“The institutions haven't generally been concerned about the hacks. … If you look at the 10 largest hacks in Bitcoin's history and look at the 30-day return after that, in five cases, Bitcoin is up. In five cases, Bitcoin is down.”

Unchained · Crypto & Web3 · November 2026

Context

Shin had opened with the $6.3 billion Binance theft and asked what institutions are saying about this year's string of hacks. Hougan said they mostly hold Bitcoin through ETFs and institutional cold storage, which has not been affected.

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Transcript

Unchained Around 12:47 into the episode

Matt Hougan

…anything, politics is moving towards a more economic populism orientation, which means probably yet more spending and probably to get that done, yet less tax revenue on whole. So I don't think the deficits are going anywhere. I think the debasement trade will be back in sort of full force in 2027.

Laura Shin

…this endless number of hacks this year. And it seems like they're coming from all directions. It's like North Korea, the AI thing, then there's these quantum scares that have been happening. So what have institutions been asking you when it comes to this issue? And how are you responding to them?

Matt Hougan

Yeah, you know, the interesting thing about that is the institutions haven't generally been concerned about the hacks. I know that is surprising to hear, but in underwriting crypto, they've underwritten the fact that we've had these hacks before, that it's part of the ecosystem, but it's not part of their ecosystem, right? They are focused primarily on ETFs or institutional custodians with true cold storage. The track record there has been exceptional. So somewhat surprisingly, these hacks haven't come up in a…

Laura Shin

Oh, wow. That is so fascinating because I would have thought that they would view some of that as an existential threat or, you know, yeah, I would have thought that they would be entering that into their calculations. Well, because you do talk to so many institutions and you have done so for…

Matt Hougan

Yeah, they've really changed a lot. Actually, there's been a remarkable change of tone, even in the last three or four months. So I would say that if we went, if we had this conversation five years ago or eight years ago, we would have been focused on family offices, which are really individual…

Laura Shin

Wow, that's so interesting. And why is it that you think this last group is finally coming online now?

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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