Gulf institutions stick with bitcoin despite crypto slump

Vijay Valecha, February 27, 2026, AGBI

Gulf sovereign wealth funds and financial institutions are pressing ahead with selective bets on bitcoin, signalling sustained conviction in digital assets despite the slump in crypto markets.

Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company disclosed it increased its holding in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) ETF by 46 percent quarter-on-quarter to 12.7 million shares as of the end of last year, a regulatory filing shows.

Abu Dhabi Investment Council, an independently run unit of Mubadala, lifted its exposure by 3 percent to 8.2 million shares via a subsidiary, taking Mubadala’s cumulative stake in IBIT to more than $1 billion.

The move comes amid one of the weakest periods for bitcoin in the recent past. The token fell 23 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025, and has since slid further to about $65,000, having peaked at around $126,000 in October 2025.

Yet Gulf institutions appear to be treating the slump as an opportunity to “buy the dip” rather than as a warning sign. One of the UAE’s largest lenders, Emirates NBD, said in an interview with CNBC this week that it is exploring the addition of bitcoin to its portfolio, viewing the asset as digital gold and a store of value.

Mubadala and BlackRock declined to comment.

For Mubadala and other sovereign wealth funds overseeing close to $5 trillion in assets, accumulating exposure during a 20-50 percent drawdown from all-time highs fits a well-established contrarian playbook.

The investment push also aligns with the UAE’s broader ambition to embed digital assets into its economic strategy. Abu Dhabi and Dubai have positioned crypto, blockchain and tokenisation as core growth sectors, pairing capital deployment with increasingly formalised regulation.

And to build a blockchain economy, regulations are not enough. “It requires real capital, active participation and visible long-term commitment,” said Vijay Valecha, CIO of financial brokers Century Financial.

Bounceback

In recent months, the UAE’s Ministry of Finance formally recognised Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority as a competent authority within the federal tax and regulatory framework. The country has also signed a multilateral agreement to implement a global tax reporting standard for crypto transactions and approved a memorandum enabling the payment of selected government service fees in cryptocurrencies.

“This demonstrates the UAE’s positioning as an attractive destination for institutional crypto capital flows and explains Mubadala’s growing interest in accumulating bitcoin,” Valecha said.

Crypto advocates also point to the asset class’s ability often to rebound more quickly than traditional markets. Bitcoin’s biggest price drop was about as severe as the tech crash in the early 2000s, but it bounced back in a little more than two years. In comparison, it took US tech stocks 15 years to recover fully from the dotcom bubble.

“One of the main reasons for this is that bitcoin remains highly retail-driven, with just 8 percent held by institutions,” Valecha said.

The bank pointed to sustained central bank purchases, public announcements of U.S. Treasury divestment and a broader shift by countries seeking to diversify revenue bases away from the dollar and toward the Chinese renminbi.

Source

AGBI