According to Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten, despite a growing institutional presence in the cryptocurrency market, retail sentiment is as essential as it was when Wall Street was largely on the sidelines.

“It’s still the case. It’s important to remember that it’s not like BlackRock owns Bitcoin and Fidelity owns Bitcoin. It’s mostly a group of retail accounts that actually buy it,” Klippsten he said during an interview with Cointelegraph posted on YouTube on Tuesday.

Cory Klippsten spoke to Cointelegraph at BitcoinVegas 2026. Source: Cointelegraph

“You know they buy it in a package. But they still have to get real supply and store it. And that comes out of supply. So, you know, that’s still real demand for ETFs,” Klippsten said, adding:

“There are certain paper products and futures and things like that that are weird and take some time to work through the system. There’s something about the supply being greater in certain ways. But ultimately, if you want real Bitcoin on-chain, the fact that you can get it is what makes Bitcoin special.”

Since May 15, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen total net outflows of $2.90 billion, According to according to Farside data, while Bitcoin fell by about 9.5% over the same period. At the time of publication, the price of Bitcoin is $73,630, According to to CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin is down 2.87% in the last 30 days. (CoinMarketCap)

Meanwhile, sentiment towards the cryptocurrency market in 2026 was volatile. Crypto fear and greed Indexwhich measures overall cryptocurrency market sentiment, posted an “Extreme Fear” score of 23 on Friday, signaling that investors are cautious about the cryptocurrency market.

Bitcoin price predictions for 2026: little chance

Klippsten said his forecast for Bitcoin hitting a up-to-date record high in 2026 is currently low.

Related: Bitcoin drops out of the top 10 assets in the world when market capitalization drops below $1,500. dollars

He said he thinks there’s about a 50% chance we’ll see a up-to-date all-time high this year, while at the beginning of this year Bitcoin was still trading around $95,000, but considering it’s dropped about 23% since then, its chances have dropped.

“I thought there was probably about a 50% chance that we’d see a new all-time high this year. Given that we’re still in the 70s and, you know, we’ve gone all the way down to the 60s, I’d probably cut it down to about a 20 or 25% chance that we’d get a new one.” [high]- he said.

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