ETF shows that Bitcoin will continue to dominate in 2025, with Ethereum gradually increasing its market share.

Bitcoin (BTC) is an asset that institutional investors clearly prioritize in 2025. Throughout the year, BTC consistently accounts for about 70–85% of the total crypto ETF market share, indicating how institutional investors approach this market: viewing Bitcoin as the entry point, while maintaining caution with allocations to other digital assets.

Notably, Bitcoin's dominant position in the ETF market has remained largely unchanged, despite the launch of many ETF products for alternative assets. A total capital flow of approximately 31 billion USD into Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs in 2025 reflects strong demand from institutional investors, but most of the capital still concentrates on Bitcoin.

The buying activity of institutions through ETFs and other investment instruments has provided stable price support for Bitcoin throughout 2025, contributing to BTC's outperformance compared to the rest of the crypto market. This concentration of capital flow indicates that institutional portfolios are separating Bitcoin from the general group of digital assets, viewing BTC as a macro hedge or “digital commodity,” rather than grouping it with the entire crypto market.

However, the trading volume of Bitcoin spot ETFs has significantly shrunk over the past three weeks. In December, the daily trading volume largely did not exceed the mark of 5 billion USD. This indicates that market behavior may be shifting as the fiscal year draws to a close, with lower levels of activity, resembling the quiet period of this summer rather than the surge of Q4 of last year.

Spot market ETF market share by cryptocurrency | Source: The Block## Ethereum is gradually expanding its presence, but still lags behind Bitcoin

Ethereum (ETH) accounts for about 15–30% of the ETF market share in 2025, becoming the second largest allocation for institutional investors. The market share of ETH is therefore seen as an important measure of sentiment towards altcoins compared to Bitcoin. The gradual increase in ETH's market share from the beginning of the year to December indicates that institutional acceptance of Ethereum is improving, although it is still far from the allocation scale for Bitcoin.

In the context of the overall crypto market fluctuating and adjusting in recent weeks, the amount of ETH held by public companies has increased significantly, mainly coming from a corporate “whale.” The total amount of ETH in the treasuries of public companies has risen from 4.5 million ETH at the beginning of the month to approximately 5.09 million ETH at present.

Detailed analysis shows that the entire net purchase amount of approximately 590,000 ETH comes from BitMine Immersion (BMNR) of Tom Lee. While the holdings of other ETH institutions remained relatively flat, BitMine continued to scale up this month. The buying power comes from an aggressive At-the-Market (ATM) stock issuance strategy, allowing the company to issue additional shares to fund the purchase of ETH, as long as the stock price continues to trade above the net asset value (NAV).

In the “long tail” asset group like XRP, SOL, LINK, LTC, or DOGE, the market share is still very small. However, many ETFs for these assets have only been approved at the end of 2025, meaning they are still in the very early stages of their development lifecycle.

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