Citrini's encrypted basket—no BTC and no ETH
Before the drop, Citrini Research—the company famous for issuing that AI final daily report in the (2028 Global Intelligence Crisis)—
They released new writing (Breaking The Wall), discussing Agentic AI × crypto × traditional finance, and in the main text they revealed their crypto holdings and weights.
❚ Crypto token basket—three main lines account for 92%
15 token weights from 10% to 3% look scattered, but in fact they follow three theme lines
1/ Derivatives: one line makes up 39%
- Derive ( $DRV ) 10%
- Lighter ( $LIT ) 10%
- Hyperliquid ($HYPE ) 7%
- Aerodrome ($AERO ) 7%
- Backpack ( $BP ) 5%
Two new-generation players, DRV and LIT, are given the maximum allocation of 10% each—both above the established leader HYPE
Backpack also gets 5%. I previously wrote about this project as one with “the doors welded shut”—institutions have noticed it too
2/ Yield and staking make up 27%
- Ether fi ( $ETHFI ) 10%
- Ethena ( $ENA ) 9%
- Maple (SYRUP) 5%
- Pendle (PENDLE) 3%
LSTs + synthetic stablecoins + fixed income + tokenized Treasuries: a full-stack allocation to “on-chain yield,” from source to application
This is the narrative institutions know best, and it maps directly onto how they allocate by duration in traditional finance
3/ Blue chips and infrastructure account for 26%
- Aave (AAVE) 9%
- Solana (SOL) 8%
- Chainlink (LINK) 5%
- Uniswap (UNI) 4%
The rest: LayerZero (ZRO) at 5% for cross-chain, and Ondo (ONDO) at 3% for RWA
❚ Four counterintuitive signals in the portfolio
1/ Not a single BTC or ETH
The basket is called “Crypto Tokens,” but it completely skips the market benchmarks
The message is clear: in Citrini’s framework, BTC and ETH are Beta. This basket is all about Alpha. They’re managed separately
2/ UNI gets just 4%
Uniswap, a longtime KOL favorite, is just a starter position in institutional eyes
One possible reason: Robinhood Chain is already capturing nearly half of Uniswap’s protocol fees, but it hasn’t yet integrated the v2 and v3 burn mechanisms. It will take time for the UNIfication narrative to translate into value
3/ They’re willing to give new leaders a bigger allocation than established ones
DRV at 10% and LIT at 10% both outweigh HYPE at 7%
Institutions believe the Perp DEX sector hasn’t settled yet, and later entrants still have a chance to overtake the leaders. They’re not blindly deferential to current market caps—a completely different approach from retail investors chasing the biggest names
4/ In crypto’s public markets, it’s all about regulated infrastructure
- Securitize (SECZ) 20%
- Circle (CRCL) 18%
- Coinbase (COIN) 18%
- Bitwise Hyperliquid ETF (BHYP) 14%
- Robinhood (HOOD) 14%
- Bullish (BLSH) 7%
- Figure Technology (FIGR) 5%
- BlackRock (BLK) 2%
- WisdomTree (WT) 2%
Not a single MSTR, not a single BMNR, and not a single mining stock
To Citrini, “crypto stocks” aren’t leveraged proxies for BTC—they’re “next-generation financial infrastructure”
Securitize ranks first at 20%. That’s a hefty allocation, placing the RWA issuance layer above Circle and Coinbase
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❚ Retail investors, take a page from this playbook
The greatest value of an institutional basket isn’t telling you what to buy; it’s showing you how they group things
The backbone of this basket comes down to one simple idea
“Cash flow + users + auditability” is what Citrini sees as the next major crypto theme
- The derivatives sector has the strongest cash flows, with the largest allocation at 39%
- Yield-bearing staking assets have genuine duration demand, with the largest allocation at 27%
- Regulated infrastructure offers traditional capital an entry point; the public-market basket is entirely made up of these plays
As for meme coins, AI agent coins, and L2 airdrop coins, Citrini didn’t include a single one
It’s not that they don’t understand it—they understand it and don’t think it’s worth allocating to
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Which allocation in this basket do you find most counterintuitive?