The Emerald Finance & Banking Innovation Fund is the latest to disclose they hold bitcoin through the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC).
This is a fund that invests in “companies principally engaged in banking or financial services, and collective investment vehicles such as mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that invest in companies that are principally engaged in banking and financial services.”
Bitcoin therefore might seem a bit out of place since it is not a bank, but it is related to financial services in facilitating global commerce and payments, so the fund holds $2.6 million worth of GBTC.
Morgan Stanley also revealed they bought $3.6 million worth of GBTC for their Morgan Stanley Europe Opportunity Fund.
As you might guess, this fund invests in European companies yet BTC has found its way presumably as a diversifier with it amounting to about 1% of the fund’s total assets.
The Saba Capital Income & Opportunities Fund went a bit under the radar in it too disclosing they have $1.3 million worth of GBTC.
This is an even more diversified fund with the bitcoin addition indicating the asset might become a trend in passive funds.
Not least because one of the biggest investment manager, BlackRock, stated they can add bitcoin to their Global Allocation Fund, this being the most diversified fund usually as they invest in all global assets.
They have not yet bought bitcoin as far as we are aware, and there may well be other passive funds that hold bitcoin, but have not come to our attention.
These names are big however, even if the figures are a bit small so far, and it being less than a handful suggests we are just at the very beginning of the addition of this new asset to passive funds.
At scale, that translates to basically every investor having exposure to bitcoin, from politicians and billionaires to street cleaners if they have a pension.
Which means we are probably past the tipping point where investors are concerned as this asset – for now it is just bitcoin – may be going mainstream in a way that investors don’t necessarily even know they have bitcoin.
