For two years, institutional crypto has meant one thing above all else: Bitcoin. Regulated funds, corporate treasuries and retirement platforms bought Bitcoin first, and everything else waited its turn. According to Canary Capital chief executive Steve McClurg, that order may be about to change.
In an interview with Altcoin Daily on 1 November 2026, McClurg argued that institutional demand flowing through exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and digital asset treasury companies could put large-cap altcoins ahead of Bitcoin in the market’s next phase. It is a forecast, not a fact — and it comes from the head of a firm with its own altcoin ETF filings — but it captures a real shift in how Wall Street is now talking about crypto: less about a single coin, and more about which networks actually get used.
What McClurg actually said
McClurg’s argument has three parts. First, the access vehicles matter as much as the technology. Institutions rarely buy a token directly on an exchange; they buy it through a regulated wrapper — an ETF or a listed treasury company. Without one of those vehicles, he said, institutions are unlikely to buy obscure assets outside the top 20 at all.
Second, within that top tier, activity wins. He named networks with substantial transactions and ongoing development as the strongest candidates for institutional interest: the XRP Ledger, Hedera, Injective, Sui and Solana. Among privacy-focused assets, he singled out Zcash and Litecoin. The common thread is use — payments, tokenization and real transaction volume — rather than narrative alone.
Third, tokenization is the longer game. McClurg said large banks and asset managers are building tokenized products and platforms, with adoption potentially accelerating over the next one to two years. He also noted a tension worth keeping in mind: financial firms want controls such as freezing or recovering tokens, approving participants and verifying customer identities. Those features may help adoption, but they sit uneasily with crypto’s original decentralised ideals.
He also offered a glimpse of how some investors are positioning in Bitcoin itself: holding the asset while selling call options struck 5% to 10% above the market — collecting income while capping upside. And he expects reduced political uncertainty after the US midterm elections on 3 November to lift appetite for crypto risk assets. Again, that is his view, not a market guarantee.
Why this debate is happening now
McClurg’s comments land at a moment when the ETF pipeline itself is changing shape. From the end of the third quarter of 2025, the US Securities and Exchange Commission had accumulated more than 126 pending crypto ETF applications, spanning Solana, XRP, Litecoin, Dogecoin and others, according to a 2026 guide published by Gate. After the SEC introduced universal listing standards in September 2025, the listing cycle for plain-vanilla crypto ETFs shortened to just 75 days.
Bloomberg senior ETF analyst James Seyffart has predicted that 2026 will bring a wave of intensive crypto ETF launches. Bitwise has gone further, projecting more than 100 crypto asset-related ETFs launching in the US in 2026. In 2025, Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs together attracted a combined $31 billion of inflows, and ETF trading volume now accounts for about 30% of the entire spot market, Gate’s guide notes.
That wave has a warning attached. Seyffart expects a wave of crypto ETF liquidations between late 2026 and early 2027, with high-fee, duplicative single-asset funds, niche index products and thematic products most at risk. Morningstar research cited in the same guide puts the average lifespan of a US ETF at just 5.4 years, with insufficient inflows the usual cause of death. In other words, getting listed is no longer the hard part — surviving is.
Europe is moving too. Switzerland’s regulator FINMA has approved BIT AM’s spot Bitcoin fund ETF (BBIT), expected to list on the SIX Swiss Exchange in November 2026. The fund invests directly and exclusively in Bitcoin under a rare regulatory exemption, with holdings segregated from the management company’s assets, and BIT describes it as Europe’s only available spot Bitcoin ETF. It is authorised for public sale in Switzerland only for now, and its near-term effect on Bitcoin trading is likely to be limited — but it is another sign that regulated, segregated crypto vehicles are becoming normal rather than novel.
The market backdrop: steady, not euphoric
None of this is happening in a roaring market. On the morning of 2 November, KuCoin’s daily report put Bitcoin at $78,350, up 1.05% over 24 hours, and Ethereum at $2,275.28, up 0.88%, with the Crypto Fear & Greed Index at 37 — up from 30, but still in fear territory. Centralised-finance tokens led the day’s sector gains, up 1.34%, with OKB up 2.72% and BNB up 1.56%, while AI tokens fell 1.61% and DeFi slipped 0.75%.
That steadiness follows a bruising week. US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $643 million of net outflows on 30 October, and spot Ethereum ETFs lost about $156 million the same day, in the wake of the $6.3 billion Binance hack. Binance has since said it has obtained about 95% of the affected assets and expects to publish proof of reserves, with selected withdrawals reopening. The institutional money that left on Friday has not yet clearly returned — which is exactly why the next flow prints matter more than any single forecast.
What to watch, and what it means for ordinary holders
If McClurg is right, the next phase will not be decided by which coin has the loudest community, but by three practical tests:
Does it have a regulated vehicle? An ETF or treasury listing is now the gateway to institutional money. Coins without one may simply never appear on an institution’s buy list, however good their technology.
Does anyone actually use it? Transaction volume, developer activity and tokenization work — the criteria McClurg cites for XRP Ledger, Hedera, Injective, Sui and Solana — are the evidence institutions can point to in an investment committee.
Can it survive the shakeout? With more than 100 new products tipped for 2026 and liquidations expected into early 2027, many funds will close. Low fees, real inflows and a distinct purpose will matter more than being first.
For ordinary holders, the practical takeaway is calmer than the headlines suggest. Do not chase a coin just because a fund manager named it, and do not assume an ETF listing guarantees a price rise — several newly listed products have already shown how quickly flows can reverse. Instead, watch the flow data itself: sustained inflows into a specific altcoin ETF, a treasury company actually accumulating, and tokenization projects moving from announcement to live product are the signals that would turn McClurg’s prediction into something real.
Bitcoin is not going away — it remains roughly 60% of the market by value, and its ETF infrastructure is the template everything else is copying. But the conversation has clearly moved on from whether institutions will come to crypto at all. The question now is which assets they will pick next — and, for the first time, the answer may not automatically be Bitcoin.
This post is for information only and is not financial advice. Forecasts are attributed to Steve McClurg of Canary Capital, James Seyffart of Bloomberg Intelligence and Bitwise, as reported on 1–2 November 2026, and are views, not guarantees. Prices and flows are as reported by KuCoin, Gate, TokenPost and other outlets and will change. Cryptocurrency markets are volatile — do your own research before making investment decisions.
