Quarterly revenue expectations surge 268 times, how high is Galaxy Digital's position in the cryptocurrency stock boom?

Author: BlockBeats

Since the development of cryptocurrency OTC platforms, there have been two explosive points: the approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs in 2024, and the gradual introduction of frameworks (MiCA, VARA) in regions like the EU and Dubai, allowing over-the-counter trading to operate legally on a large scale, with institutions needing to quickly procure underlying assets. By 2025, following the concept of "cryptocurrency capital" proposed by former U.S. President Trump, the overall trend of traditional finance has made a 360-degree turn. After the introduction of various new cryptocurrency policies, Bitcoin reached new highs and Ethereum surged in early 2025, leading to a boom in institutional asset allocation and explosive growth in OTC platform trading.

Generally speaking, OTC trading matches buyers and sellers directly. They provide a single quote, so there is no slippage or bidding, and transfers are completed through custodial wallets and institutional accounts. Because orders never touch the public limit book, the market never sees your hand. As a dark pool of the "cryptocurrency market," OTC institutions do not disclose the specific trading details of their users, but unlike traditional finance, we can find clues from on-chain data.

In July 2025, one of the largest Bitcoin OTC trades to date occurred, with a total of 80,000 BTC changing hands for about $9 billion, yet the public market remained almost unaffected. The orchestrator behind this was Galaxy Digital, the most favored "crypto OTC institution" on Wall Street today, which boosted its Q2 revenue by 268 times year-on-year.

What role did OTC platforms play in this wave of compliance? How did Galaxy Digital leverage its resources to maneuver in the cryptocurrency stock trading? BlockBeats conducted a series of studies on this topic.

The Third Major Liquidity Pillar in Crypto

With this wave of institutional enthusiasm, OTC platforms have seemingly become the "third major liquidity pillar" in the crypto market, following centralized exchanges (CEX) and decentralized exchanges (DEX). For large amounts of capital, CEX/DEX struggle to directly accommodate buy orders in the hundreds of millions without causing severe volatility, thus OTC platforms play the role of "white gloves" for institutions, completing their positions or liquidations behind the scenes.

Throughout 2024, there was not a single month where OTC trading volume was lower than the same period last year, indicating that market participants are increasingly inclined to trade through private channels rather than betting openly in the market. The crypto industry has gradually transformed from a marginal speculation to an acceptable asset allocation option in their eyes, with Wall Street shifting from skeptics to participants. This growth further accelerated exponentially in 2025.

Finery Markets pointed out that an increasing number of traditional financial leaders have shifted from "watching" to "neutral or accepting," which is a significant reason for the surge in OTC trading volume. As more trades occur in dark pools, the apparent market volatility may be significantly smoothed. According to Finery Markets' report for Q4 2024, the overall trading volume on OTC platforms increased by 106% compared to the previous year, and in the first half of 2025, OTC spot volume grew by 112.6% year-on-year compared to the first half of 2024.

Notably, as the compliance environment improves in Europe and the U.S., the Asian OTC market is also on the rise. Licensed OTC platforms in Hong Kong, as well as emerging platforms in the UAE and Southeast Asia, are attracting global large-scale liquidity. Meanwhile, some traditional block trading market makers like Flow Traders are also active in this space, using high-frequency and quantitative strategies to provide bilateral quotes for institutional clients in large crypto trades, improving execution efficiency and reducing impact costs. These factors collectively reinforce OTC's position as an invisible pool in the crypto market.

The Rising Star Galaxy Digital

Among the many OTC players, Galaxy Digital, founded by Mike Novogratz, is undoubtedly a star in this wave of institutional buying frenzy. Galaxy is a well-known crypto investment bank that also operates a high-reach OTC trading business, covering trading, investment, asset management, consulting, and mining. Its clients include publicly listed companies, hedge funds, and other top players. However, the main pillar of its profitability is OTC spot trading and investment. Backed by the founder's 20 years of Wall Street experience and the company's compliance shaping after going public, more and more institutional funds are pouring in, leading to astonishing large-scale trading events on Galaxy's platform, covering mainstream assets like ETH and BTC, as well as popular coins like SOL and BNB.

Epic 80,000 BTC Trade Smoothly Executed

As mentioned earlier, the OTC trade of 80,000 Bitcoins within four days, valued at $9 billion, set a record as one of the largest single trades in crypto history, with Galaxy Digital acting as the intermediary.

On July 25, Galaxy Digital announced that it was commissioned to complete this massive BTC sale for an early investor from the "Satoshi era." It was reported that this was part of the investor's estate planning, and Galaxy did not disclose the client's identity, only stating that the trade was a step in a broad wealth management strategy. Surprisingly, the clearing of these 80,000 BTC had almost no impact on the market. Starting from July 17, ancient addresses on-chain began moving, transferring Bitcoin to Galaxy Digital's OTC address within a few days, and the clearing of these 80,000 Bitcoins did not reflect in Bitcoin's price. Although a few days later, after Galaxy's announcement, the price briefly dropped nearly 4% and fell below the $115,000 mark, it quickly rebounded to about $117,300 within hours.

Analyst Jason Williams pointed out that this massive sell-off has been "fully absorbed" by the market, while another analyst, Joe Consorti, remarked, "80,000 Bitcoins (over $9 billion) sold at market price, and the BTC price barely moved." On one hand, this tests the current depth of the OTC market, as there were counterparties able to absorb such a large sell order shortly after the exchange match; on the other hand, it reflects the importance of "dark pool trading" in today's cryptocurrency space. In fact, according to the already public OTC address (bc1q0), depending on market sentiment, the total value of Bitcoin handled by Galaxy OTC Deck weekly reaches hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, and the reality may be even higher.

Preference for ETH by Crypto Stock Companies

In Q2 2025, multiple unusually large buy orders appeared on the Ethereum chain, attracting close attention from the community. Since July 9, 14 new wallet addresses have cumulatively purchased an astonishing 856,554 ETH through OTC platforms like Galaxy Digital or FalconX, valued at about $3.16 billion. These wallets had no history on-chain until they suddenly began accumulating large amounts of ETH through OTC channels, indicating that "big players are quietly increasing their ETH holdings."

On-chain analysis firm Arkham Intelligence pointed out that starting from late July, a newly created wallet address (0xdf0A…2EF3) accumulated approximately $300 million worth of ETH through Galaxy Digital's OTC trading desk in just three days. This address once held 79,461 ETH, costing about $300 million, and at the time's market value of approximately $282.5 million, it showed a paper loss of about $26 million (about an 8.7% drawdown). This indicates that the whale's average purchase price was relatively high, yet they continued to accumulate.

Just today, August 5, three new addresses acquired a total of 63,837 ETH through Galaxy and FalconX, valued at about $23.6 million. EyeOnChain disclosed some of these buyers' addresses, including 0x55CF…679, 0x8C6b…60, and 0x86F9…446. It is estimated that the cumulative buying intensity of these addresses reached tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, with one wallet holding over 110,000 ETH (valued at over $40 million).

Who exactly is behind this buying? There are indications pointing to SharpLink Gaming, which has publicly claimed since June 2025 to emulate MicroStrategy's strategy by continuously increasing its Ethereum holdings as a primary treasury asset. According to its announcements and on-chain data, SharpLink has aggressively purchased nearly 500,000 ETH through ATM financing and OTC trading from June to the end of July. As of July 27, the company held 438,190 ETH, a 21% increase from a week prior, with over 77,000 ETH purchased in a single week at an average price of about $3,756.

By the end of July, SharpLink had cumulatively purchased about 449,000 ETH. Entering August, the company continued to accumulate, spending $43.09 million to buy 11,259 ETH on July 31, and again purchasing 18,680 ETH from Galaxy on August 4. Analysts estimate that SharpLink's total holdings have surpassed 499,000 ETH, with an average cost of about $3,064, currently valued at about $1.8 billion, yielding a paper profit of about $275 million. Such a large-scale Ethereum buying spree has been almost entirely completed through OTC desks like Galaxy and FalconX, with even the founder of Wintermute joking that "it's almost impossible to buy ETH at our OTC desk now because the whales have already cleared the supply. Besides the current second-largest ETH holder SharpLink, the largest holder, Bitmine, is also a deep partner of Galaxy."

Related address 0xCd9 has transferred over $800 million worth of ETH to SharpLink. $153 million worth of ETH from 0xdf0 and about $300 million from 0x286, among other addresses, are associated with both.

While we cannot trace the origins of such a dense accumulation of large OTC trades, this undercurrent is undoubtedly becoming a key force influencing ETH supply and demand. BlockBeats estimates that based on several major on-chain OTC addresses from Galaxy, OTC trading in ETH has reached $5.444 billion over the past 90 days, averaging about $1.8 billion in ETH processed monthly.

According to Arkham's public data from four OTC wallets: 0x335, 0x15, 0x46f, and 0xb9c.

Acting as Both Referee and Player, MicroStrategy's Drama Unfolds on BNB Chain

If Bitcoin and Ethereum were the protagonists of 2024, then BNB has also taken the stage for institutional layouts starting in the second half of 2025. In July, an unexpected piece of news emerged: CEA Industries, a Nasdaq-listed company (stock code VAPE, originally focused on agricultural temperature control and e-cigarettes), announced a complete transformation into a "BNB treasury company," planning to raise up to $1.25 billion through private placements and options to purchase BNB. This plan caused VAPE's stock price to soar 550% in a single day.

Even more noteworthy is that the mastermind behind VAPE's pivot to crypto is David Namdar, co-founder of Galaxy Digital. He will serve as the new CEO of VAPE, while Russell Read, a partner from 10X Capital and former Chief Investment Officer of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), will take on the role of CIO. Namdar stated that they will actively build BNB positions over the next 24 months using this funding, which could reach $500 million (with a maximum expansion to $1.25 billion), including purchases in the public market, strategic trades, and generating returns through staking and decentralized finance.

This means that BNB will welcome its first large-scale public market institutional buyer, and OTC channels will undoubtedly play a key role in this. Given the high concentration of BNB's issuance and circulation, with Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao reportedly controlling 71% of circulating BNB, absorbing hundreds of millions of BNB without causing severe market volatility can only rely on large OTC trades or protocol transfers. Galaxy Digital's extensive OTC network and liquidity resources will provide strong support for Namdar's "BNB version of the MicroStrategy initiative." As the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization globally, this move marks BNB's formal entry into the institutional asset allocation landscape.

Whether it's Coinbase's integrated trading platform focusing on custody, trading, and on-chain ecology, or Galaxy Digital's consulting + OTC trading facilitating crypto-stock relationships, or the rapid integration of traditional brokerages and trading platforms, various sectors in the cryptocurrency field are beginning to move towards compliance and a concentration of resources at the top. The recent launch of the Crypto Project may be a public indication of this significant trend, signaling the impending era of compliance dominance for institutions, while cryptocurrency OTC platforms, as "transparent dark pools," may occupy an even more important ecological position in the future.

Click to learn about job openings at ChainCatcher