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1. What the CoinShares fund manager survey found
Professional investors overseeing roughly $642 billion raised their average digital asset allocation to 1.3% of portfolios, up from 1.2% in July, according to the CoinShares fund manager survey for October 2026, published on November 10. The 28 respondents again picked Bitcoin (BTC) as the asset with the strongest growth outlook, and 40% named diversification as their main reason to hold crypto.
Two other results stand out. Sentiment toward Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL) improved slightly compared with earlier editions, and the share of managers who said they hold crypto for speculation fell below 9%, leaving that motive in fifth place among the reasons respondents gave for investing.
Taken together, the numbers describe a group of institutions that is still cautious, still small in its commitments, and increasingly deliberate about why it owns digital assets at all. The increase in allocation was modest, but the survey links it to portfolio construction rather than a rush for quick gains.
2. Who took part and how the survey works
CoinShares, the European digital asset manager, has run this survey every quarter since 2021. Its purpose is to track how professional allocators think about digital assets over time: how much they hold, which assets they favor, what holds them back and what motivates them to invest.
The October edition drew responses from 28 investors. Together they manage about $642 billion in assets, which gives the panel a meaningful footprint even though the number of participants is small. Because each respondent can represent a very large pool of capital, shifts in their answers can say more about institutional behavior than a far larger survey of retail traders would.
A quarterly cadence also makes the survey useful as a running gauge. Comparing one edition with the last shows whether institutional appetite is building, holding steady or fading, and the October results can be read directly against the July survey that preceded them.
3. A one-tenth of a point rise in crypto allocations
The headline allocation figure moved from 1.2% in July to 1.3% in October. In other words, the average portfolio in the survey now keeps a little more than one dollar in every hundred in digital assets, a gain of one-tenth of a percentage point over a single quarter.
That is a small step, and it should be read as one. A 1.3% average means that the overwhelming majority of the money these managers oversee remains in traditional holdings such as equities, bonds and cash-like instruments. Crypto is a sliver of the overall mix rather than a core building block.
Still, direction matters in a survey like this. An allocation that edges higher quarter over quarter indicates that managers are adding exposure rather than trimming it. For an asset class that many institutions have approached only gradually, a steady move in the same direction can carry more weight than the size of any single step.
It is also worth noting how much capital sits behind even a fraction of a percentage point. Applied across a panel managing about $642 billion, small changes in average allocation can translate into meaningful sums, although the survey measures attitudes and positioning rather than tracking actual money flows.
4. Why Bitcoin still leads the growth outlook
Bitcoin once again ranked first when managers were asked which digital asset has the most compelling growth outlook. In practical terms, respondents see the original cryptocurrency as the asset with the most room to grow from here.
That result is consistent with Bitcoin's position in institutional portfolios more broadly. It is the largest and most liquid digital asset, it has the longest trading history, and it is the asset most often used as a first point of entry for professional investors exploring the sector. For a manager who wants exposure to crypto without making a bet on a specific application or platform, Bitcoin is usually the simplest choice.
A growth outlook ranking is a forward-looking measure. It does not record what managers already own, but which asset they expect to perform best in the period ahead. Bitcoin keeping first place on that question shows that, even after years of institutional involvement, professional investors still regard it as the asset with the clearest upside case, ahead of the many newer networks and tokens that compete for their attention and capital.
The survey also shows how concentrated institutional positioning remains. Bitcoin and Ethereum together accounted for 47% of portfolio positioning responses, meaning that nearly half of the answers managers gave about where they are positioned pointed to one of the two largest networks.
5. Ethereum and Solana see a modest improvement
Ethereum and Solana both registered slight gains in sentiment compared with earlier editions of the survey. The shift was described as modest, not dramatic, but it runs in the opposite direction from the caution that has marked attitudes toward many alternatives to Bitcoin.
Ethereum is the main platform for smart contracts, the self-executing programs that underpin decentralized finance, stablecoins and many tokenized assets. Solana is a competing high-throughput blockchain designed for fast, low-cost transactions. Both are widely used by developers, and both are among the few networks other than Bitcoin that large investors tend to consider as standalone holdings.
An improvement in how managers view these two networks suggests that institutional interest is not limited to Bitcoin alone. At the same time, the survey's broader findings indicate that managers are becoming more selective about which other assets they are willing to hold.
6. Which newer tokens are gaining institutional interest?
Managers turned toward a group of newer names: Hyperliquid (HYPE), Sui (SUI), Uniswap (UNI), NEAR Protocol (NEAR), Aave (AAVE) and Chainlink (LINK). At the same time, respondents pulled back from multi-asset strategies and from some older alternative coins.
Each of the assets gaining attention plays a distinct role. Uniswap is a decentralized exchange protocol that lets users swap tokens directly from their wallets, and Aave is a lending protocol that allows users to borrow and lend crypto assets. Chainlink provides oracle services, which deliver outside data such as asset prices to blockchains so that smart contracts can act on it. NEAR and Sui are general-purpose blockchains that compete to attract developers and users. Hyperliquid is best known for its on-chain trading venue.
What links these names is that each is tied to a specific use. Rather than buying a broad slice of the market, managers appear to be choosing projects whose function they can identify and evaluate on its own merits.
7. Diversification overtakes speculation as the main motive
Diversification was the most frequently cited reason for investing in digital assets, named by 40% of respondents. Speculation, by contrast, dropped below 9% and ranked only fifth among the motives managers gave.
This is arguably the most important finding of the October edition. Investors who buy for diversification are looking for an asset whose returns do not move in lockstep with the rest of their portfolio. Their goal is to improve the balance between risk and return across all their holdings, not to capture a short-term price move in crypto itself.
The survey attributes the small increase in average allocation to that diversification motive rather than to a renewed appetite for speculative bets. That distinction matters for how the extra exposure is likely to behave. Positions held for portfolio balance tend to be sized carefully, rebalanced on a schedule and kept over longer periods, while speculative positions are more likely to be opened and closed quickly in response to price swings.
For the market, a shift in motive from speculation toward diversification can have a stabilizing influence over time. Holders who view crypto as one component of a broader allocation are less likely to rush for the exit at the first sign of volatility, although the survey itself does not measure trading behavior.
8. What the results mean for crypto markets
Several conclusions follow from the October data. First, institutional exposure to crypto remains small. With an average allocation of 1.3%, the managers in the panel are still treating digital assets as a minor satellite holding rather than a central part of their portfolios.
Second, the dominance of the largest assets looks durable. With Bitcoin and Ethereum making up 47% of positioning responses, the two biggest networks appear likely to keep capturing most of the institutional money that does enter the sector.
Third, the rotation toward newer tokens deserves attention. Interest in Hyperliquid, Sui, Uniswap, NEAR, Aave and Chainlink suggests that when institutions look beyond the majors, they make targeted choices instead of spreading money thinly across the market.
Finally, the retreat from multi-asset strategies points in the same direction. Rather than buying baskets that bundle together projects of very different quality, managers appear to prefer selecting individual assets they understand. That approach rewards projects with clear functions and established usage, and it may leave less room for tokens that rely mainly on being included in broad index-style products.
9. What to watch in the next CoinShares survey
Because CoinShares publishes the survey every quarter, the next edition will show whether the move from 1.2% to 1.3% was the start of a trend or a one-off. A further rise would indicate that institutions are steadily building exposure, while a pause or reversal would suggest the October uptick was simply noise.
Readers will also want to see whether Ethereum and Solana keep improving in the eyes of managers, whether the interest in newer tokens such as Hyperliquid and Sui broadens or narrows, and whether diversification keeps its place as the dominant reason for investing. On the evidence of the October results, professional investors are approaching crypto patiently and with clear intent, adding exposure slowly and for reasons rooted in portfolio construction rather than in the hope of a quick win.