BlackRock raises Bitcoin exposure to $5.4 billion with fresh ETF and miner investments

The world’s largest asset manager BlackRock increased its exposure to Bitcoin in Q1 of 2025, according to its latest 13F filing. The filing shows that the firm bought shares of its own spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) while also investing in competing ETFs for the first time. According to the filing, BlackRock’s position in IBIT grew by 124.7% between Q4 of 2024 and Q1 of 2025, as it bought an additional 3,248,304 shares of IBIT. This increased its total holdings to over 5.8 million shares worth $273.99 million. Beyond buying more of its own ETF, the company also acquired 70,971 shares in Fidelity’s FBTC, 200 shares in Grayscale’s GBTC, and 40 shares in GBTC mini. This marks the first time that BlackRock will invest in competing Bitcoin ETFs, showing an evolution of its strategy. BlackRock Bitcoin exposure at the end of Q1 2025 (Source: SaniExp) Interestingly, the investment firm also doubled down on acquiring securities and bonds of companies that have exposure to Bitcoin. This translated into increasing its Strategy Class A shares by 28% to 14.42 million shares. BlackRock alone now owns over $4 billion worth of Strategy shares. It is also on track to own more, given that it also acquired over 620,000 MSTR Series A Perpetual shares, bought almost 15 million shares of two MSTR commercial notes. Overall, the firm’s exposure to MSTR is worth over $4.23 billion, accounting for the majority of its $5.43 billion in Bitcoin investments. Meanwhile, BlackRock also increased its investment in Bitcoin miners during the first quarter. It bought an additional 2.5 million shares in Riot Platforms and 3.8 million shares in MARA Holdings. The two are its most held miners, with 27 million and 53.9 million shares respectively. However, it also increased exposure to TeraWulf, Bitdeer, and BitDigital, showing that it is allocating heavily to the sector despite the challenges that most Bitcoin miners are facing. BlackRock exposure to IBIT increase by more than 13,000% YoY BlackRock’s increasing allocation to Bitcoin-focused products and companies is not completely surprising, as it aligns with its decision to include these products in some of its model portfolio offerings. The firm disclosed a few months ago that it would allocate 1% to 2% of its IBIT ETF to selected model portfolios. It said at the time that the addition is part of its move to diversify these portfolios, which focus on investors who are less risk averse and have higher growth targets. Over the past year, the firm’s exposure to its own IBIT shares has increased by more than 13,500%, going from just 43,000 shares at the end of Q1 2024 to 5,853,406 shares by the close of Q1 2025. This shows how much of IBIT demand is coming from in-house. Despite the increasing investment in Bitcoin products, BTC only accounts for a small portion of the company’s assets under management (AUM). BlackRock has over $11 trillion in AUM, which means its BTC exposure of $5.43 billion is less than 0.05% of its overall portfolio. 9% of BTC supply held by public companies and ETFs Still, BlackRock’s allocation to Bitcoin only signals the general trend of exposure by corporate entities to BTC. According to data from Ecoinometrics, ETFs and public companies now control 9% of all Bitcoin supply. Spot Bitcoin ETFs currently hold 5.5% of the total supply, while public companies hold the remaining 3.5%. However, they will likely increase their percentage of holdings in coming months, given that they are the biggest accumulators in the past 18 months. ETFs and Public companies now hold 9% of BTC (Source: Bitcoin Buddha) With Strategy announcing plans to expand its Bitcoin acquisition target to $84 billion, the accumulation of BTC by corporate entities will likely increase in the next few years. The rate of accumulation by spot ETFs already exceeds the average BTC rewards mined, and many stakeholders believe that the assets will only become scarcer as more institutions increase exposure. Meanwhile, BTC is currently worth around $94,000 after dropping 1.10% in the past 24 hours. It has been trading within range for the past two weeks. As one user noted, investors should focus on yearly lows of BTC which has been increasing consistently since 2015, except for 2022 and 2023, instead of its all-time highs. Cryptopolitan Academy: Want to grow your money in 2025? Learn how to do it with DeFi in our upcoming webclass. Save Your Spot