Executive Summary

• Global cryptocurrency owners increased by 4.5% in the first half of 2026, rising from 741 million in December 2025 to 774 million in June 2026.
• • Based on our on-chain estimates:
  • • Bitcoin (BTC) owners grew by 2.5%, from 364 million in December 2025 to 373 million in June 2026, accounting for 48.3% of global owners.
    • Ether (ETH) owners grew by 9.1%, from 175 million to 191 million during the same period, accounting for 24.7% of global owners.
  • An estimated 300,000 to 1.3 million investors hold BTC and ETH via U.S. spot ETFs beyond these on-chain figures.

• BTC adoption could be primarily driven by institutional adoption through digital asset treasury (DAT) companies and macro hedging against rising U.S. debt and global inflation.
• • First, digital asset treasury (DAT) companies continued to accumulate a notable amount of BTC on their balance sheets. Total BTC held by DAT companies exceeded 1.2 million by June 2026, accounting for over 6% of total BTC supply.

• • Second, macroeconomic factors, particularly rising U.S. debt and inflation, accelerated Bitcoin adoption. Data from H1 2026 indicates a medium-to-strong positive correlation (0.47 to 0.76) between BTC adoption growth and U.S. debt expansion.

• • Additionally, BTC adoption trends aligned closely with CPI growth, reaching a five-month correlation of 0.64 in May 2026.

• ETH adoption was mainly driven by the expansion of real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and stablecoins.

Read the full report: Crypto Market Sizing Report H1 2026

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Authors

Crypto.com Research and Insights team

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