As of February 2025, 12 U.S.-based bitcoin spot exchange traded funds (ETFs) held $114.41 billion in bitcoins, representing 5.94% of BTC's market cap.
In fact, the 12 bitcoin ETFs themselves do not own these bitcoins; all the bitcoins in the funds are owned by retail investors who are clients of the ETFs.
But if you find out who owns the lion's share of the bitcoins in these ETFs, you'll find that it's the famous financial titans, the Federal Reserve shareholders, who amass significant stakes in bitcoin ETFs.
So when the media claims that BlackRock, Fidelity and Ark Invest own huge amounts of bitcoins; it would be more correct to say that investors in their exchange traded funds (ETFs) own these BTC, and the funds only provide storage services.
BTC worth $20.9 billion is owned by over 300 institutions.
But who appear to be some of the biggest IBIT holders❓
The answer is Goldman Sachs Group Inc., as the financial giant controls a significant portion of IBIT Blackrock.
Along with Goldman, Millennium Management, Susquehanna International Group and the State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB) are attending
Susquehanna is deeply involved in multiple BTC ETFs. Susquehanna, a global quantitative trading and investment firm known for its market-making, proprietary trading and institutional brokerage services, owns shares in Coinshares' Valkyrie BRRR, Grayscale's GBTC, Franklin Templeton's EZBC, Vaneck's HODL, Invesco Galaxy's BTCO, Wisdomtree's BTCW and Hashdex's DEFI .
Another trading company, Jane Street Group, is also actively involved in eight of the 12 funds.
Bracebridge Capital LLC is among ARKB's major holders, while Millennium Management LLC remains one of BITB's major shareholders.
Horizon Kinetics Asset Management LLC controls a significant stake in Grayscale's Bitcoin Mini Trust.
Other key holders of the BTC mini fund include Parafi Capital, IMC-Chicago, Multicoin Capital Management, Hightower Advisors and Eagleclaw Capital Management.
IMC-Chicago also participates in GBTC and IBIT. Hightower Advisors owns interests in GBTC, FBTC, IBIT, ARKB, EZBC and BITB.
In addition to IBIT, Goldman also participates in FBTC with Millennium Management, investing in several bitcoin ETFs.
In addition, banksters, through subsidiaries such as Susquehanna and Jane Street, use diversified ETF holdings for hedging or arbitrage, mixing quantitative money market techniques with crypto assets.
Yes, of course, this activity of the banking giants will continue to increase the scarcity of bitcoins.
But the important takeaway is that the major shareholder of all the world's largest funds, such as BlackRock, State Street; Fidelity, known for its clever camouflage scheme of cross-owning every multinational corporation on the planet, is using the same scheme to hide the trail of one entity buying up all the bitcoins in circulation 🏴☠️
And from this chart, as from almost all global crypto projects, we can see the protruding ears of Goldman Sachs and other shareholders of the Federal Reserve, the IMF, the BIS and the World Bank. Incidentally, the bitcoin and altcoin market is controlled by its own market makers.
All of this frenzied activity in the Bitcoin market by the global financial elite suggests that Bitcoin is as important to them as the world's largest Titanic 🛳.
Given the scale of the players, it is obvious that they would not have joined the game if they did not see it as a global instrument capable of absorbing other assets that could easily be concentrated in one hand.
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