During the Christmas holiday, Bitcoin fell below $88,000 on Christmas Eve, with a daily decline of less than 1%. Behind the seeming calm, the world's leading asset management giants are quietly making moves.

I checked the blockchain explorer. Interestingly, retail investors are withdrawing one after another, and trading has become sluggish. When the daily trading volume drops to $100 billion, a top global asset management firm’s Bitcoin ETF holdings remain completely unchanged. It’s as if this dip isn’t a big deal to them.

The entire crypto market is indeed shrinking — the total market cap has slid from its high to around $2.95 trillion. Meanwhile, traditional safe-haven assets like gold are breaking out, reaching a historic high of $4,500 per ounce. The futures market also responded, with open interest decreasing by 1.5%.

This asset rotation seems to favor gold on the surface. But look at the actions of the institutions — they list Bitcoin ETFs as one of their top three investment priorities of the year, promoting them alongside short-term US bonds and leading US stocks. The signal is quite clear: Bitcoin has been elevated to the same strategic level as traditional safe-haven assets and blue-chip stocks.

The most interesting part is that these institutions could easily promote better-performing gold ETFs, but they chose a "contrarian move" — betting on Bitcoin. This is no coincidence; it’s a modern version of collecting chips on the market when fear is at its peak.