- A recent report published by ARK Invest shed light on institutional Bitcoin holding.
- The sentiment of institutional and large capital investors has been bullish for months.
If we are to believe the latest figures, 70% of the 19 million Bitcoin [BTC] in circulation has not moved for over a year. The figure represented an all-time high (ATH) in a year in both relative and absolute terms.
The finding has been revealed in a report published by ARK Invest titled, The Bitcoin Monthly – The Dawn of the ETF Era?
During the crypto winter of 2022, investors held onto about 70% of the total BTC supply.
Source: ARK Invest
Nearly 8,000 BTC is live on over-the-counter (OTC) exchanges, with an impressive 60% increase this quarter. ARK uses OTC as an index to monitor institutional investment activity. The OTC figure matches the Bitcoin holdings of institutional and large capital investors.
As we can see, sentiment from institutional and large capital investors has been bullish for months. The report for its part stated,
“In our view, increased balances on OTC desks suggest that institutions and other major capital distributors are increasingly turning to Bitcoin.”
BTC ETF deposits result in NAV discount on GBTC
The report inspects the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), one of the largest BTC trust firms for large investors. GBTC’s discount to net asset value (NAV) was 30% in June 2023.
Source: ARK Invest
It means that the share price of GBTC is 30% lower than the price of the underlying asset i.e. BTC. Again, the discount is the lowest in nearly a year.
The report attributes the drop in the discount to the net asset value of leading asset manager BlackRock filing for spot BTC exchange-traded fund (ETF) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Readers will recall that Grayscale filed a complaint against the SEC for the denial of its application to convert GBTC into a spot Bitcoin ETF.
BlackRock is not the only traditional finance company (TradFi) to apply for spot BTC ETF. Other asset managers such as Fidelity, VanEck, 21Shares, and WisdomTree have also recently done so.