Jane Street Lifts Fidelity Bitcoin ETF Stake to $509M, Trims IBIT
Jane Street's Nov. 12 Form 13F shows its FBTC stake up 691% to 7,010,008 shares worth $509.2M at Sept. 30, while IBIT shares fell 19% to 20.2M. It also added nearly 9M ARKB shares and more than doubled ETHA.
Up 691%. Jane Street grew its FBTC position from 886,736 shares to 7,010,008 in the third quarter, worth $509.2 million at Sept. 30 versus $45.3 million three months earlier. The trading firm's Form 13F, filed Nov. 12 with the SEC, also shows a cut to its BlackRock IBIT stake.
Jane Street trimmed IBIT to 20,221,140 shares from 24,878,191, a drop of roughly 19%. A higher share price still lifted the position's value to $957.3 million from $828.2 million. IBIT holds about $56 billion in net assets, so the trim barely registers against the fund's size.
Other ETF moves in the filing
Across FBTC, IBIT and ARKB, Jane Street's combined holdings are valued at about $1.79 billion, up from about $926 million in June.
The ARKB (ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF) addition was large too: nearly 9 million shares. Published tallies of the filing disagree on the value. One puts the added shares near $249 million. Another has the holding growing from 2,700,151 to 11,689,194 shares, worth $323.7 million versus $52.5 million.
Ether exposure rose. Jane Street added about 7.83 million shares of ETHA, BlackRock's Ether ETF, more than doubling the position. Total shares went from 7,606,021 to 15,438,249, valued at about $310.6 million versus $90.4 million.
The filing also lists IBIT call options on 34.97 million shares and put options on 45.32 million shares.
Reading the numbers
Caution applies. The filing is a Sept. 30 snapshot and shows nothing about later trading. Jane Street is a market maker and authorized participant, the firms that create and redeem ETF shares, so some holdings may be inventory rather than a directional view on Bitcoin.
Other institutions moved differently. JPMorgan raised its IBIT holdings 9.6%, by about 1 million shares to 11.41 million, worth about $540 million, while cutting ETHA to 399 shares from 1.17 million. Hong Kong-based Laurore cut IBIT by 33%, or 1.6 million shares, to about 3.25 million shares, worth about $154 million. Barclays reportedly raised its IBIT shares 48%, and Citigroup opened a 1.64 million share FBTC position.
Context
Jane Street has rotated between issuers before. It cut FBTC by about 60% in the first quarter, then raised IBIT to nearly 24.88 million shares in the second, when its combined Bitcoin ETF holdings already topped $1 billion. Data from 13F Pro shows it was the largest reported institutional IBIT holder at the end of Q2 after a 324% rise in its share count.
The Q3 shift toward FBTC, ARKB and ETHA reads as diversification across issuers, not a retreat from Bitcoin. Fidelity's macro chief has kept favoring Bitcoin over gold, but a market maker's book says little about conviction. The filing is on SEC EDGAR.
