Based in Boston, a little-known hedge fund named Bracebridge Capital, has emerged as one of the biggest holders of spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Data shows that it holds assets worth millions of dollars. This includes the largest individual tallies in the Ark Invest/21Shares and BlackRock ETFs.
The breakdown
The company’s total Bitcoin exposure is valued at $363 million. It is spread across ETFs issued by BlackRock, Grayscale, and Ark Invest/21Shares.
Its investment in BlackRock is worth $81 million, while that in Grayscale’s ETFs is $20 million. The largest is in Ark Invest/21Shares, valued at $262 million.
Eric Balchunas, the Bloomberg ETF analyst, said that the hedge fund had gone wild. He said that holdings of Bracebridge Capital are the ‘new high water mark’.
This excludes authorized participants and market makers. They create and redeem shares to help maintain the accurate price of spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Bracebridg Capital was founded in 1994 and the total assets under management of the company are valued at $12 billion.
In 2016, it had been referred to as the largest hedge fund in the world that is run by women. The company is also known to manage funds from the endowments of Yale University and Princeton University.
The hedge fund
In March, the value of the spot Bitcoin ETF holdings of Bracebridge Capital were valued at $434 million. This was revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and did not include options.
In the first quarter, a look at the US traded equities of the firm came when the price of Bitcoin had stood at $72,000. The price has declined since then.
At that time, Bracebridge Capital’s investment in Ark Invest and 21Shares’ Bitcoin ETF was valued at $300 million.
Its holding in BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF and Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust were valued at $100 million and $26.5 million, respectively.
At the time, BraceBridge Capital did not just hold shares of BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF. It also had options for the product that were valued at $284 million.
Of its total holdings, the hedge fund’s exposure to BlackRock’s products was about 47%.
Additional details
When put together, Bracebridge Capital holds shares of spot Bitcoin ETFs or options based on them worth $718 million.
This is about 88% of the hedge fund’s total holdings that it reported in its SEC filing. The high investment does not come as a surprise.
Data from Farside Investors shows that almost $11.6 billion has been allocated to spot Bitcoin ETFs by Wall Street firms alone.
This has happened after the approval of this investment product this year in January. This figure undoubtedly includes the outsized holdings of Bracebridge Capital.
However, it was recently revealed that even banking giants, such as Wells Fargo, have made massive investments in spot Bitcoin ETFs.
While they have seen their inflows decline over time, they are still higher than other investment products at the time of their launch.