From Gold to IBIT: A Trillion-Dollar Wealth Migration

In the long river of investment, gold has always been regarded as the unshakable “king of hedging.” However, everything began to change in 2024. On January 10, 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs, including those from Black Rock and Fidelity, marking the beginning of an unprecedented capital migration. Funds began to seek a vehicle that is more explosive than gold and more suited to the digital age.

Today, looking back from the year 2025, the winner of this migration is undoubtedly: BlackRock's IBIT.

It took less than two years to cover the journey that the gold ETF (GLD) took over a decade. According to the latest Q3 financial report data, from the academic institution Harvard University to the royal families in the Middle East, the world's top capital is allocating positions from “old gold” to “new gold” at an unprecedented speed.

From “birth” to “hundred billion giant”

First, we need to understand the destination of this migration - what exactly is IBIT.

IBIT (iShares Bitcoin Trust) is the world's largest asset management company BlackRock's Bitcoin Spot ETF. Its emergence addresses the biggest pain points of traditional funds: compliance and convenience.

With IBIT, investors do not need to register with complex cryptocurrency exchanges, nor do they have to worry about losing their private keys. You can hold BlackRock's 1:1 custodied Bitcoin assets on Nasdaq just like buying and selling stocks.

It is precisely this “securitization” bridge that has allowed IBIT to achieve a speed that gold can only envy:

◦ Trillion Milestone: BlackRock CEO Larry Fink recently announced that the asset management scale of IBIT has officially surpassed 100 billion dollars.

◦ Speed comparison: It took GLD over a decade to reach this scale, while IBIT took less than two years.

It is the establishment of this “compliance bridge” that has finally provided a ticket for the massive traditional capital, which has long been eyeing digital assets.

The Choice of Harvard and the Royal Family

If the buying of retail investors is an emotional outburst, then the buying of top institutions is a well-considered strategy. The 13F filings for Q3 2025 reveal a shocking picture of holdings.

1. Harvard University: Gold is still there, but the “new favorite” is growing faster

Harvard University's endowment fund has always been known for its stability. Data shows that as of September 30, Harvard simultaneously held GLD and IBIT.

◦ GLD holdings: worth $235 million, a month-on-month increase of 98%.

◦ IBIT Holdings: valued at $443 million, with a month-on-month increase of 257%.

An intriguing detail is that Harvard's holding value in IBIT is already 4 times that of its holdings in Nvidia shares (USD 109 million). This indicates that in the eyes of academic capital, Bitcoin is no longer a marginal asset, but rather a more core allocation than popular tech stocks.

2. Middle Eastern Royalty: Viewing BTC as a “store of value”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Council (ADIC) increased its holdings of IBIT shares to nearly 8 million in the third quarter, worth approximately $518 million, tripling from the previous quarter.

The logic behind this move is even grander. ADIC clearly states that “Bitcoin is viewed as a store of value similar to gold.” For sovereign funds seeking intergenerational wealth transfer, this is not just an investment, but also a hedge against the future currency system.

3. Asian Whales: Continuing Heavy Positions

At the same time, the Li Lin family office (Avenir Group) has increased its holdings for 5 consecutive quarters and currently holds nearly $1.2 billion in IBIT, firmly establishing itself as the largest institutional holder in Asia.

The collective actions of these top institutions prove that the crypto industry is no longer synonymous with “speculation,” but rather the focus of global capital. IBIT is the best annotation of global consensus during this period.

milestone of market structure

In addition to the explosive growth in scale and positions, the market structure itself has also completed a key upgrade.

For a long time, the Bitcoin derivatives market has been dominated by Deribit, a platform primarily for crypto-native users and traders.

However, last week, the open interest of BlackRock's IBIT options ($38 billion) officially surpassed that of Deribit ($32 billion).

This milestone directly indicates that traditional financial institutions and large professional investors are rapidly entering the Bitcoin market on a large scale through regulated instruments. This deep integration means that Bitcoin assets have gained unprecedented liquidity assurance, significantly enhancing the maturity and transparency of the market.

Beyond Gold



IBIT achieved a scale in less than two years that took gold ETFs over a decade to reach, but this is just the surface. Its surpassing of GLD ultimately reflects IBIT's structural advantages over traditional safe-haven assets:

◦ Return Advantage: While the annualized return of traditional safe-haven assets like GLD typically stabilizes in single digits, Bloomberg analysts point out that IBIT has maintained an annualized yield close to 80% since its listing in 2024, even after experiencing price corrections. This proves that IBIT possesses both the allocation characteristics of safe-haven assets and the explosive potential of growth assets.

◦ Capital resilience: Traditional gold ETFs often face capital outflows when prices fall. However, as data from SoSoValue shows, even during periods of price volatility, IBIT managed to record a net inflow of $224 million in a single day. This resilience of “buying more as prices drop” is precisely a hallmark of why global institutions view IBIT as a long-term strategic allocation.

On January 10, 2024, the SEC's approval knocked down the first domino; in 2025, IBIT proved the irreversibility of this wealth migration with a scale of $100 billion. Gold remains that stable ballast, but today in 2025, Bitcoin is becoming that nuclear-powered speedboat.

A new era of digital assets driven by global top capital consensus has officially begun.