John D’Agostino said large allocators are treating Bitcoin’s drop below $60,000 as a buying opportunity, citing resilient ETF exposure, stronger market infrastructure and continued interest from family offices and sovereign-linked investors.
Institutional investors are not retreating from Bitcoin’s latest selloff and are instead using the decline as an opportunity to add exposure, Coinbase head of institutional strategy John D’Agostino said on CNBC’s Squawk Box on June 8. Bitcoin briefly fell below $60,000 for the first time since October 2024, but D’Agostino said family offices, sovereign-linked buyers and other long-term allocators still view the asset constructively. He declined to make a direct price call on whether the move toward the $59,000 area would hold as support, but said the investors he speaks with through Coinbase’s institutional business have spent months or years studying the asset class and tend to buy when it becomes cheaper. He said recent meetings in the Middle East showed family offices in the UAE and government and sovereign funds remain comfortable accumulating during the drawdown. D’Agostino argued the institutional market structure around Bitcoin is stronger than in previous downturns, with more developed "institutional piping" supporting crypto assets across both bull and bear markets. He also pointed to roughly $100 billion in Bitcoin spot ETF exposure and said retail interest had fallen only about 15% even with Bitcoin down nearly 50% from its peak. He attributed the selloff to a mix of risk-off positioning, higher-for-longer rates, weaker support for the debasement trade, regulatory uncertainty and leverage-driven pressure in parts of the market, while saying he is not seeing institutional panic or heavily overleveraged large holders. At press time, BTC traded at $63,345.