Morgan Stanley boosts holdings in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust

One of the largest US banks, Morgan Stanley, during July–September continued to build its position in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) through various funds available to its clients.

In new SEC filings, Morgan Stanley has disclosed a dramatic increase in Bitcoin exposure in its asset management business.

Earlier this year, Morgan reported buying Grayscale BTC in a large number of investment funds. For the three funds with the largest Grayscale holdings…

— MacroScope (@MacroScope17) November 24, 2021

The largest holdings were in the Morgan Stanley Growth Portfolio, which bought 1,511,965 GBTC shares, bringing total to 3,642,118 GBTC shares. Their value amounted to $192,829,700, equivalent to 0.52% of assets under management.

Two other funds — Morgan Stanley Insight Fund and Morgan Stanley Global Opportunity Portfolio — increased their GBTC holdings from 928,051 to 1,520,549 shares and from 919,805 to 1,463,714 shares, respectively.

In October, the investment bank barred wealth-management staff from offering clients the ProShares futures Bitcoin ETF. Prior to that, CEO James Gorman said that client interest in Bitcoin was tepid.

Earlier, Morgan Stanley began assembling a team that will focus on studying the impact of cryptocurrencies on equities and fixed‑income instruments.