Gemini and Glassnode report: digital assets attract new capital flows in 2024

According to the report conducted by Gemini and Glassnode, digital assets have recorded large capital inflows in the last two years.

Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini and on-chain research firm Glassnode have jointly released their 2025 report titled "Charting The Tides." The report highlights a shift in capital flows and new trends emerging in the crypto market.

According to the report, digital assets have seen large capital inflows over the past two years, with high-cap cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH, and SOL experiencing price rebounds driven by both institutional and retail demand.

Among these assets, Bitcoin has received the highest inflows, as indicated by the "Realized Cap" metric, which tracks net money flows to evaluate investor behavior and market sentiment. It is calculated by summing the value of each coin based on the price at which it was last purchased.

Since January 2023, the Realized Cap on Bitcoin has increased from $381 billion to $843 billion, marking a 121% rise. In comparison, Solana has seen a more modest capitalization increase, rising from $21 to $83 billion despite a higher percentage gain of 295%.

Meanwhile, Ethereum has seen a smaller increase in capitalization, rising from $176 to $256 billion for a growth of 45%. From this perspective, Solana emerges as one of the fastest-growing digital asset ecosystems, outperforming the top 2 digital assets in the market on 344 out of 727 open market days.

However, Bitcoin still boasts the largest overall share of realized capital, amounting to 70.6%, followed by Ethereum at 22.4% and Solana at 6.9%.

The report also notes a shift in the focus of various market players during the last bull cycle, with retail investors coming back into the spotlight from Q2 2024 onwards, following a strong institutional push in the earlier stages of the bull.

To evaluate this handover, Gemini and Glassnode isolated the Realized Cap values for BTC, ETH, and SOL, focusing on the capital held by wallets active from 1 to 7 days.

This approach yields the "Realized Cap by Age" indicator, which measures the longevity of new capital flows in the market. The metric serves to understand the distribution of network wealth among different age brackets, ranging from the hot supply (coins that have moved recently) to the cold supply (older, more dormant coins).

According to the findings for Bitcoin, addresses from 1 to 7 days surged towards the end of the year, coinciding with the breakout of $100,000. In this context, retail investors contributed $99.6 billion, equivalent to 13.7% of the total wealth of the network.

In the last bull market cycle, retail investors contributed only $45.3 billion to Bitcoin, with a share of 22.5%. This suggests that there is still room for a bull ride for investors more inclined towards short-term speculation.

On Ethereum and Solana, the issue appears different: Gemini and Glassnode show how retail arrived at different moments of the market and with different strength.

In 2024, we witnessed a less pronounced increase in retail strength for Ethereum, given the asset's underperforming performance.

The local top of the Hot Realized Cap indicator for ETH, that is, the capital held by accounts that have been active in the last seven days, did not coincide with new price highs of the coin, unlike BTC and SOL.

The peak of the cycle brought inflows of only $11.6 billion, equal to 4.7% of the total wealth of the network. The coin remained below the May 2021 lows, suggesting a lack of appeal among retail users.

Solana, on the other hand, appeared much more interesting in the eyes of retail, who rushed to the SOL markets throughout almost all of 2024.

Also in this case, the Hot Realize Cap for the cryptocurrency did not coincide with the historical price high, although it came very close to the target. Short-term investors transferred wealth amounting to $15.8 billion, equivalent to 21% of the total capital.

These data suggest that SOL was the preferred asset in the bull market of this cycle, acquiring significant capital inflows.

As highlighted by Gemini and Glassnode, one of the factors that contributed to bringing greater retail activity to Solana was the memecoin mania.

For the first time in history, Solana surpassed Ethereum in terms of capital held by retail investors, precisely due to the strong interest in this type of high-risk asset.

This trend began in October 2023, marking a strong pivot point of reversal for the SOL/ETH ratio. From that moment on, SOL brutally outperformed ETH, leaving little room for speculative attention for the EVM network.

In a scenario like this, even on-chain activities shifted in favor of the Solana ecosystem. At the end of 2