Securitize has expanded institutional collateral support for BlackRock’s BUIDL fund across participating crypto prime brokerages, giving tokenized Treasuries another step toward deeper use in trading infrastructure.
The expansion means qualified institutional traders can post BUIDL token shares as off-exchange collateral across supported prime brokerage relationships. That matters because tokenized funds become more useful when they can do more than sit in a wallet.
Collateral use is the important piece.
If tokenized Treasury products can support margin, lending, or trading activity, they move closer to being part of market plumbing rather than only tokenized yield products.
For more details, visit the official Securitize platform.
TL;DR
Securitize expanded BUIDL collateral support across crypto prime brokerages.
BUIDL token shares can be used by qualified institutional participants.
The product is not a retail-access tokenized fund.
Why BUIDL Matters
BlackRock’s BUIDL fund has become one of the most watched tokenized Treasury products in the market.
It represents a bridge between traditional asset management and blockchain settlement. The underlying idea is simple: put exposure to a regulated money-market-style product on-chain so institutional participants can use it more efficiently.
But tokenization only becomes powerful when the asset can be used.
If tokenized fund shares can serve as collateral, they can support trading, financing, margin management, and liquidity strategies. That makes them more valuable to institutions than a passive holding alone.
Off-Exchange Collateral Is A Big Deal
Crypto prime brokerage has been shaped by counterparty risk.
After several major industry failures, institutions became much more careful about where collateral sits and who controls it. Off-exchange collateral arrangements are designed to reduce the need to keep large balances directly on trading venues.
Adding BUIDL into that collateral framework could make the product more useful for institutional traders.
It gives firms a way to hold tokenized Treasury exposure while still supporting trading activity across prime brokerage networks.
Qualified Purchasers Only
The access limits matter.
BUIDL is not a retail product that anyone can buy through a standard crypto wallet. Participation is restricted to qualified institutional users. That should be stated clearly because tokenized asset stories can easily sound more open than they are.
Institutional tokenization often means better settlement and collateral tools for approved participants.
It does not always mean open DeFi-style access.
That is not a flaw. It is part of the regulatory structure.
Tokenized Treasuries Are Becoming Useful Collateral
The broader trend is that tokenized Treasuries are moving from proof-of-concept to functional collateral.
That could change how crypto firms manage idle cash, margin, and short-term yield. Instead of choosing between stablecoins and traditional cash accounts, institutions may be able to hold tokenized fund shares and use them inside trading relationships.
There are still risks.
Legal rights, redemption timing, custody, transfer restrictions, smart contract design, and brokerage integration all matter. But the direction is clear.
The Institutional Read
Securitize’s BUIDL expansion shows tokenized assets becoming more embedded in professional crypto markets.
The story is not retail adoption. It is not a meme-driven RWA headline. It is a market-structure update for institutions that want safer, more flexible collateral.
If tokenized Treasuries keep gaining utility, they could become one of the most important bridges between traditional finance and crypto trading.
For BUIDL, collateral support across prime brokers makes the fund more than a tokenized yield product. It makes it part of the trading stack.
This article draws on Securitize materials relating to BlackRock BUIDL collateral integration and RWA.xyz data.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
This report is based on information released by Securitize. at Securitize
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust exchange-traded fund has delivered better returns since its 2024 launch than Vanguard’s popular S&P 500 fund.
That’s according to Bloomberg data highlighted by the firm’s senior ETF analyst, Eric Balchunas, who said that the BlackRock product’s cumulative percentage return was only slightly ahead of Vanguard’s in the time period.
BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF is up 71% since its January 2024 debut, while Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF up 66% on a total-return basis.
Hard to believe $IBIT is beating $VOO since inception but it's true..altho it's close. And to be fair, IBIT's path to 70% looks like the El Toro roller coaster at Great Adventure (i needed two Advil last time I rode that thing) while $VOO was a walk in the park in comparison.… pic.twitter.com/vpOgI7JZKL
The iShares Bitcoin Trust — IBIT — started trading in 2024 after the Securities and Exchange Commission gave the green light to 11 spot bitcoin ETFs following a decade of denials.
“IBIT’s path to 70% looks like the El Toro roller coaster at Great Adventure (I needed two Advil last time I rode that thing) while $VOO was a walk in the park in comparison,” wrote Balchunas on Tuesday.
U.S. investors now have several funds to choose from to buy shares that track the price of bitcoin managed by the likes of Fidelity, Grayscale and Morgan Stanley. But BlackRock’s product is the most successful: It currently manages $61.4 billion in assets, according to its website.
By comparison, the second biggest bitcoin ETF, the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund, manages nearly $11 billion.
BlackRock, which manages over $15 trillion in assets, sent shockwaves through the crypto space after it applied for a spot bitcoin ETF in 2023. Its fund now allows more traditional investors to get exposure to bitcoin; its product also experiences more day-to-day trading action than the other ETFs.
Investors piled back into ETFs in August, which has also helped bitcoin’s price. From August 17 to 27, investors threw over $2.8 billion at the vehicles — the most since October, when the coin hit a new all-time high.
Bitcoin reached as high as $81,281 last week before sliding again on Friday.
Bitcoin’s roughly 50% decline from its October 2025 high has created a useful test for the institutional investment thesis. It is relatively easy to make the case for a new asset while prices are rising, correlations are favorable and capital is flowing into the market. The more revealing exercise comes after a major drawdown, when investors can revisit the original assumptions and determine which were structural and which were simply products of the preceding cycle.
That is effectively what BlackRock has done in its latest research, Re-Underwriting Bitcoin: Still a Portfolio Diversifier. Rather than treating the recent drawdown as evidence for or against Bitcoin in isolation, the firm returns to the question most relevant to an allocator: how has Bitcoin actually affected the risk and return characteristics of a diversified portfolio?
The results are more consequential than the headline return figures suggest. In BlackRock’s rolling 10-year analysis through May 29, 2026, a traditional 60/40 equity and fixed-income portfolio generated an annualized return of approximately 9.9% with annualized standard deviation of roughly 10.1%. Introducing a 1% Bitcoin allocation increased annualized return to approximately 10.9%, while volatility moved only modestly higher to roughly 10.3%. At a 2% allocation, annualized return reached approximately 11.8%, with standard deviation of about 10.6%.
Put differently, the 2% allocation added roughly 190 basis points of annualized return relative to the traditional portfolio while increasing annualized volatility by approximately 50 basis points. The portfolio’s Sharpe ratio improved from 0.81 to 0.96, while maximum drawdown changed from -20.3% to -20.9%. Those figures are hypothetical and backward-looking, but they illustrate why judging Bitcoin primarily by its standalone volatility can produce an incomplete assessment of its portfolio impact.
The more relevant question is how that volatility interacts with everything else an investor already owns. BlackRock continues to characterize Bitcoin as having risk and return drivers that are fundamentally different from traditional assets, rooted in its fixed supply, decentralized structure and independence from any sovereign issuer. Those characteristics do not prevent Bitcoin from trading alongside risk assets during periods of deleveraging, but BlackRock’s research suggests those correlations have historically been episodic rather than permanent.
That distinction helps explain the portfolio results. A modest allocation does not import Bitcoin’s standalone volatility into a portfolio on a one-for-one basis. What matters is the marginal contribution of that allocation to total portfolio risk relative to the return it has historically generated. In BlackRock’s analysis, that trade-off remained favorable at 1% and 2%, even after incorporating one of Bitcoin’s most significant recent drawdowns.
Why 1–2% keeps appearing in BlackRock’s work
This is not the first time BlackRock has arrived at this range. Its earlier portfolio research approached Bitcoin sizing through risk contribution, concluding that a 1–2% allocation could represent a reasonable range for investors willing and able to accept Bitcoin’s risk. At those weights, BlackRock found that Bitcoin could contribute a similar share of overall portfolio risk as an individual mega-cap technology holding in a conventional 60/40 portfolio. Beyond 2%, however, Bitcoin’s contribution to total portfolio risk begins to increase disproportionately.
The new analysis approaches the same question from the opposite direction. Rather than asking how much risk Bitcoin contributes, it examines what investors historically received for assuming that additional risk. The improvement in Sharpe ratio from 0.81 for the traditional portfolio to 0.90 with 1% Bitcoin and 0.96 with 2% Bitcoin suggests that the incremental return historically more than compensated for the additional portfolio-level volatility.
This does not establish 1% or 2% as an optimal allocation, and BlackRock does not present it that way. The appropriate exposure will depend on liquidity requirements, investment horizon, governance constraints and risk tolerance. What the analysis does provide is a more rigorous framework for the discussion. The allocation question can increasingly be evaluated in terms of marginal risk, correlation, drawdown and portfolio efficiency rather than through a binary debate over whether Bitcoin itself is too volatile to own.
BlackRock has also seen the demand firsthand
There is another dimension to BlackRock’s latest analysis that is difficult to separate from the firm’s experience in the market.
BlackRock launched the iShares Bitcoin Trust, IBIT, in January 2024. Less than a year later, it had accumulated more than $50 billion in assets, making it what BlackRock itself has described as the largest exchange-traded product launch in history. It reached that milestone roughly five times faster than the previous record holder.
Its significance has only grown since then. BlackRock now describes IBIT as the world’s largest and most traded Bitcoin ETP, and the fund became the firm’s highest-revenue ETF in 2025 despite competing within a global BlackRock lineup of more than 1,000 products.
The concentration within the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF market is equally notable. According to current ETF holdings data tracked by Bitcoin For Corporations, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs collectively hold approximately 1.25 million BTC, representing nearly 6% of Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million supply. IBIT alone accounts for roughly 775,000 BTC, or more than 60% of the Bitcoin held across the U.S. spot ETF complex.
That does not make BlackRock’s research independent of commercial context; IBIT is an important and increasingly valuable BlackRock product. That context should be understood rather than ignored. But it also means the firm’s reassessment is occurring alongside more than two years of observing how investors actually use Bitcoin exposure at scale.
The distinction is useful. The theoretical case for Bitcoin as a portfolio asset is increasingly being accompanied by observable allocation behavior. Investors have now had access to Bitcoin through familiar brokerage, advisory and institutional infrastructure across multiple market regimes, including periods of rapid appreciation and severe drawdowns. IBIT’s growth suggests that demand has persisted well beyond its initial launch window.
A drawdown is precisely when a thesis should be re-underwritten
The timing of BlackRock’s report may ultimately be more informative than the portfolio simulation itself.
Bitcoin is not being reassessed at an all-time high. BlackRock published the analysis after an approximately 50% drawdown from Bitcoin’s October 2025 peak, a period the firm associates with leveraged positioning being unwound, slowing ETP flows and weaker demand from companies accumulating Bitcoin. Its conclusion is that these forces represented a positioning correction rather than a fundamental change in Bitcoin’s investment case.
That is what re-underwriting is supposed to accomplish. An investment thesis should not survive because investors are attached to it; it should survive because its underlying assumptions continue to hold when conditions change.
For Bitcoin, those assumptions extend beyond historical returns. The asset remains scarce by design, globally liquid, independent of a sovereign issuer and structurally different from the liabilities that dominate traditional portfolios. BlackRock argues that concerns around fiscal sustainability, monetary stability and geopolitical risk may therefore become increasingly relevant to Bitcoin’s long-term adoption.
The portfolio evidence does not prove what Bitcoin will return over the next decade, nor does IBIT’s success establish what an appropriate allocation should be. What the two developments show together is that the institutional conversation has advanced considerably. Bitcoin is no longer being evaluated solely as an unconventional asset that institutions may or may not choose to own. It is increasingly being evaluated through the same disciplines applied elsewhere in capital allocation: sizing, risk contribution, correlation, liquidity, drawdown and expected return.
What this means for corporate leaders
For CFOs, boards and corporate operators, that evolution may be the most important takeaway from BlackRock’s work.
The relevant decision is not whether Bitcoin is volatile; that is already known. Nor does a corporate allocation need to resemble the concentrated Bitcoin strategies pursued by companies that have explicitly built their capital structures around the asset. Between zero exposure and a Bitcoin-centric balance sheet sits a much broader spectrum of possible allocations.
BlackRock’s research provides a useful framework for thinking about that spectrum. A relatively small allocation was sufficient to materially alter the historical return characteristics of a conventional portfolio without producing a comparable increase in portfolio-level risk. At 2%, approximately 190 basis points of additional annualized return came with roughly 50 basis points of additional annualized volatility in the period studied. The allocation was small; its effect was not.
For corporate leaders, the implication is less about adopting BlackRock’s specific allocation range than adopting the discipline behind the analysis. Bitcoin can be underwritten like any other strategic allocation: define its purpose, determine an acceptable risk contribution, establish liquidity and governance requirements, size the position accordingly and periodically revisit the assumptions.
That is a considerably more mature question than whether a company should simply “buy Bitcoin.”
BlackRock has now re-underwritten that question after another full market cycle and a roughly 50% drawdown. Its historical portfolio math still makes the case that, in measured amounts, Bitcoin can improve the equation. For corporate decision-makers, that is the takeaway worth bringing into the boardroom.
Disclaimer: This content was prepared on behalf of Bitcoin For Corporations for informational purposes only. It reflects the author’s own analysis and opinion and should not be relied upon as investment advice. Nothing in this article constitutes an offer, invitation, or solicitation to purchase, sell, or subscribe for any security or financial product.
Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have continued their winning streak, attracting billions of dollars in new investment over the past week.
U.S. investors have thrown $2.56 billion since last Monday, according to Farside Investors data, helping push the leading cryptocurrency’s price higher.
And this week alone, nearly $652 million in fresh cash has hit the products managed by the likes of BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, and Fidelity.
Bitcoin was recently trading for $78,302 after jumping nearly 25% over a seven-day period. The coin touched as high as $81,160 on Monday.
JUST IN: U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have taken in $2.08 billion over the past 5 trading sessions pic.twitter.com/GskNy0yPfc
Bitcoin’s rise comes after a sluggish June and July when it mostly traded below $65,000.
The cryptocurrency has benefited from news that the Treasury would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations. The announcement last week hurt the dollar but non-yielding assets like Bitcoin and gold have benefited.
Bloomberg Intelligence ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas wrote on X Wednesday that the debasement trade was back.
“Gold and Bitcoin ETFs have combined for +$7b in flows in past week, by far a record for a 5-day period as debasement trade steals spotlight from AI,” he said.
The debasement trade is when investors buy an asset to hedge against a currency losing value. Investments like Bitcoin and precious metals have done well as part of the trade as they cannot be endlessly printed.
Last year, the investment strategy was much talked about but then went quiet as investors focused more on buying artificial intelligence-related equities.
Investors now are fretting over U.S. borrowing, a weak dollar and efforts to contain long-term yields.
Bitcoin ETFs had their best week since October last week, with nearly $2 billion in inflows.
Positive regulatory coming out of the White House has also spurred the flurry of trading activity. President Donald Trump held a meeting with crypto executives earlier last week before urging lawmakers to get the long-awaited crypto Clarity Act over the line.
Bitcoin’s price is down nearly 50% since its October record. But investors shouldn’t worry, the world’s largest asset manager has said, and the cryptocurrency still plays a role as “a global monetary alternative.”
In a report Monday, Robert Mitchnick, global head of digital assets at the firm, said that the ongoing rise in U.S. and global government debt and deficits hasn’t slowed.
BlackRock has argued alongside other Bitcoin proponents that the oldest and biggest cryptocurrency can be a hedge against governments printing money.
JUST IN: $15 trillion BlackRock reports they're still bullish on Bitcoin despite the -50% decline from its all time high
"bitcoin’s core investment case as an important emerging global monetary alternative and unique portfolio diversifier remains unchanged." pic.twitter.com/lL2tWQ6iZr
Noting that there was seemingly no way governments could not debase their currencies, the report added: “With no credible path for consolidation on the horizon, these fiscal dynamics reinforce the strategic case for assets with supply constraints beyond the discretion of central banks, governed by geology in the case of gold and mathematics and code in the case of bitcoin.”
The Wall Street titan added that bitcoin’s price has consistently been volatile during its 17-year history, but investors shouldn’t be put off.
“And while bitcoin remains inherently volatile, its volatility has trended lower over the past decade as market structure has matured, supported by the growth of derivatives markets and the expansion of and exchange-traded products,” the report noted.
The report continued by saying that the asset still deserves a spot in investors’ portfolios for uncorrelated returns.
Wall Street’s top regulator, the SEC, approved BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust in January 2024.
Of all the Bitcoin ETFs, BlackRock’s product has been the most successful, attracting the most investment and trading volume.
BlackRock has previously said that Bitcoin is in an asset class of its own, and that investors are buying it to hedge against any potential debt crises.
Bitcoin’s price recently stood at $64,713, up by nearly 2% over the past day but flat over a 30-day period. Year-to-date, the asset is down 27% and has shed nearly half of its value since its all-time high last year of $126,080.
Quantitative trading firm and liquidity provider Jane Street has a nearly $1 billion bitcoin position — or 15,394 BTC at today’s prices.
But the position is not held in the form of digital coins: According to a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Wall Street giant holds $990 million in Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, spread across major ETFs like BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund, and Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust.
The lion’s share of the firm’s holdings are in BlackRock’s fund, with $828 million solely invested in the fund, according to the filing.
JUST IN: Wall Street giant Jane Street dropped a bombshell SEC filing:
BlackRock’s fund is the biggest and most popular of the spot Bitcoin ETFs, which were approved and started trading at the beginning of 2024. The fund has received more cash than any other crypto ETF and currently has $47.3 billion in assets under management.
Major firms have been able to buy exposure to the asset via shares of the regulated vehicles that trade on stock exchanges.
Pension funds and U.S. states have all bought exposure to Bitcoin via the ETFs, along with more traditional investments like tech stocks and other U.S. equities.
Jane Street on Monday posted its first losing month in about a decade, revealing roughly $15 billion in July losses.
The loss was driven mainly by its stake in AI-focused hedge fund Situational Awareness, which stumbled badly amid AI bet losses and margin calls, and by bad bets in Asian equity markets.
Despite the loss, Jane Street has made over $40 billion in net trading revenue year-to-date, according to Bloomberg. That’s already more than all of 2025, when it set a Wall Street record with $39.6 billion, beating Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan.
Wall Street titans Edelman Financial and Tudor Investment Corporation last week also revealed significant Bitcoin positions, along with Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth funds.
American investors have reversed course, cashing out of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds after a hot run at the beginning of August.
Data from Farside Investors shows that investors pulled over $385 million from the U.S. funds last week. The week before, the funds had received fresh cash every day, bringing in more than $865 million in investment — their biggest inflows since April.
The turn in sentiment comes as the price of the biggest cryptocurrency remains flat: Bitcoin was recently trading for $64,066, unmoved over the past week and last 30 days.
Investors initially seemed unfazed by the huge Coldcard hack on July 31, when cybercriminals stole over $115 in Bitcoin after discovering a vulnerability in the popular product’s software.
Bitcoin investors also shrugged off a delay in a vote on the long-awaited crypto Clarity Act, continuing to buy into the funds despite negative regulatory news.
But things last week changed, with investors pulling cash out of the major investment vehicles as tensions in the Middle East started to escalate again.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust and Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund experienced the biggest outflows last week, while Morgan Stanley’s fund, which debuted in April, received net inflows.
Current macroeconomic headwinds, such as the U.S. war with Iran and rising oil prices, could see inflation go up again. The price of Bitcoin has typically done well on news that inflation is cooling because investors expect interest rates to come down.
Bitcoin — along with stocks — has experienced price bumps when President Trump has hinted that a deal with Iran was imminent, but the current war appears to have no end in sight.
While the price of Bitcoin has been relatively stable — it hasn’t budged over the past month — a July report from NYDIG said that the asset’s year-to-date performance makes it the worst-performing asset, losing out against U.S. treasuries, silver, and currencies like the Swiss Franc.
It added that if Bitcoin’s price action were to match other drawdowns — like the bear market of 2022 — a “potential cycle low near $38k-$39k” was possible.
Bitcoin is the most important asset in two of Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds, according to regulatory filings.
Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company disclosed Friday that it held a $490 million stake in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust — the second-largest single holding across its entire 13F portfolio.
And a Thursday filing from the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, another state-run fund, revealed a $273.6 million position in the popular Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. The stake is the biggest position in its portfolio.
JUST IN: UAE sovereign wealth funds Mubadala and Abu Dhabi Investment Council report owning a combined $763.7 million of BlackRocks Bitcoin ETF pic.twitter.com/OOnptHhlTA
Both wealth funds’ position in Bitcoin is unchanged since last quarter.
Earlier this year, blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence attributed approximately 6,782 Bitcoins — worth roughly $453.6 million at the time of its analysis — to wallets connected to Bitcoin mining activity linked to the UAE’s Royal Group.
The findings highlight a distinction between how the UAE has built its bitcoin position compared with other governments known to hold large amounts of the asset. Countries such as the United States hold substantial Bitcoin reserves that largely originated from law enforcement seizures.
The UAE’s holdings, by contrast, stem primarily from domestic mining activity rather than confiscated assets.
Since the SEC approved a slew of Bitcoin funds in January 2024, major firms have been able to buy exposure to the asset via shares of the regulated vehicles that trade on stock exchanges.
BlackRock’s IBIT is the most successful crypto ETF: The fund has received more cash than any other crypto ETF and currently has $47.3 billion in assets under management.
Pension funds and U.S. states have all bought exposure to Bitcoin via the ETFs, along with more traditional investments like tech stocks and other U.S. equities.
Switzerland’s largest bank has upped its exposure to Bitcoin, according to regulatory filings.
UBS bought more shares in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, bringing its total position to over $83 million across 2.5 million shares, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The bank has slowly upped its exposure to the biggest cryptocurrency by market cap since BlackRock’s top fund got approved back in 2024.
JUST IN: Switzerland's largest bank UBS discloses owning $83.2 million of BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF pic.twitter.com/Nq9AU4GwdX
The filings are the latest examples of traditional institutions seeking exposure to Bitcoin. ETFs like BlackRock’s Bitcoin Trust — which trades as IBIT — allow investors to buy exposure to the leading cryptocurrency without having to store the digital coin directly.
Since the SEC approved a slew of Bitcoin funds in January 2024, major firms have been able to buy exposure to the asset via shares of the regulated vehicles that trade on stock exchanges.
BlackRock’s IBIT is the most successful crypto ETF: The fund has received more cash than any other crypto ETF and currently has $47.3 billion in assets under management.
Pension funds and U.S. states have all bought exposure to Bitcoin via the ETFs, along with more traditional investments like tech stocks and other U.S. equities.
The shares in IBIT aren’t the only Bitcoin investment UBS has, either: the filing shows that the bank also has exposure to other premium income and other Bitcoin-related ETFs, bringing its ETF holdings in the cryptocurrency to around $90 million.
The bank also has invested in American Bitcoin Corp., the Bitcoin mining company backed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald, Jr., with a position worth a little under $1.5 million.
News dropped earlier this year that the Swiss bank was planning to offer Bitcoin trading to a select group of private clients in the country.
BlackRock has reduced the in-kind conversion minimum for its iShares Bitcoin Trust from $25 million to $1 million, potentially making the mechanism available to a wider group of institutional participants.
The change was disclosed in an updated IBIT filing and relates to in-kind creation and redemption activity, not retail holders directly swapping ETF shares for Bitcoin.
That distinction matters.
A lower minimum can improve institutional access, fund mechanics, and operational flexibility, but it does not mean ordinary brokerage users can redeem IBIT shares for BTC in their personal wallets. The process remains limited to authorized participants and qualifying institutional channels.
Still, the reduction is meaningful because it lowers the operational threshold around the largest Bitcoin ETF in the market.
For more details, visit the official Sec platform.
TL;DR
BlackRock cut IBIT’s in-kind conversion minimum from $25 million to $1 million.
The change expands access for qualifying institutional participants.
Retail investors should not read this as direct Bitcoin redemption access.
Why In-Kind Conversion Matters
ETF creation and redemption mechanics can sound boring, but they matter for market structure.
In-kind processes allow authorized participants to create or redeem ETF shares using the underlying asset rather than cash. In a Bitcoin ETF, that means the mechanism can involve BTC moving in or out of the trust structure through approved institutional plumbing.
That can help keep the ETF price aligned with net asset value.
It can also make creation and redemption more efficient for institutions that already operate in crypto markets or have access to BTC liquidity.
By cutting the minimum from $25 million to $1 million, BlackRock is lowering the size threshold for those institutional mechanics.
This Is Not A Retail Redemption Product
The most important caveat is that this is not a retail feature.
A normal IBIT shareholder using a brokerage account should not assume they can redeem shares for physical Bitcoin. ETF plumbing works through authorized participants, market makers, custodians, and institutional processes.
That is why the language matters.
The change may broaden institutional access, but it does not turn IBIT into a direct self-custody product for retail investors.
IBIT remains an ETF wrapper. It gives price exposure to Bitcoin through traditional brokerage rails, not direct control of private keys.
Why The $1M Threshold Could Help
A $25 million minimum is a high bar.
It limits practical access to larger institutions and makes the in-kind process less useful for mid-sized players. Dropping the threshold to $1 million may allow more firms to participate in creation and redemption activity.
That could improve flexibility around liquidity management.
In theory, more accessible in-kind mechanics can support tighter spreads, better arbitrage, and more efficient ETF operations. The actual impact will depend on usage, market-maker participation, and demand.
But for a product as large as IBIT, even operational changes can matter.
Bitcoin ETF Infrastructure Keeps Maturing
This change also shows that the Bitcoin ETF market is still evolving after launch.
The first milestone was approval. The next phase is refinement: fees, liquidity, options, in-kind mechanics, custody processes, creations, redemptions, and institutional workflows.
These are the details that determine how smoothly Bitcoin exposure fits into traditional portfolios.
BlackRock’s adjustment suggests the ETF structure is being tuned for broader institutional use, not just headline asset gathering.
That is a sign of market maturation.
The Bigger Institutional Signal
The reduction does not mean new Bitcoin demand automatically appears.
But it does make the IBIT structure more usable for a wider range of institutional participants. That matters because institutions care about process as much as exposure. Operational thresholds, redemption mechanics, settlement, custody, and compliance all shape whether products are adopted.
Bitcoin ETF access is no longer simply about whether investors can buy shares.
It is about how deeply the product integrates into institutional trading and portfolio systems.
BlackRock’s $1 million threshold is a small number compared with IBIT’s total scale, but it may make the ETF more flexible at the margin.
For Bitcoin, those margin improvements are how traditional-market infrastructure gets built.
This article is based on BlackRock’s updated iShares Bitcoin Trust filing.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
This report is based on information released by Sec. at Sec
American Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have had their biggest weekly inflow since April, taking in $850 million last week, according to Bloomberg figures.
The major U.S. funds managed by BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, Morgan Stanley and others have received the cash the week after hackers targeted Coinkite’s popular Coldcard product.
Hackers started stealing millions in Bitcoin from Coldcard wallets after discovering a vulnerability in the product’s software. Some estimates put the amount of Bitcoin lost now at over $130 million.
JUST IN: BlackRock tells Bloomberg they've "seen consistently" that Bitcoin ETF investors are buying and holding BTC "long term" on this dip
The incident has rattled the BTC community that typically praises cold storage solutions.
Speaking on Bloomberg’s ETF IQ show on Monday, Robert Mitchnick, global head of digital assets at BlackRock, said that since the ETFs’ approval in 2024, investors have wanted a “very simple turnkey trusted vehicle and not have to worry about all the unique elements of Bitcoin and crypto security that generally custody otherwise would require of an investor.”
Speaking about the Coldcard hack, he added: “What’s also important to recognize is that that is not a breach of Bitcoin or any other crypto protocol — those are individual security mismanagement issues that happen from various individuals or providers.”
It isn’t clear whether investors are rotating out of cold storage into the ETFs since the hack but the funds have seen a spike in trading action.
Bitcoin’s price has typically done well when investors have thrown cash at the products but the leading cryptocurrency is now flat over a seven-day period, priced at $63,861.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust took most of last week’s inflows but other funds managed by Morgan Stanley and Fidelity also experienced trading action.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2024 approved the slew of Bitcoin investment funds which went on to have the most successful launch in the history of ETFs.
Investors previously put off from buying Bitcoin due to the complexities of cold storage and private keys can now buy shares that trade on stock exchanges that track the price of Bitcoin.
The ETFs — managed by other top Wall Street fund managers — currently manage nearly $80 billion in assets, according to Coinglass data.
Investors are throwing cash at spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds following the massive Coldcard hack.
Major U.S. funds managed by BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, Morgan Stanley and others have received a total of $626 million in fresh cash following news of the hack on Friday, according to data from Farside Investors.
Hackers last week started millions in Bitcoin from Coldcard wallets after discovering a vulnerability in the product’s software. Some estimates put the amount of Bitcoin lost now at over $130 million.
Writing on X Thursday, Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior ETF analyst, Eric Balchunas, said the flows might not be related to the hack, but investors would be making a good move to allow fund managers to look after their Bitcoin.
“Who are you gonna trust to not screw up the security of your Bitcoin (or get it back if some scumbag does mess with it): a 5-man boutique in Canada or this guy and his 25,000-employee, $15T by-the-book empire?” wrote Balchunas, posting a picture of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s face, and criticizing Coldcard’s parent company Coinkite’s small team.
who are you gonna trust to not screw up the security of your bitcoin (or get it back if some scumbag does mess with it): a 5-man boutique in Canada or this guy and his 25,000-employee, $15T by-the-book empire? TradFi doesn't seem so lame now after all does it? pic.twitter.com/EHTVeQVcAm
He added: “TradFi doesn’t seem so lame now after all does it?”
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has received most of the new investment from the ETF investors.
The Wall Street titan’s ETF was approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2024 and had the most successful launch in the history of ETFs.
Investors previously put off from buying Bitcoin due to the complexities of cold storage and private keys can now buy shares that trade on stock exchanges that track the price of Bitcoin.
The ETFs — managed by other top Wall Street fund managers — currently manage a total of $77.8 billion in assets, according to Coinglass data.
A firmware flaw in the popular Coldcard hardware wallets — tracing back to a 2021 build issue that skipped the device’s dedicated randomness chip — let an attacker guess weak private keys.
Millions of dollars in Bitcoin has been drained on a daily basis since the attack, and cautious investors have been moving their coins to other storage solutions — including exchanges.
Spain’s largest bank, Banco Santander, has revealed a $4.3 million investment in Bitcoin.
According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the Madrid-based bank bought the exposure via BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust — a total of 129,615 shares.
The filing is the latest example of a traditional institution seeking exposure to the biggest cryptocurrency by market cap.
JUST IN: Spain's largest bank, Banco Santander, reports owning $4.3 million in spot Bitcoin ETFs pic.twitter.com/HfbuaTc3Fh
Over the past year, Santander’s digital bank, Openbank, has allowed customers to buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and began a more friendly approach to marketing digital assets to customers.
BlackRock’s Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) allows investors to buy exposure to Bitcoin without having to own and store the digital coin directly.
The shares trade on a stock exchange and can be bought quickly and easily via a brokerage account.
BlackRock’s IBIT is the most successful crypto ETF: The fund has received more inflows than any other crypto ETF, currently holding $46.9 billion in assets under management, according to its website.
Other major institutions have bought exposure to Bitcoin via the ETFs after their 2024 approval. A large number of investors were previously put off by having to deal with things like storage and private keys but once the SEC approved a slew of ETFs in 2024, new capital entered the space.
The crypto ETF market is already a crowded one, with popular products by top asset managers BlackRock, Fidelity, and bank Morgan Stanley already on the market.
U.S. Bitcoin funds currently manage over $83 billion in assets, according to CoinGlass data.
BlackRock’s IBIT and MicroStrategy are both huge Bitcoin accumulation stories, but they are not doing the same thing, and that distinction matters more as the numbers get bigger.
IBIT gathers Bitcoin passively through ETF demand. Investors buy shares, the fund creates exposure, and Bitcoin flows into the product through the ETF mechanism. MicroStrategy, by contrast, actively raises capital, including debt and preferred equity, to buy Bitcoin for its corporate treasury.
Both roads lead to large BTC holdings, but they tell very different stories about how capital enters Bitcoin.
That is why comparing the two is useful, even if it needs to be done carefully. IBIT’s flows can surge when ETF investors are allocating heavily, while MicroStrategy’s purchases depend on financing windows, market conditions, board decisions, and capital structure choices.
In other words, one is a demand pipe. The other is a corporate balance-sheet strategy.
TL;DR
BlackRock’s IBIT accumulates Bitcoin through ETF investor demand.
MicroStrategy buys Bitcoin through an active corporate treasury strategy funded by capital markets.
The comparison is useful, but ETF flows and corporate purchases move on very different cycles.
IBIT Is A Passive Flow Machine
The power of IBIT is its simplicity.
Investors want Bitcoin exposure in a brokerage account, they buy the ETF, and the product channels that demand into BTC. That makes IBIT one of the cleanest visible measures of institutional and advisor-driven Bitcoin appetite.
When flows are strong, the signal is easy to understand: traditional-market investors are adding Bitcoin exposure through a regulated wrapper.
That does not mean every inflow is long-term conviction. Some buyers may be tactical. Some may rebalance. Some may trade around macro events. But ETF demand is still one of the most important structural changes Bitcoin has ever seen.
IBIT’s scale also changes how people compare Bitcoin buyers.
For years, MicroStrategy was the corporate accumulation story. It was the name everyone watched when discussing public companies and BTC treasuries. IBIT has introduced a different kind of accumulation, one tied to thousands or millions of investors using the ETF market rather than a single company making treasury decisions.
MicroStrategy Is An Active Bitcoin Treasury Engine
MicroStrategy is not passive.
The company has deliberately built itself around Bitcoin, using equity issuance, convertible debt, preferred stock, and other capital-market tools to expand its holdings. That is a very different model from an ETF.
It gives shareholders leveraged exposure to management’s Bitcoin strategy, but it also introduces corporate finance questions that do not exist in a plain ETF.
How is each purchase funded? What are the financing costs? How much dilution is involved? What obligations sit ahead of common shareholders? How much cash does the company need to service debt or preferred dividends?
Those questions matter because MicroStrategy is not just holding Bitcoin in a vault. It is building a financial structure around BTC.
That can be powerful when markets are favorable. It can also become complicated when capital conditions tighten or when investors start examining the cost of each new purchase.
The Race Is Not Apples To Apples
It is tempting to frame IBIT and MicroStrategy as being in a race to own the most Bitcoin.
That makes for a neat headline, but it is not the best way to understand the market.
IBIT does not make a corporate decision to buy Bitcoin because it has a bullish view. It responds to ETF creations and redemptions. If investor demand rises, IBIT buys. If demand weakens, flows slow or reverse.
MicroStrategy is different. It chooses when and how to raise capital, and it chooses when to buy BTC. Its strategy is active, directional, and closely tied to the company’s leadership, financing access, and balance-sheet appetite.
So when IBIT inflows outpace MicroStrategy’s buying over a period, that is meaningful, but it does not mean one model has permanently beaten the other. It means ETF demand was stronger than corporate accumulation during that window.
Those windows can change quickly.
Why Both Matter For Bitcoin
The bigger picture is that Bitcoin now has multiple major accumulation channels.
ETFs bring traditional market demand. Corporate treasuries bring balance-sheet demand. Long-term holders, miners, sovereign entities, private funds, and retail investors all add their own flows.
That diversity matters because it makes Bitcoin’s ownership base broader.
In earlier cycles, the market leaned heavily on crypto-native exchanges and retail trading. Now, some of the biggest visible buyers are entities that sit inside traditional finance or public-company capital markets.
IBIT and MicroStrategy represent two different versions of that shift.
One says Bitcoin can be bought like an ETF allocation. The other says Bitcoin can become the center of a corporate treasury strategy.
The Market Will Keep Comparing Them
Traders will keep watching the numbers because both stories are easy to track.
ETF flow dashboards show daily demand. SEC filings and corporate announcements show MicroStrategy’s purchases and financing moves. Together, they give the market a running scoreboard of Bitcoin accumulation.
But the smarter read is not only who bought more.
It is what kind of capital is entering Bitcoin, how sticky that capital might be, and what risks come with each route.
ETF flows can be fast and reversible, but they bring enormous distribution. Corporate treasury buying can be sticky, but it depends on financing discipline. Neither model is perfect. Both are important.
Bitcoin’s market is becoming more institutional, but not in one single way.
IBIT and MicroStrategy show two sides of the same transformation: Bitcoin is no longer only bought by crypto-native traders. It is being absorbed by ETFs, public companies, and capital-market structures that were not built for Bitcoin originally, but are now reshaping how the asset is held.
US spot Ethereum ETFs have recorded a third consecutive day of net inflows, giving ETH traders another sign that institutional demand is improving after a choppy stretch for the products.
Farside Investors data shows the Ethereum ETF group brought in $37.47 million in net inflows on July 21. BlackRock’s ETHA led the day with $52.79 million in net inflows, while Fidelity’s FETH posted $15.32 million in net outflows.
That split matters. The headline number was positive, but the flow picture was not evenly distributed across issuers. BlackRock continued to attract capital, while Fidelity saw money leave the product.
For Ethereum, the short-term message is still constructive. A third straight day of net inflows suggests demand is not isolated to a single session. But it is also too early to call it a durable trend.
TL;DR
US spot Ethereum ETFs recorded $37.47 million in net inflows on July 21.
BlackRock’s ETHA led with $52.79 million in inflows.
Fidelity’s FETH saw $15.32 million in outflows, showing the demand is still uneven across issuers.
Ethereum ETF Demand Is Improving, But Unevenly
Ethereum ETFs have had a more complicated start than Bitcoin ETFs.
Bitcoin’s spot ETF launch quickly became one of the market’s dominant demand stories. Ethereum’s products have had to fight harder for attention, partly because ETH sits in a different part of the market structure. It is not only a monetary asset or store-of-value trade. It is also tied to staking, DeFi, stablecoins, Layer 2 networks, and smart contract activity.
That makes the ETF story more nuanced.
Investors are not just asking whether ETH is “digital gold.” They are asking whether Ethereum remains the core settlement layer for crypto finance and whether an ETF is the cleanest way to express that view.
A third day of inflows helps answer part of that question. It shows that investors are still allocating through the ETF wrapper, even after periods of weaker demand.
But the issuer split is important. BlackRock pulling in more than $50 million while Fidelity saw outflows suggests capital is concentrating around the largest and most liquid products. That is common in ETF markets. Larger issuers often attract the deepest flows because institutions prefer liquidity, brand familiarity, and tight trading conditions.
For smaller or less dominant products, that can make the competitive environment harder.
Why BlackRock’s ETHA Matters
BlackRock’s ETHA remains one of the key products to watch because BlackRock has already shaped the Bitcoin ETF market.
When BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF began attracting large flows, traders treated that as a major sign of institutional demand. The same logic applies to Ethereum, although the scale is different.
If ETHA continues to lead inflows, the market may start viewing BlackRock’s Ethereum product as the main institutional gateway into ETH exposure.
That would not automatically mean ETH price strength. ETF inflows are only one part of the market. Spot demand, derivatives positioning, staking dynamics, macro liquidity, and broader risk appetite all matter.
Still, ETF flows are visible, trackable, and easy for traders to use as a sentiment gauge.
That is why a positive three-day streak gets attention.
Fidelity Outflows Keep The Picture Balanced
The Fidelity outflow is the part of the data that prevents the story from becoming too bullish.
A healthy ETF market can still have mixed flows across issuers. Money can move from one product to another, or investors can reduce exposure in one fund while adding elsewhere. But outflows from a major issuer show that demand is not broad-based across the full category.
That is a reminder to keep the data in proportion.
The Ethereum ETF group had a positive day. BlackRock led strongly. The streak extended. But this is not the same as saying all Ethereum ETFs are seeing synchronized demand.
The market will need more sessions before the trend becomes more convincing.
ETH Traders Need More Than Three Days
For ETH traders, the key question is whether ETF demand can become persistent.
A few days of inflows can support sentiment, especially when they come during a market that is already watching institutional products closely. But sustained inflows over several weeks would carry more weight.
The ETF story also needs to be read alongside Ethereum’s broader fundamentals.
Ethereum transaction activity, Layer 2 usage, stablecoin settlement, DeFi liquidity, and staking demand all feed into the market’s long-term view of ETH. ETFs give traditional investors access to the asset, but they do not replace the need for Ethereum itself to remain useful on-chain.
That is why the ETF data is important but not complete.
For now, the July 21 inflow number is a positive signal. BlackRock’s ETHA continues to show institutional pull, and the group has extended its inflow streak to three days.
The next test is whether that demand can continue without relying on one issuer to carry the category.
Bitcoin ETF Inflows Extend For Second Week, But Recovery Remains Fragile
US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded a second consecutive week of net inflows, offering a modest sign that institutional demand is stabilizing after a difficult stretch of outflows.
Farside data shows the products brought in approximately $75.7 million during the trading week of July 13–17. Friday was the stronger session, with net inflows of $132.3 million. BlackRock’s IBIT accounted for $136.5 million of inflows on the day, while Fidelity’s FBTC saw $4.2 million in outflows.
That is a constructive shift, but it is not a blowout.
The inflows suggest buyers are returning, yet the size of the recovery remains modest compared with the larger withdrawals seen earlier in the cycle. For Bitcoin, the signal is positive but still needs follow-through.
TL;DR
US spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a second straight week of net inflows.
Weekly inflows were about $75.7 million, with Friday adding $132.3 million.
The recovery is encouraging, but still small compared with prior outflow pressure.
ETF Flows Still Matter For Bitcoin
Spot Bitcoin ETFs have become one of the clearest windows into institutional demand.
They do not capture every buyer. They do not explain every price move. But they show how capital is moving through regulated products that traditional investors can access easily. When ETF flows are strong, Bitcoin often benefits from a cleaner demand story. When flows turn negative, the market starts asking whether institutional appetite is cooling.
That is why the latest two-week inflow streak matters.
After a period of outflows, even a modest return to positive flows can improve sentiment. It shows that investors have not abandoned the products and that buyers are still willing to allocate after weakness.
The strongest recent data point was Friday’s $132.3 million net inflow. BlackRock’s IBIT remained the standout product, while Fidelity’s FBTC posted a small outflow. That split matters because ETF demand is not evenly distributed across issuers.
IBIT has continued to dominate much of the flow conversation, which reinforces BlackRock’s position in the market.
Why The Recovery Is Still Fragile
The numbers are positive, but they need context.
A $75.7 million weekly inflow is helpful, but it is not enough by itself to erase concerns from earlier outflow periods. ETF investors can be patient, but they can also move quickly when macro conditions tighten, volatility rises, or Bitcoin loses momentum.
That means the market needs more than one or two positive weeks before calling this a durable recovery.
Bitcoin is also dealing with multiple forces at once. ETF flows are important, but so are interest-rate expectations, dollar strength, liquidity conditions, corporate treasury demand, derivatives positioning, and broader risk appetite.
ETF inflows can support the price, but they do not create a floor on their own.
The next few sessions will be important because they will show whether Friday’s inflow was a one-day rebound or the start of a stronger allocation trend.
BlackRock Remains The Flow Leader
IBIT’s role continues to stand out.
BlackRock’s fund has become the main institutional reference point for spot Bitcoin ETF demand. When IBIT attracts inflows, traders take notice because it suggests capital is still moving through one of the market’s largest and most accessible regulated products.
That does not mean other issuers are irrelevant. Fidelity, Bitwise, Ark, and others still contribute to the market’s overall flow picture. But IBIT has become the product many traders watch first.
The July 17 data reinforces that pattern. IBIT’s inflows were large enough to offset weakness elsewhere and turn the overall day positive.
For Bitcoin bulls, that is useful. It shows that demand has not disappeared. For bears, the question is whether inflows remain concentrated in one product while broader demand stays uneven.
Both readings are reasonable.
Bitcoin Needs Sustained Demand
The ETF market is now part of Bitcoin’s core structure.
In earlier cycles, traders focused mainly on exchange balances, miner flows, derivatives funding, and macro liquidity. Those still matter. But ETF flows have added a regulated demand channel that can move sentiment quickly.
The current inflow streak gives Bitcoin a better backdrop than it had during the outflow period. But the word “streak” is doing a lot of work. Two weeks is encouraging, not decisive.
If inflows continue, Bitcoin’s institutional demand narrative strengthens again. If they stall, traders may treat the recent move as a temporary pause in a choppier allocation cycle.
For now, the message is measured optimism.
Buyers are returning to US spot Bitcoin ETFs, led by BlackRock. The recovery is real, but still early. Bitcoin needs continued inflows to turn this from a relief signal into a stronger market trend.
This article is based on Farside Investors Bitcoin ETF flow data.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
This report is based on information released by Farside Investors. at Farside Investors
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