Goldman Sachs has disclosed a $418 million stake in spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), with exposure to a total of seven different of these products and the largest stake being in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust.
The investment bank’s quarterly filing revealed a particularly large position in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, valued at nearly $240 million, as well as exposure to Fidelity’s Bitcoin ETF worth $79.5 million, $56.1 million in shares of the Invesco Galaxy fund, $31.1 million in Grayscale’s GBTC, $8.3 million in Bitwise’s fund, and smaller takes in those offered by WisdomTree and Ark Invest.
The move underscores the burgeoning institutional appetite for Bitcoin exposure as the digital asset gains mainstream acceptance. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs’ head of digital assets lauded Bitcoin ETFs as an “astonishing success,” as Bitcoin Magazine reported.
The disclosure comes at a time in which Bitcoin miners have significantly reduced their BTC reserves over the last few months, to the point they’re not at their lowest level since January 2021, when the cryptocurrency’s price exploded from around $25,000 to over $69,000 before entering a downturn.
The total amount of Bitcoin held by miners has plummeted to a three-year low as a direct consequence of the recent halving upgrade in April, which halved the coinbase reward miners receive per new block found.
According to a report from Bloomberg citing Kaiko data, the amount of Bitcoin held by miners has dropped to around 1.5 million BTC, worth around $86 billion. Miners have notably seen selling tokens since the cryptocurrency market rallied in late 2023, with the proceeds from these sales often being used to fund their operations.
Data from cryptocurrency analytics firm CryptoQuant confirms there has been a severe downtrend in miner reserves, with its data pointing to reserves of around 1.8 million BTC.
Featured image via Pixabay.
