Overview
- Tudor Investment increased its direct holding in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust to 688,529 shares and cut reported call-option equivalents by about 85%, according to quarter‑end positions disclosed in filings dated Aug. 14.
- Two Abu Dhabi funds, Mubadala and the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, kept a combined 22.94 million IBIT shares unchanged and recorded about a $118 million mark‑to‑market loss as Bitcoin fell from its May intra‑quarter peak.
- Harvard Management Company paused two quarters of selling and held 3,044,612 IBIT shares at June 30, keeping its dollar exposure lower only because the Bitcoin price fell rather than because it sold shares.
- Other large institutions showed a mixed stance: JPMorgan raised its IBIT stake to roughly 10.4 million shares, Morgan Stanley trimmed its reported holding to about 16.5 million, and UBS and banks reported larger option and share positions in varying directions.
- Form 13F rules require options to be reported as underlying‑share equivalents and give only quarter‑end snapshots, so changes in share counts or dollar values can reflect price moves, expirations or aggregated client accounts rather than clear directional bets, and IBIT’s near‑50% share of U.S. spot‑ETF assets magnifies the market impact of these shifts.