KEY POINTS
- JPMorgan's 13F shows about $981 million in spot Bitcoin ETFs, Strategy and Coinbase as of Sept. 30.
- Its IBIT stake was worth about $540 million, and its Strategy shares rose 36% to 848,932.
- The filing is a snapshot and may reflect hedging or client trades rather than a bet on price.
JPMorgan Chase held close to $1 billion in crypto-linked stocks and funds at the end of the third quarter, according to its latest 13F filing, as reported by Decrypt. The form is the quarterly disclosure that large institutional investors submit to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Decrypt's tally of the filing puts the bank's combined position in spot Bitcoin ETFs, Strategy and Coinbase at roughly $981 million as of Sept. 30. The outlet noted that adding the bank's stakes in Robinhood and several Bitcoin miners would likely push the total beyond $1 billion.
The biggest holding was BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust, known as IBIT. JPMorgan reported 11,408,930 shares worth about $540 million, a 9.6% rise in share count from the previous quarter, when the position was valued at around $356 million. Smaller stakes in Bitcoin ETFs from Grayscale and Bitwise lifted its total spot Bitcoin ETF exposure to about $549 million.
The bank also increased its position in Strategy, the company that holds Bitcoin as a treasury asset. Its shares rose 36% to 848,932, from 624,387 at the end of June. The stake was worth about $131.3 million, up from $57.9 million three months earlier, a change that reflects both the additional shares and a higher Strategy share price.
A stake of about $301 million in Coinbase completes the core holdings. JPMorgan also disclosed positions in Robinhood and in miners including Core Scientific and Hut 8, along with sizable options tied to IBIT and Strategy.
Decrypt cautioned that a 13F is only a snapshot of holdings on one date and does not capture later changes. It also does not necessarily show a directional bet, since banks often hold such assets to hedge exposure or to facilitate trades for clients. The figure is therefore better seen as a gauge of the scale of the bank's activity in crypto markets than as a sign of conviction.
That context matters because CEO Jamie Dimon has long been a critic of crypto, having called Bitcoin worthless and compared the sector to a fraud. Meanwhile, the bank has kept expanding its digital-asset offerings. According to the report, it recently issued its first Bitcoin price forecast, launched a deposit token called JPM Coin that is tied to bank dollars and runs on Ethereum, and explored tokenized stocks with BlackRock and the DTCC.
The filing arrives during a weak period for Bitcoin products. Decrypt said spot Bitcoin ETFs lost more than $1.4 billion over a recent five-day stretch as investors reduced risk, suggesting institutional demand has cooled since the end of September. The outlet added that Bitcoin has fallen well below its highs and was trading under $69,000 at the time of its report.
