What to know:
- Morgan Stanley raised its IBIT stake 23% to 16.5 million shares as its value fell 18%.
- MSBT held 6,563 BTC worth over $426M after adding 232.5 BTC in August, Arkham reported.
- Ethereum, Solana and Circle exposure rose as Coinbase and CleanSpark positions shrank.
Morgan Stanley raised its BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust holding by 23% in the second quarter, even as the position lost value. An Aug. 11 SEC filing listed 16.5 million IBIT shares worth about $549 million on June 30.
That share count stood roughly 3.04 million above the 13.4 million reported in March. Yet the position’s value fell nearly 18% from about $667 million as Bitcoin weakened during the quarter.
Morgan Stanley Expands Bitcoin Fund Exposure
The consolidated Form 13F covers multiple affiliated investment managers. Reports of such kind give a picture of eligible U.S. securities at the end of the quarter. Short positions are not disclosed in the report, and not all transactions and prices are disclosed.
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The report also does not show that all the securities belong to Morgan Stanley. Some of the positions may be the securities of clients being managed by entities covered in the report.
Additionally, the disclosure includes 2.57 million shares of Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust with the market value of $43.3 million. It is important to mention that MSBT was launched during the reporting period.
MSBT started trading on the NYSE Arca on April 8. The yearly fee of sponsorship was 0.14%. The trust holds bitcoin and tracks its performance minus the costs and liabilities.
Initially, the fee was smaller compared to 0.25% offered by BlackRock’s IBIT and Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund. The fee was one basis point smaller than that of Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust, which was 0.15%.
Even with its own product, the report demonstrated significantly higher involvement with IBIT. This position of BlackRock was more than 12 times bigger than the reported value of the position of MSBT.
According to Arkham, on Aug. 8 MSBT purchased 232.5 BTC for $15.05 million, and its balance increased to 6,563 BTC. The coins were worth more than $426 million at the time of purchase.
This fund balance is independent of the 13F position. All of the Bitcoin stored by MSBT are the backings for its outstanding shares. Only the shares allocated to the covered managers are reported.
Ethereum, Solana, and Circle Holdings Expand
Exposure to Ethereum has been via two funds. The position in iShares Ethereum Trust increased by about 202% to 4.6 million shares. The Grayscale Ethereum Staking Mini ETF investment increased by around 26% to 5.1 million shares.
The first two investments in Solana were recorded in the report. These included an investment of $4.25 million in Grayscale’s Solana Staking ETF. Another investment of $2.26 million was made in the Fidelity Solana Fund.
Circle Internet Group had one of the most significant increases related to cryptocurrencies. The reported investment increased from 1.46 million shares to 8.32 million shares.
A decrease in other holdings was also seen. The document shows a reduction of almost 550,000 shares of Coinbase stock. In addition, there was a reduction in over 3.1 million shares of CleanSpark stock.
The form does not show any position in Bitfarms despite 8 million shares being held in March. Besides, the company made changes outside the document in July. This includes extending crypto trading to eligible E*TRADE customers via Zerohash. This is done with a transaction fee of 0.50%.
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