Morgan Stanley Discloses Around $190M Investment in Spot Bitcoin ETFs

• Morgan Stanley revealed holding over 5.5 million shares, or $187.79 million in IBIT.
• Most recent disclosure revealed a holding of around $148,000 in the GBTC.

According to Morgan Stanley’s 13F filing with the US SEC, the global investment and financial services giant disclosed a sizable holding in BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund on Wednesday.

In the iShares Bitcoin Trust (ticker: IBIT), Morgan Stanley revealed holding over 5.5 million shares, or $187.79 million, as of June 30. The investment bank would then be one of the ETF’s top five shareholders. Following the first quarter’s disclosure of an allocation of $2.3 million, the bank revealed that it held 26,222 shares of the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ticker: ARKB) with a value of around $1.57 million.

Worth noting is that Morgan Stanley’s most recent disclosure revealed a holding of around $148,000 in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (ticker: GBTC). This represents an almost complete liquidation of the $269.9 million holding it displayed in the prior quarter.

Rising Institutional Interest

Institutional investors that are in charge of equity assets worth more than $100 million are required by law to submit a 13F report to the SEC every three months. While the filings do not reveal any short positions, they do reveal the manager’s stock holdings at the end of each quarter.

IBIT manages $20 billion in assets, making it the biggest spot Bitcoin ETF in terms of market capitalization. Goldman Sachs, another behemoth in the banking industry, disclosed its $238.6 million stake in the fund on Tuesday, revealing that it owned 6.9 million shares.

By the conclusion of the second quarter, Morgan Stanley had around $190 million worth of spot Bitcoin ETFs. The price of Bitcoin has rebounded after falling under $50k during the August 5 market crash. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $59,595, up 0.30% in the last 24 hours as per data from CMC.

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