Morgan Stanley Now Owns More Shares In World's Largest Bitcoin Fund Than Cathie Wood's Ark

Wall Street banking giant Morgan Stanley MS has been increasing its stake in the world’s largest Bitcoin BTC/USD fund —the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust GBTC.

What Happened: According to regulatory filings seen by Blockworks last week, Morgan Stanley owns more than 13 million shares of GBTC, which it holds across 17 portfolios. These shares were worth more than $370 million as of Thursday morning.

Morgan Stanley's asset management arm bought millions of shares of GBTC in 2021.

Morgan Stanley's asset management arm bought millions of shares of Grayscale BTC in 2021.

Morgan just disclosed major increases in ownership across a large number of its institutional funds. These are mostly double-digit percentage increases, up to 26% on the high end.

One... https://t.co/Duthrvx0Mo

— MacroScope (@MacroScope17) February 28, 2022

Morgan Stanley’s Growth Fund held 4.3 million GBTC shares worth $123 million, up 18% since the previous quarter.

Why It Matters: Until recently, Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest was GBTC’s largest institutional shareholder with a total of 7.9 million shares worth $226 million.

Several finance data portals, however, continue to list Ark Invest as the largest shareholder based on disclosures filed in December.

Ark Invest has since reduced exposure to GBTC, according to data from Cathie’s Ark. As of Mar 8, Ark reportedly held 6.17 million shares of GBTC – nearly two-thirds lower than Morgan Stanley’s GBTC holdings.

In a research note published in January, Morgan Stanley described Bitcoin’s 50% retracement as a normal event and advised cryptocurrency investors to be patient.

Sheena Shah, the bank’s head of cryptocurrency research, said the market correction is within historical norms. According to her, $45,000 is the price level to watch to assess whether the downtrend is likely to turn around.

Price Action: As of Thursday morning, Bitcoin was trading at $39,200, down 5.48% in the last 24 hours.

Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash