Morgan Stanley, one of the major investment banks in the United States, has allegedly increased its holdings in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) shares since April.
According to the bank’s most recent statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), its Morgan Stanley Europe Opportunity Fund, which invests in “known and emerging” European companies and has a total asset value of $371 million, held 58,116 shares of the GBTC as of 31 July.
At the time of publication, the price of GBTC was $34.18, resulting in the bank’s total BTC exposure exceeding $2 million. Morgan Stanley stated in its 27 September statement that the shares were valued at $2.4 million. Earlier this year, the fund said that it had 28,289 shares, valued at approximately $1.3 million at the time.
While the European Fund’s exposure to cryptocurrency has expanded, the investment bank also holds significant amounts of GBTC across a variety of institutional portfolios.
The Morgan Stanley Insight Fund is the most well-known of these, with a stated holding of 928,051 shares. At the time of writing, this totaled more than $31.7 million.
Throughout the current year, the $4 trillion asset management has steadily increased its exposure to cryptocurrency. The bank stated in April that it would introduce Bitcoin exposure to 12 of its institutional funds via Grayscale and cash-settled futures. These funds collectively own around 6.5 million GBTC shares.
JP Morgan is a market leader in meeting customer demand for BTC exposure, as well as the second-largest holder of GBTC shares. Cathie Wood’s ARK investment, on the other hand, remains in top place, with the firm reporting the acquisition of almost 450,000 GBTC shares in two separate purchases in July.
This increased Ark Invest’s and its institutional funds’ total GBTC ownership to more than 8.3 million shares or 0.69 percent of its overall portfolio.
JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock are further large financial firms with significant interests. These substantial investments by America’s largest banks are only indicative of growing institutional interest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Additionally, GBTC is frequently chosen as the principal location for institutions to store their crypto-currency.
To take things a step further, the corporation has stated that it is “100% committed” to converting GBTC into an ETF. The much-anticipated Bitcoin ETF is expected to significantly increase institutional demand and inflows.
Grayscale may have a good shot at realizing its ETF ambition when the time comes, given it was the first American company to launch a publicly traded Bitcoin fund and the only one to transform a Bitcoin fund into an SEC-reporting company.
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