In a FireHustle video, the host questions Kevin O’Leary’s decision to reduce his reported altcoin exposure, arguing that institutional data does not support a blanket dismissal of assets such as Hedera, Solana and Avalanche. O’Leary has reportedly cut his crypto allocation from 24% to 14% and now holds only Bitcoin and Ethereum, referring to the rest as “poopoo coins.”

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The core issue, the host argues, is not whether a billionaire investor sold, but whether large professional investors have actually abandoned the same tokens. On that point, the video suggests a more mixed picture than O’Leary’s comments imply.

Institutions are narrowing altcoin exposure, not abandoning it

O’Leary’s view is based on index-provider data showing that roughly 97% of crypto’s aggregate returns have come from Bitcoin and Ethereum. From that perspective, index funds, sovereign wealth funds and other major allocators have little reason to hold a broad basket of smaller tokens, especially given compliance burdens and Bitcoin’s outsized influence on the wider market.

The video says Wintermute’s first-half data partially supports that argument. According to the figures cited, institutional participants increased the number of tokens they were willing to trade by only 24% over two years, compared with 76% for retail traders. Separate Kaiko data cited by the host showed the 10 largest altcoins increasing their share of total altcoin trading volume from 50% to 63%.

That shift points to a more selective market rather than a return to the broad, indiscriminate altcoin rallies seen in earlier cycles. Wintermute’s OTC desk data also showed institutions accounting for a record 72% of spot-trading activity across tokens, not only Bitcoin and Ethereum. For readers trying to gauge whether institutional capital is present at all, the answer appears to be yes — just in a narrower set of names and with more emphasis on regulated access points.

HBAR, SOL and AVAX still show regulated-fund exposure

Fire Hustle proposes a simple measure: compare the total net assets held in regulated funds linked to a token with that token’s total market capitalization. The idea is to show how much of a network is represented in professional investment products.

Using SosoValue figures cited in the YouTube video, Ethereum funds held assets equal to 4.55% of ETH’s market cap, while Bitcoin stood at 6%. Solana was estimated at about 2%, Hedera at 1.6% and Avalanche at just over 1%.

The HBAR figure was attributed to a single product, described in the video as the Canary HBAR ETF, which makes it a narrower institutional signal than it may first appear. Even so, the host argues that the presence of regulated fund capital in all three assets challenges the idea that institutions have written them off entirely.

That distinction matters because product availability often shapes who can gain exposure and how. Fund ownership can change quickly, and the existence of a product is not a guarantee of sustained demand. Still, the data suggests O’Leary’s Bitcoin-and-Ethereum-only approach is a portfolio constraint rather than a definitive judgment on every major altcoin.

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