BlackRock Doubles Down on Bitcoin—Now Holds $5.4B in ETF and Miner Bets

Wall Street’s quiet crypto coup accelerates as the world’s largest asset manager goes all-in on digital gold. BlackRock just added another truckload of Bitcoin exposure—$5.4 billion worth—through spot ETFs and direct mining investments.

Why it matters: When the 800-pound gorilla of traditional finance starts accumulating BTC like a degenerate crypto trader, maybe—just maybe—the ’magic internet money’ crowd was onto something.

The kicker: This comes just months after BlackRock CEO Larry Fink called Bitcoin ’an international asset’—quite the pivot for a man who once dismissed crypto as a ’money laundering index.’ Nothing like 300% returns to focus the mind.

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.

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.

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