Meet the 60 small firms nibbling at BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF: ‘A lot of fish’

BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF has seen $15 billion pour into it since January.
But many holders are small and use Bitcoin as “hot sauce” to spice up their portfolios.

Quarterly statements from funds, banks, and other institutions have begun to roll in, revealing for the first time who and how many shares are owned by clients of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, or IBIT.

Around 60 entities account for a “tiny” 0.4% of the fund’s total shares outstanding, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas wrote in a post on X on Thursday. He cited the firms’ quarterly statements, or 13Fs, of their holdings for the data.

“Shows that most of the bites are nibbles but there are a lot of fish,” Balchunas said.

The filings speak to the appeal among a wide swathe of new investors as the ETFs act as a vehicle for crypto to reach the mainstream. Entities include small regional banks, registered investment advisors, holding companies for financial-services firms and wealth managers.

Bitcoin is not a massive chunk of these firms’ strategies. Instead, it’s more like “hot sauce” on top of wider portfolios. The largest helping comes from Pittsburgh-based registered investment company Quattro Advisors at $19 million, Balchunas said.

Of the 60 entities, roughly two-thirds own less than $1 million worth of IBIT shares, according to a Bloomberg Terminal screenshot shared by Balchunas.

Quattro’s IBIT purchase, meanwhile, accounts for its third-largest holding of any asset at roughly 5%, according to a screenshot provided by Balchunas.

Form 13F is a quarterly filing by institutional investment managers controlling over $100 million in assets, as required by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, detailing all managed equity assets.

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The analyst said the results aligned with expectations that BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF is being used to complement a strategy known as 60/40 investing, which allocates 60% of a given portfolio to stocks and a further 40% to bonds, Balchunas said.

“People [are] just gonna add a little bit,” Balchunas tweeted.

BlackRock launched IBIT on January 11, a day after the SEC approved spot Bitcoin ETFs. It has been one of the fastest-growing ETFs ever, surpassing $15 billion in assets last week.

Sebastian Sinclair is a markets correspondent for DL News. Have a tip? Contact Seb at sebastian@dlnews.com.