Institutional Barriers to Bitcoin Adoption

Briefing Notes contain: (1) a summary of podcast content; (2) potential information gaps; and (3) some speculative views on wider implications for Bitcoin. Most summaries are for Bitcoin-centered YouTube episodes but I also do some on AI and technological advance that spill over to affect Bitcoin.

Summary

The November 24, 2025 episode of the Robin Seyr Podcast features Sam Roberts explaining why most institutional capital still avoids Bitcoin despite expanding market infrastructure. Roberts describes how committee-driven governance, conservative risk frameworks, and career incentives constrain pension funds, corporations, and asset managers even as inflation erodes traditional savings assets. The episode highlights emerging entry points—such as small pension allocations, treasury strategies, central bank pilots, and Bitcoin-linked retirement products—and underscores the structural and cultural shifts needed for broader institutional adoption.

Take-Home Messages

1. Governance Frictions: Multi-layered committees and fiduciary processes slow institutional decision-making, causing large allocators to lag far behind retail investors in considering Bitcoin.
2. Distorted Risk Perceptions: Many institutions still classify cash and government bonds as inherently safe while labeling Bitcoin as speculative, despite mounting evidence that inflation undermines fiat-denominated savings.
3. Constrained Access Channels: Mandates and product rules often prevent direct Bitcoin holdings, pushing institutions toward exchange-traded products or Bitcoin treasury companies as indirect exposure routes.
4. Emerging Institutional Experiments: Early moves by a UK pension scheme and the Czech National Bank’s modest Bitcoin and stablecoin pilot show how tightly governed experiments can open the door to more systematic use.
5. Retirement and Income Innovation: Bitcoin-denominated tontines and other pooled structures offer a way to pair hard-money savings with longevity risk sharing, potentially reshaping how retirement income is designed and delivered.

Overview

The discussion begins with the puzzle that roughly 97% of institutional money still refuses to touch Bitcoin, even as prices reach new highs and supporting infrastructure matures. Sam Roberts contrasts the agility of individual investors, who can act on conviction within minutes, with the slow, layered processes of institutions where any new idea must pass through boards, investment committees, and external advisors. He argues that this architecture, built to prevent rash mistakes, also makes institutions late to recognize and respond to monetary regime shifts.

Roberts then maps the institutional landscape across pension schemes, corporations, charities, asset managers, and governments, emphasizing that each operates under different mandates and political pressures. Pension trustees must reconcile long-dated liabilities with an asset that is still perceived as volatile, while recognizing that sticking with low-yield bonds and cash exposes beneficiaries to long-term purchasing power loss. Corporate treasurers confront their own constraints, needing to justify any Bitcoin exposure to boards and shareholders who often view deviations from conventional cash and bond reserves as unnecessary speculation.

A central theme is the gap between how institutions categorize fiat assets and how they categorize Bitcoin within their risk frameworks. Roberts notes that inflation, debt accumulation, and negative real yields have weakened the protective function of cash and government bonds (see my analysis of state 'rainy day funds' for an example), yet these instruments continue to enjoy privileged status as “safe” on most risk registers. By contrast, Bitcoin is frequently framed as a short-term trading vehicle rather than a potential savings asset, and this framing shapes how consultants, regulators, and internal risk teams discuss it with decision-makers.

Despite this, Roberts points to tangible signs of change, including a UK pension scheme that adopted a small Bitcoin allocation with a 10-year horizon and reporting focused on network health metrics rather than quarterly price swings. He highlights the Czech National Bank’s €1 million Bitcoin and stablecoin experiment as an example of how smaller central banks can explore new tools within strict risk controls, even under broader euro-area constraints. The conversation closes by examining “version two” Bitcoin treasury companies and Bitcoin-denominated tontines (pooled lifetime income funds), suggesting that new corporate structures and retirement products may gradually embed Bitcoin within institutional balance sheets and income strategies without forcing abrupt departures from existing governance norms.

Stakeholder Perspectives

1. Pension funds and long-term allocators: Seeking to protect real funding ratios and intergenerational fairness while managing volatility, governance scrutiny, and reputational risk around even small Bitcoin allocations.
2. Corporate treasurers and CFOs: Focused on liquidity, accounting treatment, and shareholder oversight when considering Bitcoin as a reserve asset, and wary of being perceived as speculative or off-mandate.
3. Asset managers and financial advisors: Constrained by product mandates and regulatory expectations, they often rely on listed vehicles or Bitcoin treasury companies to meet client demand without holding native Bitcoin directly.
4. Regulators and central banks: Monitoring systemic risk and experimenting cautiously, they must decide whether Bitcoin can play a constructive role in reserves, collateral frameworks, and payment systems while preserving financial stability.
5. Households and retirees: Exposed to inflation and low yields in traditional savings vehicles, they stand to benefit or suffer from new Bitcoin-linked products, such as tontines, that promise hard-money income streams but introduce unfamiliar design and governance risks.

Implications and Future Outlook

Institutional adoption of Bitcoin is likely to unfold as a gradual, path-dependent process shaped by governance reforms, evolving risk culture, and the maturation of market infrastructure. As inflation and debt pressures persist, boards and trustees will be under increasing pressure from beneficiaries to demonstrate that they have considered the long-term implications of monetary debasement. Over the next several years, carefully structured, small-percentage allocations may become a way for fiduciaries to show that they are managing regime-level monetary risk rather than ignoring it.

Product innovation will be central to translating institutional interest into practical exposure that fits within existing machinery. ETFs, specialized mandates, and Bitcoin treasury companies offer familiar wrappers that can address operational concerns about custody, reporting, and counterparty risk. If these structures prove resilient through full market cycles, they will normalize Bitcoin’s presence in institutional portfolios and make it easier for large allocators to scale positions without triggering governance crises.

Retirement security stands out as a domain where Bitcoin could quietly, but significantly, reshape financial architecture. Bitcoin-denominated tontines and related pooled designs allow savers to combine hard-money accumulation with shared longevity risk, shifting reliance away from purely wage-linked or tax-backed promises. Should such products gain regulatory acceptance and user trust, they could alter the balance between public pensions, private annuities, and self-directed investing, with downstream effects on fiscal policy and household financial behavior.

Some Key Information Gaps

1. How do institutional governance and committee structures specifically delay decisions to add Bitcoin to portfolios? Understanding the precise procedural bottlenecks is essential for designing reforms and communication strategies that enable thorough yet timely evaluation of Bitcoin.
2. How can institutional investors rigorously compare the real (inflation-adjusted) risk of fiat cash and government bonds with that of Bitcoin? Developing robust comparative risk frameworks would help boards and regulators move beyond heuristics and align portfolio decisions with long-horizon purchasing power rather than nominal stability alone.
3. How can pension schemes and other long-term funds incorporate “quality of money” into their formal risk registers and oversight processes? Integrating monetary regime risk into established governance tools would force explicit consideration of Bitcoin alongside fiat instruments when setting strategic asset allocations.
4. In what ways can “version two” Bitcoin treasury companies, whose operating businesses accelerate adoption, change capital flows into Bitcoin compared with passive treasuries? Clarifying how these firms behave across market cycles will inform regulatory approaches, investor due diligence, and expectations about their role as institutional access points.
5. How could Bitcoin-denominated tontines be structured to provide reliable retirement income while managing longevity risk without traditional annuity guarantees? Identifying viable design parameters and safeguards is crucial for assessing whether such products can scale responsibly and complement existing pension and insurance systems.

Broader Implications for Bitcoin

Institutional Risk Culture and Monetary Regime Change

Institutional reluctance to consider Bitcoin reveals how risk cultures built for a relatively stable fiat era can struggle to recognize deeper regime shifts until losses become undeniable. Ongoing inflation, debt overhangs, and political pressure from beneficiaries are likely to push trustees and boards to treat monetary quality as a first-order risk variable rather than a background assumption. As that shift occurs, Bitcoin will increasingly be evaluated as a tool for monetary resilience within diversified portfolios, not merely as a speculative outlier.

Parallel Savings and Reserve Infrastructures

The emergence of Bitcoin-linked treasury strategies and retirement products points toward the gradual construction of parallel savings and reserve infrastructures alongside legacy systems. If these parallel rails demonstrate operational robustness, legal clarity, and predictable taxation, they can reduce dependence on purely fiat-denominated instruments across both households and institutions. This development would alter how capital is priced, how funding gaps are managed, and how investors weigh trade-offs between state-backed promises and hard-money assets over multi-decade horizons.

Evolution of Fiduciary Duty and Regulatory Benchmarks

As evidence accumulates that ignoring monetary debasement harms beneficiaries in real terms, interpretations of fiduciary duty may expand to include explicit consideration of Bitcoin as a potential hedge or diversifier. Regulators and standard setters will face pressure to articulate when and how Bitcoin can be integrated into prudent portfolio construction without being either privileged or stigmatized relative to other volatile assets. This evolution in benchmarks and guidance could reshape consultant advice, due-diligence templates, and compliance norms that currently steer institutional portfolios away from regime-level monetary questions.

Redesign of Retirement Security Around Hard-Money Assets

Bitcoin-denominated tontines and related pooled-income structures suggest a future in which retirement security is less tightly coupled to wage-linked defined benefits or purely financialized annuities. If such products reach scale, retirees could hold a portion of their lifetime savings in a hard-money asset while sharing longevity risk with peers, diversifying away from the fiscal and political vulnerabilities of state-backed schemes. This reconfiguration would force policymakers, insurers, and asset managers to rethink how tax incentives, prudential regulation, and disclosure rules align with a world where retirement income increasingly draws on decentralized monetary bases.

Central Bank Adaptation and Competitive Reserve Strategies

Small pilots such as the Czech National Bank’s Bitcoin and stablecoin experiment hint at how central banks might cautiously incorporate digital hard assets into their analytical and operational toolkits. Over time, competitive dynamics among jurisdictions could encourage some monetary authorities to adopt limited Bitcoin reserve positions or collateral frameworks as a signal of discipline and openness to innovation. Such moves would legitimize Bitcoin’s role within the global monetary hierarchy and intensify debates over capital controls, exchange-rate management, and the appropriate balance between national monetary sovereignty and market-driven reserve choices.