Morgan Stanley’s institutional fund reveals exposure to BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF

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Morgan Stanley reported a 2.1% exposure to BlackRock’s Bitcoin (BTC) IBIT exchange-traded fund in its Institutional Fund. On a September 4th SUBMISSION To the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the asset manager reported net assets of more than $10 million, which represents approximately $211,000 in IBIT shares.

In addition, the Morgan Stanley fund also reported a 4% allocation to MicroStrategy, which holds 226,500 BTC in treasury. Both IBIT and MicroStrategy Investments are among the fund’s top ten holdings.

The Institutional Fund is one of the portfolios managed by Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global. According to him websiteCounterpoint Global “seeks to make long-term investments in unique companies whose market value can increase significantly due to fundamentals.”

Thus, given the 2% allocation in IBIT shares out of 216 holdings of the Institutional Fund, it can be said that the Counterpoint Global team sees value in Bitcoin for the long term.

The biggest asset managers are bullish on Bitcoin

Morgan Stanley is the sixth largest asset manager in the world with over $1.5 trillion in assets under management (AUM) reported in April.

On August 2, the asset manager gave the green light for its 15,000 advisors to recommend allocations to US-traded spot Bitcoin ETFs, starting with BlackRock’s IBIT and Fidelity’s FBTC.

Later that month, the firm reported owning nearly $187 million in IBIT stock in a 13F filing with the SEC.

Notably, five of the world’s six largest asset managers are somewhat related to Bitcoin. BlackRock is the asset manager behind IBIT, which is the largest Bitcoin ETF by inflows, approaching more than $21 billion according to Farside Investors. DATA.

Fidelity is the fourth largest asset manager by AUM, holding $4.9 trillion. The company is also behind Bitcoin ETF FBTC, which has about $9.7 billion in inflows and is the second largest crypto ETF.

State Street done a partnership with Galaxy Digital in July to add Bitcoin to its investment strategies. Meanwhile, UBS is an authorized participant in BlackRock’s IBIT.

The only major asset manager of the group left out is Vanguard, which refused to recognize the crypto’s investment case and said it would not offer Bitcoin ETFs to its clients.

Despite these remarks, Vanguard’s new CEO Salim Ramji was the head of the iShares division at BlackRock and was directly involved in formulating IBIT.

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