Financial advisors are becoming big Bitcoin buyers

Main observations

• Advisors now hold 167,274 BTC equiv., the largest cohort of professional allocators to the US Bitcoin ETFs (54% of all BTC 13-F filer positions)

• Professional holdings altogether rebounded 57% to $33.4B in Q2 2025, outpacing 30% bitcoin price growth and the broader ETF market’s 45% growth

• Harvard Endowment disclosed bitcoin exposure for the first time: A $116M purchase of Blackrock’s IBIT product, or less than <25 bips of the portfolio

• Top institutional changes were mixed: JPMorgan (+$203M), Morgan Stanley (-$312m), Goldman Sachs (-$377M), Blackrock (+$475m), Wells Fargo (+$148m)

• Hedge funds continue decreasing their bitcoin exposure: Despite increasing in dollar terms by 27.9% from price action, hedge funds exposure slightly decreased by 1.4% in bitcoin terms

Advisors quietly accumulate while corporate treasuries dominate headlines

Between bull market price action, ongoing government action and policy, and the size of capital inflows from Microstrategy-esque (now Strategy) companies – there has been little room for other industry headlines. Yet, a quiet, encouraging trend developing in the background is the growing bitcoin exposure of financial advisors via US spot bitcoin ETFs. Self-reported investment advisors managing over $100m now hold the equivalent of 167k BTC, up over 30% QoQ, according to the latest round of SEC 13-F filing data.

Corporate treasury demand remains the dominant narrative this year, and it’s not without good reason. Public company balances have crossed the 1 million BTC mark as of August 2025, with inflows from public corporations outpacing net flows into global bitcoin ETFs across Q2. Roughly US$25 billion in a single quarter. 

Jarring numbers, but it seems like an increasingly held view is that this flavor of corporate adoption is likely a temporary phenomena – the tapping of capital markets for funding, SPAC’ing forth single strategy businesses or the resurrection of zombie companies with little else to offer may not last. It’s altogether an impactful near-term trend, but almost certainly a more sturdy trend would come from corporations taking a sliver of operating profits to bitcoin over time.

The more durable trend, and perhaps more impactful long-term, is the structural integration of bitcoin ETFs into wealth management channels.The aggregate of advisors carving a lasting sleeve of their client portfolios to bitcoin would be a giant leap in maturation in its usage as a store of value. The second-order benefit of passive, very sticky demand for a supply-limited asset is then of course a positive for investors, similar to the role gold plays as a standard allocation within alternatives buckets.

This is a trend that has our focus. And with that in mind, this report will be a chart-heavy breakdown of the latest round of 13-F filings for the US bitcoin ETFs – who’s buying, who’s trimming, the concentration of capital across products, and some interesting nuggets of information discovered along the way.

Our main observation is that the effects of these spot ETFs being approved are still unfolding. Retail participation remains very high, with about 75% of ETF AUM held by non 13-F filers. Yet this round of data shows meaningful progress among institutional players. The steady growth of advisors’ exposure, coupled with several prominent disclosures among endowments and bulge bracket banks, is promising for future demand.

Advisors, brokerages, and endowments show growth while hedge funds trim

Institutional holdings rebound as ETF market grows

13-F Filers reported $33.4B in bitcoin ETF holdings at Q2 end, up 57% from $21.2B in Q1. The broader US bitcoin ETF market grew 45% to $103B AUM, increasing institutional share slightly to 24.5%. Importantly, both the broader market and 13-F filings cohort outpaced growth in the bitcoin price itself (+28.9%). 

Who’s buying, who’s selling

There were a few impactful discoveries contributing to these changes. Brevan Howard reclassified from a hedge fund to investment advisor and materially increased holdings from 12.3k BTC to 21.4k BTC equiv., assisting advisor growth and partly explaining the slight hedge fund decline. On the banking side, JPMorgan disclosed its first 1.9k BTC equiv. position, and Wells Fargo increased exposure nearly 5x to 1.7k BTC. Harvard’s first reported allocation was the sole factor changing endowment holdings. Pertaining to brokerage, increases were largely due to quant firms and trading intermediaries, led by Jane Street, with sizable change from IMC-Chicago, Clear Street, and Belvedere Trading. 

Three products continue to dominate professional exposure

Institutional demand remains concentrated in three vehicles:

1. IBIT (BlackRock): $21.6B, with 29% from 13-F filers 

2. FBTC (Fidelity): $4.5B, with 21% from 13-F filers

3. GBTC (Grayscale): $2.9B, with 15% from 13-F filers

Together, they account for over 87% of 13-F filer ETF holdings.

Notable movements

A durable adoption base continues to build

The story in Bitcoin this year has been dominated by corporate treasury moves, but the more impactful demand sector may be quietly emerging beneath the surface. Advisors, brokerages, banks, and endowments are steadily embedding Bitcoin ETFs into their portfolios, albeit at tiny weights, which represent recurring allocations that are harder to unwind than tactical, price sensitive bets.

Bulge bracket banks’ entries, like JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, even if passive or client-driven, reinforce the ETFs’ role in merging bitcoin into mainstream financial infrastructure. Meanwhile, it cannot be undersold how pensions and endowments bring credibility to the consideration of bitcoin as a financial asset in modern portfolios.

Spot ETFs may have launched more than one and a half years ago in the US, but their effects are far from fully realized. The structural integration of Bitcoin into wealth management and institutional channels is underway, and this quiet, sticky base of demand appears more and more likely to have a growing impact on bitcoin market dynamics for years to come.

***Note that we added coverage of Grascale Mini Trust Bitcoin (BTC) in our coverage of 13-F filings for Q2 2025, which will effectively inflate Q2 2025 figures relative to the rest. This ETF accounts for 3.5% AUM among US bitcoin ETFs and 2.3% of 13-F holdings.

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