Various funds, banks and other institutions began publishing 13F reports for the past quarter, giving us our first look at client statistics for iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), a fund owned by BlackRock.
According to the data obtained, 60 organizations own only 0.4% of the fund's total shares outstanding.. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas reported this on social network X, which is banned in Russia, and cited data from recent quarterly reports filed on Form 13F.
It can be seen that most of the holders are small fish, but there are a lot of these fish,” Balchunas said.
The figures in the reports indicate the attractiveness of the product among a large number of new investors, since ETFs act as a tool for the penetration of cryptocurrency into mainstream financial flows. Bitcoin ETF clients include small regional banks, registered investment advisers, holding companies of financial services firms, and private wealth management firms.
Bitcoin is far from the main place in the strategy of these firms. As Balciunas puts it, it's more like a «hot sauce» served as an addition to the main portfolio. The largest portion of this “sauce” worth $19 million is from the American investment company Quattro Advisors, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Of the 60 companies, about two-thirds hold shares in the IBIT fund worth less than $1 million, according to Bloomberg data shared by the analyst.
The analyst also noted that the share of IBIT shares in Quattro's portfolio is 5%, which corresponds to the third place among the company's assets.
Form 13F is a quarterly report filed by institutional investment management companies that control more than $100 million in assets, as required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Bitcoin ETF Issuer Ticker AUM Price 1 Grayscale GBTC $19.47 B $57.16 2 Blackrock IBIT $17.28 B $36.58 3 Fidelity FBTC $9.77 B $56.15 4 Ark/21 Shares ARKB $2.77 B $64.24 5 Bitwise BITB $1.21 B $34.99 6 VanEck HODL 5.07 M $72.66 7 Valkyrie BRRR $502.21 M $18.21 8 Invesco/Galaxy BTCO $385.79 M $64.19 9 Franklin Templeton EZBC $317.31 M $37.23 10 WisdomTree BTCW $77.73 M $68.20
The analyst said the results matched expectations that BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF would be used to complement a 60/40 investment strategy that allocates 60% of the portfolio to stocks and the remaining 40% to bonds.
People are just adding it a little at a time to their portfolios,” Balchunas said.
BlackRock launched the IBIT fund on January 11, the day after the SEC approved spot Bitcoin ETFs. It is one of the fastest-growing ETFs ever, surpassing $15 billion in assets last week.