Large institutional investors continued to add exposure to crypto treasury companies over the past week, even as bear-market illiquidity forced another round of shakeouts across decentralized finance (DeFi).
The biggest corporate shareholders of Bitmine Immersion Technologies, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, increased exposure to the Ether (ETH) treasury company during Q4 2025 despite a broader market sell-off.
Still, ongoing bear-market illiquidity is forcing some protocols to wind down operations, with DeFi lender ZeroLend shutting down. Crypto analytics platform Parsec has also shuttered, citing crypto market volatility as the main reason.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) and ETH each rose about 2.6% during the past week, amid mounting outflows from US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which logged three consecutive days of selling leading up to Thursday’s $165 million outflow, Farside Investors data shows.
Ether ETFs started the week with $48 million in inflows on Tuesday, but reversed to log two successive days of outflows, including $41 million in outflows on Wednesday and $130 million on Thursday.
Morgan Stanley, other top holders add Bitmine exposure amid sell-off
The largest shareholders of Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) stock increased their investments in the leading Ethereum treasury company in the fourth quarter of 2025 despite a wider crypto market crash and poor stock price performance.
Morgan Stanley, the top reported holder, increased its position by about 26% to more than 12.1 million shares, valued at $331 million at the quarter’s end, according to its Form 13F filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. ARK Investment Management, the second-biggest holder, increased its stake by about 27% to more than 9.4 million shares worth $256 million, its filing shows.
Several other top institutional holders also increased exposure. BlackRock increased its BMNR holdings by 166%, Goldman Sachs by 588%, Vanguard by 66% and Bank of America by 1,668%.
Wall Street adds BMNR exposure despite 48% stock slide
Each of the top 11 largest shareholders increased exposure to BMNR during Q4 of 2025, including Charles Schwab, Van Eck, Royal Bank of Canada, Citigroup and the Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, according to official filings compiled by crypto investor Collin.
The accumulation came despite a sharp drop in Bitmine’s share price. BMNR fell about 48% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and about 60% over the past six months, trading near $19.90 in premarket action Thursday, according to Google Finance.
DeFi lender ZeroLend shuts down, blames illiquid chains
Decentralized lending protocol ZeroLend said it is shutting down completely after the blockchains it operates on suffered from low user numbers and liquidity.
“After three years of building and operating the protocol, we have made the difficult decision to wind down operations,” ZeroLend’s founder, known only as “Ryker,” said in a post the protocol shared to X on Monday.
“Despite the team’s continued efforts, it has become clear that the protocol is no longer sustainable in its current form,” he added.
ZeroLend focused its services on Ethereum layer-2 blockchains, once touted by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin as a central part of the network’s plan to scale and remain competitive.
However, Buterin said earlier this month that his vision for scaling with layer 2s “no longer makes sense,” that many have failed to properly adopt Ethereum’s security, and that scaling should increasingly come from the mainnet and native rollups.
DerivaDEX debuts Bermuda-licensed derivatives DEX
DerivaDEX has launched a Bermuda-licensed crypto derivatives platform, becoming what it says is the first DAO-governed decentralized exchange to operate under formal regulatory approval.
According to a statement from the platform, the exchange received a T license from the Bermuda Monetary Authority and has begun offering crypto perpetual swaps trading to a limited number of advanced retail and institutional participants.
The BMA’s T, or test license, is issued for a digital asset business seeking to test a proof of concept.
At launch, DerivaDEX supports major crypto perpetual products and said it plans to expand into additional markets, including prediction markets and traditional securities. The company said the platform combines offchain order matching with onchain settlement to Ethereum, while allowing users to retain non-custodial control of funds.
Parsec shuts down amid ongoing crypto market volatility
Onchain analytics company Parsec is closing down after five years, as crypto trader flows and onchain activity no longer resemble their past configurations.
“Parsec is shutting down,” the company said in an X post on Thursday, while its CEO, Will Sheehan, said the “market zigged while we zagged a few too many times.”
Sheehan added that Parsec’s primary focus on decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) fell out of step with where the industry has now headed.
“Post FTX DeFi spot lending leverage never really came back in the same way, it changed, morphed into something we understood less,” he said, adding that onchain activity changed in a way he never understood.
NFT sales reached about $5.63 billion in 2025, a 37% drawdown from the $8.9 billion recorded in 2024. Average sale prices also declined year-on-year, falling to $96 from $124, according to CryptoSlam data.
Kraken’s xStocks tops $25 billion in volume with more than 80,000 onchain holders
Kraken’s tokenized equities platform, xStocks, has surpassed $25 billion in total transaction volume less than eight months after launch, underscoring accelerating adoption as tokenization gains traction among mainstream investors.
Kraken disclosed Thursday that the $25 billion figure includes trading across centralized exchanges and decentralized exchanges, as well as minting and redemption activity. The milestone represents a 150% increase since November, when xStocks crossed $10 billion in cumulative transaction volume.
The xStocks tokens are issued by Backed Finance, a regulated asset provider that creates 1:1 backed tokenized representations of publicly traded equities and exchange-traded funds. Kraken serves as a primary distribution and trading venue, while Backed is responsible for structuring and issuing the tokenized instruments.
When xStocks debuted in 2025, it offered more than 60 tokenized equities, including shares tied to major US technology companies like Amazon, Meta Platforms, Nvidia and Tesla.
Kraken said onchain activity has been a key growth driver since launch, with xStocks generating $3.5 billion in onchain trading volume and surpassing 80,000 unique onchain holders.
Unlike trading that occurs solely within centralized exchanges’ internal order books, onchain activity takes place directly on public blockchains, where transactions are transparent and wallets can self-custody assets.
Growing onchain participation suggests users are not only trading tokenized equities but also integrating them into broader decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystems.
Kraken said that eight of the 11 largest tokenized equities by unique holder count are now part of the xStocks ecosystem, signaling increased market share in the emerging tokenized equities sector.
DeFi market overview
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the green.
The layer-1 blockchain Kite (KITE) token rose 38% as the biggest gainer in the top 100, followed by stablecoin payment ecosystem token Stable (STABLE), up over 30% during the past week.
Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.
