting a new low since the major decline began. Panic is spreading across the market, retail investors have suffered heavy losses, and even some long-term bulls are beginning to waver. However, Val Vavilov, an early Bitcoin participant and Latvian billionaire, views this decline as an opportunity to adjust his asset allocation. He stated that the price drop provides a window for modest accumulation at lower levels but did not disclose the specific scale.
Vavilov is not an aggressive bull. He holds a cautious view on Bitcoin, believing it has long-term growth potential but remains only a part of his overall investment portfolio. In recent years, he has accelerated his business’s transition toward the artificial intelligence infrastructure sector to reduce over-reliance on crypto cycles. Vavilov is a co-founder of Bitfury Group, a cryptocurrency mining hardware company, and holds approximately 12% of shares in Nasdaq-listed Cipher Mining (CIFR.US). The latter, following a ten-year, $3 billion cooperation agreement with cloud computing firm Fluidstack, has seen its stock price rise approximately 200% over the past year, as its business expands from crypto mining into AI data centers.
Amid the market’s low sentiment, Goldman Sachs’ latest 13F filing revealed that as of the fourth quarter of 2025, it held approximately $2.361 billion in crypto assets through ETFs. Although this scale represents only about 0.3% of Goldman Sachs’ total $811.1 billion investment portfolio, the composition of these holdings sends an unusual signal.
Corresponding to a 39.4% sequential decrease in its Bitcoin spot ETF holdings, Goldman Sachs also reduced its Ethereum spot ETF holdings by 27.2%. However, between these two core assets, the allocation weight presents a rare “peer” pattern. As of quarter-end, Goldman Sachs held approximately $1.06 billion in Bitcoin ETFs while holding about $1 billion in Ethereum ETFs. Given that Bitcoin’s current market capitalization is roughly 5.7 times that of Ethereum, Goldman Sachs did not allocate based on market cap weighting but instead positioned them almost equally.
Additionally, Goldman Sachs made small-scale trial investments in XRP and Solana ETFs during the quarter, yet nearly 90% of its crypto exposure remains concentrated in BTC and ETH. Compared to the market’s mainstream allocation logic, which predominantly favors Bitcoin, this structure indicates Goldman Sachs’ strategic emphasis on Ethereum.
Goldman Sachs’ preference for Ethereum is not a recent development. In recent years, its initiatives in areas such as asset tokenization, derivative product structuring, and OTC trading have been closely tied to the Ethereum ecosystem. Several years ago, Goldman Sachs’ research department even predicted that Ethereum’s market capitalization could potentially surpass Bitcoin’s, citing its advantages as a smart contract platform in terms of network effects and application ecosystem.
Within the asset logic of Wall Street institutions, Bitcoin is increasingly being positioned as a macro hedge, while Ethereum carries a structural narrative centered around on-chain finance and application ecosystems. The two belong to different dimensions of allocation logic—the former emphasizes store of value, while the latter bets on infrastructure and network effects.
According to recent insights from Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise, the next wave of potential crypto asset buyers primarily consists of financial advisors, large brokerages, family offices, insurance companies, and sovereign nations. From a fringe asset to mainstream allocation, the cryptocurrency market is undergoing a profound restructuring of its participant base. This shift may hold greater long-term significance than the price movements themselves.
