Goldman Sachs Held More Than $400M In Spot Bitcoin ETFs, Filing Shows

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Key Points

Goldman Sachs held $418.65 million worth of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as of June 30, according to the SEC.

The vast majority of these assets are in shares of BlackRock’s IBIT fund.

Multiple executives from Goldman Sachs have previously expressed skepticism about investing in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency assets.

Goldman Sachs (GS), a traditional Wall Street firm and Bitcoin skeptic, recently announced a surprising investment in a regulatory filing: shares of spot bitcoin (BTCUSD) exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Goldman Sachs reported holdings in 7 of 11 U.S.-based Bitcoin ETFs as of June 30, totaling approximately $418.65 million in assets, according to its 13F filing on Tuesday.

It is unclear whether these assets were accumulated at the behest of private clients. Attempts to reach Goldman Sachs for comment were unsuccessful.

Goldman’s Bitcoin ETF Exposure

The largest spot bitcoin ETF position in the Goldman Sachs filing was about 7 million shares in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), valued at $238.6 million. About 1.5 million shares of Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin ETF (FBTC) and about 940,000 shares of the Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF (BTCO) round out the investment bank’s top three bitcoin ETF investment prospectuses.

The company also owned shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB), WisdomTree Bitcoin Fund (BTCW), and Ark 21Shares Bitcoin ETF.

Of course, 13F filings should be read with some caution. They only show assets and their values ​​as of the reporting date, in this case June 30, and provide no indication of any transactions made since that date. They also do not disclose any short positions, which may not provide a complete picture of a corporate manager’s overall investment strategy.

The filing comes just days after Morgan Stanley (MS) made headlines for allowing its advisors to unsolicitedly offer bitcoin ETF investments to clients. This was a major move for a traditional brokerage firm that typically avoids openly offering such products to clients.

Goldman Was Cautious About Bitcoin

In the past, Goldman Sachs’ top executives have been skeptical about Bitcoin’s investment potential.

In April, Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, chief investment officer of Goldman Sachs Asset Management Group, expressed skepticism about considering cryptocurrencies as an asset class in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

More recently, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told CNBC that he believes Bitcoin can function as a store of value, similar to gold, and that the technology behind it could be valuable for improving financial systems, but that “this is different than speculating on whether Bitcoin will be $70,000, $30,000 or $120,000.”

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