Who owns the Bitcoin ETFs? What the 13F filings show

As of June 30, 2026, investment managers who report to the SEC on Form 13F declared positions worth about 17.5 billion dollars in the 13 spot bitcoin ETFs listed in the United States. In IBIT, the largest, those positions equal about 27% of the shares outstanding. The rest is held by investors the filings don't identify. This article explains where those figures come from, why other publications give very different numbers and what can be concluded from them.

Provisional figures as of June 30, 2026, from Aureo's original extraction of SEC data. They will be updated with third-quarter filings, due November 16, 2026.

What it means to own a bitcoin ETF

A bitcoin ETF is a trust that buys bitcoin and issues shares that trade on an exchange. The issuer, such as BlackRock for IBIT, manages the fund. A custodian holds the bitcoin. Authorized participants create and redeem large blocks of shares with the fund. The end investor buys shares on the exchange through a bank, an adviser or a broker.

A shareholder has a claim on the trust and exposure to the price. The private keys are controlled by the fund's custodian.

What Form 13F covers

Investment managers with at least 100 million dollars in certain securities must file Form 13F each quarter, no later than 45 days after quarter end (SEC, Form 13F FAQ). The form lists long positions at quarter end.

Several things fall outside it. Individual investors don't file 13Fs, and neither do managers below the threshold or most investors outside the United States. Short positions and futures hedges don't appear. And a manager reporting a position may be acting for its clients rather than investing its own money.

Why published figures disagree

For the same quarter, one industry report estimated that institutions held 44.2% of ETF bitcoin (Crypto Briefing), while CoinShares estimated 20.8% (CoinCraft). One tracker reported positions worth 18.0 billion dollars (cryptoetf.today) and another 30.6 billion (Perception).

To see which comes closer, Aureo downloaded the original SEC files and processed them with the method described at the end. The direct sum comes to about 17.5 billion dollars, close to the 18.0 billion figure. In IBIT, which accounts for roughly two thirds of reported value, 13F positions equal 26.9% of shares. That percentage is a ceiling: removing duplicates between managers can only lower it. With IBIT at that level, a 44% institutional share across all funds would require the other ETFs to show much higher percentages. The primary data don't reproduce that figure.

A likely reason for the gap is how banks and brokers get counted. Many report positions they hold for clients. Counting those as the institution's own investment pushes the percentage up.

What the filings show as of June 30, 2026

1,937 managers reported at least one position in one of the 13 funds. The sum of what they declared is 17,545 million dollars, before removing duplicates between related managers and before reviewing 364 lines with inconsistent data.

In IBIT, 1,470 managers reported 348,107,901 shares worth 11,373 million dollars. The fund had 1,296,040,000 shares outstanding on June 30, according to its own quarterly report (iShares Bitcoin Trust, 10-Q). That is where the 26.9% comes from.

Who shows up

These are among the largest IBIT positions:

Each name plays a different role. Jane Street is a market maker: it buys and sells ETF shares to provide liquidity, and a large position at quarter end may be inventory (Jane Street). Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan handle client accounts, so part of what they report belongs to those clients. Millennium is a multi-strategy fund, and the filing doesn't show whether it holds hedges that offset the position (Millennium).

A long position on a 13F doesn't prove its holder is betting on bitcoin rising.

How it changed since 2024

The number of managers nearly doubled between early 2024 and late 2025 and dipped slightly in 2026. Reported value peaked at 38.8 billion in September 2025 and fell to 17.5 billion by June 2026.

That drop mixes two things: the bitcoin price and the number of shares. We haven't separated them yet, so the table doesn't show how much money came in or went out. The set of funds also changed. Grayscale's Mini ETF did a 1-for-5 reverse split in November 2024 (Grayscale, 8-K). Morgan Stanley launched its own fund in April 2026 (Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust, 10-Q), and Hashdex's DEFI fund delisted in September 2026 (Hashdex).

The rest isn't automatically retail

If 13F filers report at most 27% of IBIT, the other 73% sits with investors these filings don't identify. That group includes people buying on their own, and also small advisers, funds outside the United States and any manager with less than 100 million dollars in reportable securities. Calling all of it "retail" overstates what the data say.

What it means for an investor in Mexico

The filings show that banks, advisers, market makers and hedge funds use these products, and that the number of managers reporting them grew a great deal in two years. They don't say how much of that is a bet of their own, how much is inventory and how much is hedged.

For someone living in Mexico, the practical question is a different one: do you want a share in a U.S. trust, or bitcoin with keys you control? An ETF comes with third-party custody, exchange trading hours and, for some foreign investors, possible U.S. estate tax. We compare the two options in Bitcoin ETFs: advantages and limitations for Latin American investors.

How we got the figures

We downloaded ten quarterly Form 13F data files published by the SEC, covering March 2024 to August 2026, and verified their digital fingerprints (SEC, Form 13F data sets). We identified the 13 share classes by CUSIP: ARKB, BITB, BRRR, BTC, BTCO, BTCW, DEFI, EZBC, FBTC, GBTC, HODL, IBIT and MSBT. We found 41,499 original lines. For each manager and quarter we used the latest complete filing plus later amendments that add positions. We excluded 1,461 option lines, which left 38,620 share lines.

The figures in this article are direct sums. We have not yet removed duplicates between related managers, corrected 364 lines from the latest quarter whose implied price differs by more than 5% from the median, adjusted for the BTC reverse split or classified managers by type. Late filings after August 31 aren't included either.