Investment banking giant Goldman Sachs has reported a $419 million exposure to spot Bitcoin ETFs.
According to the company’s quarterly 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC], BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust [IBIT] is its largest holding. As of June 30, the firm possessed over 6.9 million shares worth $238.6 million.
Conventionally, institutional asset managers with more than $100 million in equity AUM ought to file the 13F four times every year.
That being said, it should be noted that short positions are not typically included in 13F filings. Firms are only supposed to report long positions pertaining to securities, including stocks, options, and convertible debt.
Other new positions reported by Goldman this quarter include Fidelity’s FBTC and Grayscale’s converted Bitcoin fund. The firm also possesses shares of funds from Invesco-Galaxy, Bitwise, WisdomTree, and Ark-21Shares.
This means, the banking giant has positions in seven out of the eleven spot US BTC ETF products.
It is interesting to note at this juncture that Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, the Chief Investment Officer of the Wealth Management arm at Goldman Sachs has time and again reiterated that the firm does not think crypto qualifies as an investment asset class.
In a recent interview earlier this year, she unveiled that “clients are well aware of her team’s crypto criticisms and haven’t asked about jumping in.” The executive asserted,
“We’re not believers in crypto.”
That being said, the banking giant has been making strides in the tokenization arena. According to Mathew McDermott, the investment bank’s Global Head of Digital Assets, the financial institution intends to shift focus to initiatives on this front.
As reported by blocmates recently, Goldman is looking to put to sea three new tokenization products revolving around debt issuance and the fund complex later this year in the US and Europe.
Irrespective of Mossavar-Rahmani’s skepticism, Goldman Sachs is not looking to restrict itself only to tokenization. McDermott underlined that the bank’s opportunities in the crypto space could gradually expand with time, including being able to hold spot crypto assets.
He added that as a firm, Goldman would naturally be interested in, “execution and maybe sub-custody.”
Several of Goldman’s competitors have already established a niche for themselves in this arena. In March, for instance, asset manager BlackRock launched its first-ever tokenized fund on Ethereum, BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund.
The fund is represented by the BUIDL token and is backed by repurchase agreements, T-bills, and cash. Its price is pegged 1:1 with the USD, with BlackRock paying accrued yields to investors every month. BUILD currently boasts a market cap of over $517.6 million.
