Vanguard Leads Strategy, Gaining Bitcoin Exposure Clients Can’t Access

• Vanguard now holds more than 20 million Strategy shares, equivalent to roughly 8 percent of the company’s Class A stock, surpassing Capital Group as the leading shareholder.
• The position arises from passive index funds and gives Vanguard indirect exposure to Strategy’s multi-billion-dollar Bitcoin reserve, even though Vanguard bars direct Bitcoin ETF trading for its brokerage clients.

Strategy’s stock spiked alongside Bitcoin’s rally, lifting the analytics firm’s market capitalisation above $110 billion and increasing its free-float weighting in major US benchmarks.

Vanguard’s Total Stock Market Index Fund and 500 Index Fund automatically absorbed the larger weighting, raising the asset manager’s combined holding above Capital Group’s, which had previously led institutional ownership.

Passive Indexing Drives Change

According to recent regulatory filings compiled by Bloomberg, Vanguard controls just over 20 million Strategy Class A shares valued at about $9.3 billion at Monday’s close. The stake surpasses Capital Group’s 18.1 million-share position and marks Vanguard’s first appearance at the top of the company’s share register.

The holding is spread across flagship passive vehicles such as the $354 billion VTI ETF and a suite of institutional index mandates. Portfolio managers did not actively select MicroStrategy; the shares entered the funds automatically as the stock climbed into the top decile of the Russell 1000 and S&P 500 by market value, triggering purchases during quarterly rebalancing.

Strategy’s share price has risen more than 85 per cent year-to-date, outpacing Bitcoin’s 62 per cent advance as investors treat the software company as a leveraged proxy for the cryptocurrency. Vanguard founder Jack Bogle warned against investing in Bitcoin in 2017.

More recently, the firm blocked retail clients from buying newly approved US spot-Bitcoin ETFs, citing suitability concerns.

Indirect Bitcoin Exposure for a Reluctant Giant

Vanguard’s involuntary stake links the $10 trillion asset manager to a corporate treasury holding approximately 580,000 BTC, worth nearly $68 billion at current prices. Strategy chairman Michael Saylor has financed purchases through at-the-market share sales and bitcoin-backed preferred stock, arguing that the digital asset offers a superior long-term store of value compared with fiat cash.

Vanguard’s index funds will maintain or even increase their exposure if the Strategy continues to climb in benchmark rankings, trimming only if the stock underperforms or is removed from the indices.

The episode highlights how passive indexing can lead to unintended sector bets for even the most conservative asset managers. Vanguard’s Bitcoin exposure now exceeds that of several dedicated crypto-equity funds, despite the group’s policy of limiting direct crypto trading.

Whether the fund house revisits these restrictions remains unclear, yet its clients are already riding Bitcoin’s volatility through a software stock that has become a de facto Bitcoin holding company.