Bitcoin Bottom, ETF Flows & Institutional Adoption

Joining me live at Digital Asset Summit 2026 is Sean Bill, CIO and co-founder at the Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company.

Well, Sean, great to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me, Remmy.

I'm glad that we weren't doing this yesterday and might still have the chaos.

Yeah, and speaking of all these headlines coming through, we know that this is affecting all assets.

Classes, whether we're talking about crypto, equities, or even commodities.

So what do you make of the environment we're in right now?

Well, I think that, you know, Bitcoin is subject to a 4-year cycle, and I think what we saw here with the highs in October and the lows in February going from 126 down to, you know, 70,000-ish, uh, about 60,000, roughly 100, uh, was really driven by the four-year cycle.

And so we, we saw a kind of Roll over and then we saw a kind of a second wave of retail selling.

You saw it with the ETF flows, with the outflows going out of the ETF market.

I think that we're now kind of in the bottoming zone for that.

I think that the market will find good support down there at 60,000.

I don't think we'll take that low out.

Um, I think that, uh, the markets were very heavily oversold, and we've really started to see a divergence between Bitcoin and gold.

So historically, That ratio can get down to about, you know, it takes 10 ounces of gold to buy a Bitcoin is the low, high could be much higher, but right now we're around 13, and it seems to be kind of coming out of that bottom and kind of diverging from gold, which is very interesting given all the events that we've had in the Middle East.

Yeah, and Sean, you and I are here at Digital Asset Summit 2026.

This is a three day event, and we'll be hearing from a lot of institutions as well as policymakers.

So, what have you been hearing and what are you most excited about as we head into the summit?

Well, I think that, you know, what I'm really excited about is that we're starting to see more interest for institutional adoption of Bitcoin.

And, you know, in 2019, I was the first US public plan pension CIO to recommend an allocation to Bitcoin, recommended 1 to 3%.

5 years later, you know, BlackRock came out with a 2% allocation.

Uh, so we got some justification there, and I think that we're now seeing additional firms and banks now starting to say, OK, we can dip our toe into this space.

We're seeing Morgan Stanley, we're seeing other large brokers come into the space that weren't there before.

So that to me is something that could be a tremendous catalyst for the long-term price appreciation of Bitcoin.

I don't think we've really seen them coming in size yet.

I think they're just getting set up for it.

Yeah, and you bring up an important point because you're no strangers to, uh, first, as you mentioned.

So given the current climate right now and institutional adoption, for viewers out there who are wondering how this will shake out and what it means for the retail investor in the long run, what would you say to them?

Well, I think that, you know, Bitcoin has a low correlation to most other asset classes, and it has a very fat right tail for a positive SKU for positive upside results.

So I think that, you know, all investors should have some exposure to Bitcoin, and I think that that view is now catching on more and more with the retail crowd, and that's why you're seeing Morgan Stanley rolling out an ETF, you know, Fidelity's been in the game for a while, uh, you know, we're hearing rumblings that Schwab is very excited about the space.

So I think that you're gonna see a broader adoption.

I think, you know, it, it, Bitcoin is a, a challenging class to own, you know, directly, right?

I mean, holding your keys, your private key, your public key makes some people nervous.

Uh, you know, having the adoption of ETFs really opened up the playing field and enabled other participants that might otherwise not be comfortable coming into Bitcoin, come in.

So there is a little blowback on paper Bitcoin ETFs, but we actually think it's a really positive thing.

We think that it really broadens the adoption and our mission at the Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company is really to be a catalyst to really promote the adoption of Bitcoin.

Yeah, and Sean, as we look ahead, we are only in Q1 2026, which is hard to believe given everything we've seen so far.

But in terms of plans for your organization going public, can you give us a sneak peek?

Yeah, so, when we originally founded the company, Adam Back and myself, and Adam, of course, is the inventor of Hash Cash, which is the proof of work algorithm that secures the Bitcoin network.

So, no, no proof of work, no Bitcoin.

Uh, and that was released 10 years before Bitcoin came out, uh, and then myself being one of the first institutional investors to ever get exposure to Bitcoin.

Uh, you know, our mission really has been really to try to drive the, the financialization of Bitcoin.

So what we did is we came to Wall Street, we, we, our, our founding team showed up with 25,000 Bitcoin as an initial contribution to seed the company.

Uh, that got out, the OG Bitcoiners wanted to participate.

We raised another 5,021 Bitcoin from, you know, friends and family, if you will, and that, um, was the first ever Bitcoin in kind equity hype done in the United States that was done by Cantor.

And so, uh, on top of that, we then went out and raised a fiat pipe, and we raised $400 million on common equity, uh, 300 million on the preferred convertible stock, which, uh, priced at slight discount of 255 net to us, um, and then we did a, um, convertible note, 575 million there.

And so, um, that, that fundraise was around 1.4 billion, which was at the time the largest uh for any backed treasury, more than 2.1 times the size of the next biggest.

Well, Sean, hopefully we have you back at the New York Stock Exchange next time you're in town.

So thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for sharing your perspective.

Thank you for having me.