In a note dated Wednesday, October 7, JPMorgan strategists estimate that $50 billion has flowed into crypto since January 1, 2026, reports Journal du Coin. Yet in January, the bank was forecasting a year above the 2025 record of close to $130 billion. Between these two readings, it is not only the figure that has shifted: so has the way it is calculated.
Four taps, then more
Measuring the money flowing into digital assets is far from an exact science. Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou's team usually adds up four components, Journal du Coin explains:
- net subscriptions to crypto funds;
- the impulse inferred from CME futures, the Chicago exchange where institutional investors take positions on the future price of bitcoin and ether;
- venture capital raises;
- purchases by listed miners and corporate treasuries.
For this note, seen by The Block according to Journal du Coin, the bank widened the scope to unlisted corporate treasuries, private miners and state-linked entities. A wider net mechanically brings in a bigger catch: the $50 billion total is therefore not strictly comparable with the bank's earlier estimates. The source does not specify what share of the amount comes from these new categories.
From a record to beat to $50 billion recorded
The path travelled since January speaks volumes. At the start of the year, JPMorgan was banking on a further rise in flows, driven by institutional investors and by the adoption of the Clarity Act, the US law meant to clarify the status of crypto-assets. In April, the bank noted a meagre first quarter, at $11 billion. At the May reading, the annualised pace stood at $52 billion; it now reaches $66 billion, still according to the bank's figures cited by Journal du Coin.
The outlet sums up the gap: this pace represents roughly half of last year's rate, and the counter shows less than 40% of the 2025 record. The revision is therefore no marginal adjustment. It reflects a fundamental mismatch between the winter scenario and what flows have actually delivered.
The engine changed during the year
In the first half, most of the inflows came from two pockets: Strategy's bitcoin purchases and venture capital. ETFs, by contrast, weighed on the total, with heavy outflows in May and June.
Since August, according to JPMorgan, exchange-traded index funds have turned positive again for the year. Measured from the crash of October 10, 2025, however, their cumulative flows remain negative. On the CME, institutional positions in bitcoin have exceeded their previous peak, and those in ether are close to their October 2025 level. The bank's momentum signals also indicate that CTAs, the algorithm-driven trend-following funds, are rebuilding long positions in bitcoin and ether.
On offshore platforms, leverage in perpetual contracts, futures with no expiry date, has receded since the crash but remains above its historical average. The analysts see in this the joint return of retail and institutional investors, enough in their view to create "a positive flow dynamic for the fourth quarter". That is the bank's reading, not a guarantee.
What is still holding things back
Not every segment is following. Miners show a net selling balance of around $1.8 billion since January, according to Journal du Coin, a modest amount on the scale of the market. Listed companies account for most of this movement: they sell off their output and sometimes dip into their reserves to finance computing centres dedicated to artificial intelligence.
On the corporate treasury side, Strategy carried the load at the start of the year. Listed companies finance their purchases by issuing shares, through debt or through preferred shares, hybrid securities that pay a priority dividend. The balance is shifting from debt towards the latter, which means more coupons to pay each quarter, whether bitcoin rises or not. Unlisted treasuries, for their part, buy little, for lack of flexible financing and of appetite for volatility.
Venture capital has been doing better since 2024, but the money is concentrating on fewer, larger funding rounds, led by already established players. For infrastructure with predictable revenues, debt sometimes replaces equity, and business-to-business tokenisation is attracting a growing share of the amounts invested.
The limits of the exercise
Three caveats are in order when reading this figure. First, the change of scope: setting the $50 billion in the October note side by side with previous readings amounts to comparing measures constructed differently. Second, not all components are directly observed flows; the contribution from futures, for example, is an impulse inferred by the bank. Finally, the snapshot remains fragile. On the very day the note was published, October 7, US bitcoin ETFs recorded $487.1 million in outflows, according to Journal du Coin. The week ended with $681.1 million in net outflows, and the ETF balance since January fell back to $494.1 million, compared with $1.18 billion seven days earlier.
The source says nothing about the share of Swiss investors in these flows: the information is not available. JPMorgan's figure is mainly valuable as a trend thermometer, to be read with its method and its margins of uncertainty.
