In new filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), banking giant Morgan Stanley has revealed some of its funds added Bitcoin exposure in Q3.
For the period ending September 30, Morgan Stanley’s Growth Portfolio Fund, for example, added 1.5 million shares of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). Similarly, its Insight Fund added nearly 600,000 shares over the period.
Other Morgan Stanely funds added exposure as well, suggesting that Morgan Stanley fund managers are becoming more comfortable adding Bitcoin to their portfolios.
The SEC filings were first highlighted by the Twitter account Macroscope.
The releases come at a time when Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman has been more outspoken about Bitcoin and other crypto investments, stating in October that he didn’t think that “crypto is a fad.”
The comments suggest a new openness to crypto assets, though they demonstrate that Gorman is far from educated on how Bitcoin alone provides the foundation for a decentralized alternative to today’s government-controlled financial systems.
Traded on the OTCQX market since 2013, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust allows institutional and high net-worth investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin, though there is a holding period of 12 months for the shares.
The filing is also notable, as per Barron’s, the GBTC offering is struggling of late. As noted by the report, Bitcoin has outperformed the fund so far in 2021 at a time when GBTC has faced competition from new Bitcoin futures ETFs now available to institutional investors.
