Bitcoin Spot ETFs reach 1 million BTC in custody
2 min readCurrently, more than 1 million Bitcoins are held in custody of spot Bitcoin ETFs, which are designed to track the asset’s price performance.
Specifically, more than 30 Bitcoin ETFs collectively held 1,002,343 BTC as of May 24, according to a chart released by MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor on the social network X on Monday (5/27). This data was verified by the publication Decrypt based on public reports and also confirmed by the Coinglass Bitcoin ETF panel.
Grayscale and BlackRock lead as the world’s largest Bitcoin funds
BTC holdings currently make up around 5% of the total BTC supply in circulation globally, valued at 70.5 billion USD. This amount is almost five times larger than Saylor’s BTC collection, which has 214,400 BTC, equivalent to around 15 billion USD.
Most of this BTC is in US Bitcoin spot ETFs, introduced in January and beating all previous ETF launch performance records.
More than half of these assets are distributed equally between the two largest funds in the world. The Grayscale BTC Trust has 289,040 BTC, and BlackRock’s iShares BTC Trust has 287,168 BTC.
The next largest funds in size include the second largest in the US, the Fidelity Wise Origin BTC Trust with 161,538 BTC, Cathie Wood’s Ark 21Shares Bitcoin ETF with 48,444 BTC, and the Bitwise BTC ETF with 36,185 BTC. On the international scene, the largest BTC ETF is that of Purpose, from Canada — a global pioneer in the category — which holds 27,110 BTC.
Bitcoin ETF Market Potential Could Reach Hundreds of Billions in the US
Bitcoin ETFs provide investors with the ability to add BTC to their portfolios through an ETF structure. This way, you can include them in retirement accounts or other accounts that offer tax benefits.
These ETFs also serve as a way for large institutions to invest in BTC, where they might otherwise face restrictions when purchasing directly from a cryptocurrency exchange.
Q1 data revealed that more than 20% of spot Bitcoin ETF investments in the US came from large investors and institutions. These included those with total assets exceeding 100 million USD. Investors include major hedge funds, banks and even the Wisconsin state pension fund.
Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise, mentioned in an interview earlier this month that these ETFs have the potential to represent between one and five percent of the US ETF market, which totals approximately 7 trillion USD. According to him, this points to an addressable market worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States alone.
