With additional analysis from Adrian Fritz
In 1976, Vanguard launched the first index fund available to individual investors. It aimed to raise $150 million, raised $11.3 million, and was nicknamed “Bogle’s Folly”.1 Today, passive funds hold about 55% of US fund assets, $19.4 trillion at year-end 2025.2
Owning the market was not a new idea. What changed was the wrapper: a low-cost, standardized product that gave individual investors a strategy previously limited to institutions.3 The product came first, and the capital followed.
Crypto has already lived through its stock-picking era
Until 2016, crypto was essentially Bitcoin, with more than 80% of the market. The 2017 boom in new token issuance cut that share to 37% by January 2018….
