Institutional clients are a core focus for Bitget's next phase, which means we're listening closely to what they actually need. Over the past few weeks, I've been sitting down with leaders from some of our key institutional partners for a new CEO Chat Series, where we talked about topics reshaping the market, from prime brokerage and fragmented liquidity to smarter collateral, tokenization at scale, and the changing expectations around institutional execution. Fire chat coming soon, stay tuned to @bitget

Institutional investors are cutting their bullish bets on the US Dollar. Long speculative positioning in the US Dollar fell -$15 billion, to +$5 billion in the week ending September 15th, the lowest since March. This covers hedge funds, speculative currency traders, and asset managers. This marks the 7th consecutive weekly decline, the longest streak since Q1 2025. By comparison, bullish bets on the US Dollar peaked at ~$50 billion in mid-July. Meanwhile, the US Dollar Index rose +1.4% last week, its biggest weekly gain since May 2026, following the Fed’s first rate hike since July 2023. The US Dollar is seeing extreme volatility.

Institutional DeFi is moving past the question of whether large capital wants onchain exposure and the appetite is increasingly obvious. The harder problem is everything institutions need around the trade. From custody, governance, reporting, compliance, risk controls to clear separation of responsibilities. That is why the next phase of institutional DeFi may be less about finding another 10% yield and more about building the financial infrastructure that allows serious capital to participate safely. With platforms like @Securitize now managing $4B+ in assets, that stack is starting to take shape. Here’s where the real bottleneck sits. — ● Institutional DeFi no longer has an access problem Early DeFi was built for individuals. A user connected a wallet, chose a protocol, managed custody, selected a strategy and absorbed most of the risk themselves. The flow looked something like: Wallet -> protocol -> strategy -> risk -> custody That works surprisingly well for crypto-native users. It does not map cleanly onto how institutions operate. Large allocators need: • Segregated custody • Policy-based approvals • Continuous risk monitoring • Transaction controls • Accounting and reporting • Compliance infrastructure So the problem is no longer simply can institutional capital access DeFi? It is now can DeFi fit inside an institutional operating model? — ● That requires the stack to break into specialised roles Traditional finance does not expect one entity to handle settlement, custody, asset management, risk and execution. Institutional DeFi is gradually moving in the same direction. The emerging stack looks more like: Settlement -> financial protocols -> asset managers / curators -> custodians -> institutional infrastructure At the settlement layer: • @ethereum, @solana, @base and @arbitrum provide the underlying rails. • Above that, protocols such as @aave, @Morpho, @maplefinance and @Uniswap provide lending, liquidity and market infrastructure. • Managers and curators such as @Re7Capital, @gauntlet_xyz and @SteakhouseFi determine how capital is allocated and risk is managed. • Tokenized-asset platforms such as @Ondo, @Securitize and @RWA_xyz bring traditional assets onchain. • And custodians such as @ZodiaCustody and @Anchorage handle institutional asset security. No single protocol needs to become the entire financial system. The stack becomes more useful as each layer gets more specialised. — ● RWAs are making that transition easier Tokenized assets give institutions something familiar to bring into an unfamiliar environment. @BlackRock’s $BUIDL, @Ondo and @Securitize are good examples. BUIDL crossed $1B in AUM in March 2025. By 2026, Securitize reported more than $4B in assets across its platform. But the important development is not only that traditional assets are being tokenized. It is that those assets are becoming increasingly usable inside DeFi. A tokenized Treasury can become: • Collateral • A vault asset • A liquidity source • A settlement instrument • Part of an onchain portfolio That creates a much more direct bridge: TradFi asset -> tokenized RWA -> DeFi application -> onchain liquidity For institutions, that is easier to understand than deploying directly into entirely crypto-native risk. — ● But more institutional capital also means a more complicated risk stack This is where infrastructure becomes critical. @Re7Capital breaks DeFi risk into four broad categories: 1. Financial risk Collateral volatility, liquidity, credit exposure, defaults and market risk. 2. Smart-contract risk Code vulnerabilities, upgrades and governance failures. 3. Structural risk Composability, leverage, dependency chains and liquidation cascades. 4. Stablecoin risk Reserve quality, redemption mechanisms and regulatory treatment. The important point is that these risks rarely exist independently. A lending position might depend on a protocol , an oracle , a bridge , a stablecoin , an underlying custodian A problem several layers away can still affect the original position. That is very different from simply asking whether one smart contract has been audited. — ● Institutional DeFi therefore needs risk to become a service As the stack gets more complex, institutions cannot realistically monitor every dependency themselves. Someone has to continuously answer questions like: • What collateral backs this position? • How liquid is it under stress? • Which oracle does the protocol depend on? • What happens if a stablecoin depegs? • Who can upgrade the contracts? • Where is the underlying RWA custodied? • What other protocols sit underneath the strategy? That turns risk management from a one-time due-diligence exercise into ongoing infrastructure. The same is true for compliance and reporting. Institutions do not just need access to onchain markets. They need onchain activity translated into systems their legal, risk, finance and operations teams can actually use. — And that may be the bigger shift happening in institutional DeFi. The first phase was about proving that blockchain could host financial markets. The second was about getting institutional-grade assets onchain. The next phase is about building the operating layer around those markets. • Custodians secure the assets. • Curators allocate capital. • Protocols provide the markets. • Risk systems monitor dependencies. • Reporting and compliance connect everything back to institutional workflows. That is how DeFi starts looking less like a collection of protocols and more like financial infrastructure. Institutional capital does not simply need better yields. It needs confidence that every layer between the asset and the strategy can be understood, monitored and controlled. And that is why the next institutional DeFi winners may not be the protocols offering the highest return. They may be the companies making onchain finance operationally boring enough for institutions to use at scale. Read the full report by @Re7Capital:

Institutional demand builds in Brazilian homebuilding: Invesco has expanded its equity footprint in Cyrela Brazil Realty, crossing the 5% common share ownership threshold according to a regulatory disclosure.

Institutional investors are raising cash: Global managers’ cash allocation rose +0.4 percentage points MoM, to 3.9%, its biggest monthly increase since March, according to a BofA survey of 170 participants overseeing $470 billion in assets. This follows 3.5% recorded in early August, the 6th-lowest level since the survey began in 1998. As a result, 49% of fund managers are now overweight global equities, down from 56% last month. At the same time, 48% of those surveyed are underweight bonds, the highest proportion since May 2022. This marks the 17th consecutive month in which global investors have been underweight bonds, the longest such streak since 2022. Meanwhile, almost 50% also said they expect the Treasury’s buyback program to have no impact on yields. Investors are locking in some gains after the global equity rally.

Institutional adoption has been “arriving” for years. What has actually changed? Ariane Murphy (@StandWCrypto_EU), Martha Reyes (@DigitalAssets), Michael Howe (@Bitwise_Europe), Dr. Diana-Cezara Toader (@UBS), Peter Hubli (@zkb_ch) and Sladjan Seferović (SWIAT) discussed what is genuinely moving forward across regulation, infrastructure, products and implementation. What has changed most inside your institution over the past year?

Institutional blockchain is moving beyond pilots. “Programmable Financial Infrastructure: The Next Phase of Institutional Blockchain” brought together Ian Allison (@CoinDesk), Simona Pasero (@GENERALI), Lorenzo Valente (@ARKInvest), Martin Onyeador (@NatWestGroup) and Simone Cortese (@fnality). They discussed what programmability enables across settlement, liquidity and institutional workflows once markets move on-chain. Where could programmability create the most value for your business?

Institutional crypto allocation is no longer a side conversation. “From Skepticism to Allocation: How Institutional Investors Are Building Crypto into Their Portfolios” brought together Carl Szantyr (Blockstone Capital), André Dragosch (@Bitwise_Europe), Karl Naïm (@xbtogroup), Tommaso Mancuso (@3iq_corp), Rani Jabban (@arabbankCH) and Stefan Klauser (@aisotHQ). They discussed what drives adoption, how institutions assess risk and how crypto fits into broader portfolios. What does an ideal digital asset allocation look like in your portfolio?