While most retail attention stays fixed on price charts, SWIFT has begun live testing of distributed ledger technology for a portion of the roughly $150 trillion it processes annually, and Hedera’s HBAR is one of the networks involved in those trials.
What the on-chain data shows
Wallets holding 10 million or more HBAR have grown substantially since August 2024, and wallets holding 100 million or more have grown as well, though at a slower rate. That pattern, larger holders accumulating while daily active account counts have declined over the same period, looks more like strategic positioning by entities that don’t typically speculate than retail-driven buying. It’s worth noting on-chain wallet counts can be affected by exchange custody structures and don’t map perfectly to individual holders, so treat this as directional, not precise.
In August 2025, SWIFT began live trials incorporating HBAR alongside XRP for cross-border payment testing, a step beyond the partnership-announcement stage many crypto projects never get past. Separately, Grayscale replaced Polkadot with HBAR in one of its digital asset funds, and HBAR has since been included in more than two dozen digital asset indexes and over a dozen exchange-traded products, with additional ETF filings pending SEC review.
Why institutions look at HBAR specifically
The technical case institutions point to includes high throughput (Hedera has cited figures well above what Ethereum’s base layer handles), fast finality, and a governing council that includes companies like Google, IBM, and Boeing rather than an anonymous developer team. Whether that governance structure is a net positive is a matter of some debate in the broader crypto community, since it trades some decentralization for institutional-grade accountability, but it’s clearly part of the appeal for regulated institutions evaluating counterparty risk.
Hedera’s network nodes are also distributed across most continents, and the list of organizations building on or piloting with the network includes Visa on payments infrastructure and the Federal Reserve‘s FedNow initiative on settlement-related work, alongside CBDC testing from the Reserve Bank of Australia.
What this means, and what it doesn’t
None of this is a price prediction. Institutional pilots and index inclusion are meaningful signals of infrastructure credibility, but they don’t guarantee adoption converts into demand for the token at any particular price or timeline, and pilots sometimes stall or get discontinued without much notice. What’s genuinely notable is the gap between where retail attention has been (chasing short-term price action) and where institutional infrastructure testing has actually been happening. If you’re considering an allocation based on this kind of institutional-adoption thesis, verify the current state of any pilot or partnership directly rather than relying on secondhand summaries, since these programs evolve quickly.
Educational only, not tax, legal, or investment advice. Check primary sources and speak with a qualified professional before making financial decisions.
