Major institutions invest in BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF: Bloomberg analyst

Bloomberg exchange-traded fund (ETF) analyst Eric Balchunas shared on an April 16 X post 30 entities that hold shares of BlackRock’s IBIT spot Bitcoin ETF. The list includes banks from different countries, such as Brazil, the UK, and Liechtenstein, and traditional institution firms with billions of dollars under management.

Updated look at the holders of $IBIT, there's about 30 of them so far (mostly funds and advisors) accounting for 0.2% of shares out which means this is tippy tip of iceberg (context: BITO has 42% of shares reported via 13F). Also shows lot of "nibbling" going on as evidenced by… pic.twitter.com/X7AMCw5CR3

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) April 16, 2024

According to Balchunas, the institutions in the image represent only 0.2% of IBIT’s shares. Moreover, the low percentage of the Bitcoin (BTC) ETF in the entities’ portfolios also shows a “nibbling” trend by the firms.

Excepting Grayscale’s GBTC, BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF holds the largest amount of BTC of the exchange-traded funds traded in the US, with over 272,000 BTC. The amount is equivalent to $16.7 billion. The latest Bitcoin acquisitions by the IBIT fund happened yesterday, with 1,161.78 BTC added to its address via two different transactions.

A recent report by Glassnode and Coinbase Institutional revealed that US-traded spot Bitcoin ETFs held nearly $60 billion in assets as of March 31. This is more than double the initial amount held by those funds in January when asset management firms received the green light from the Securities and Exchange Commission to offer this product to the public.