• MS institutional portfolio reported holding 28,289 Grayscale BTC (GBTC) shares earlier this year
  • Morgan’s Insight Fund reportedly has the largest amount of GBTC, holding 928,051 shares (about $36 million) as of June.

Morgan Stanley Europe Opportunity Fund reported holding 58,116 shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) as of July 31, according to an SEC filing on Monday. Earlier this year, the fund reported holding 28,289 shares.

The filings reveal that Morgan Stanley has owned sizable amounts of GBTC across multiple institutional portfolios. Morgan’s Insight Fund reportedly has the largest amount, holding 928,051 shares, equivalent to roughly $31 million, as of June.

This isn’t the $4 trillion-asset manager’s first foray into crypto. The news comes after Morgan Stanley confirmed in April that it was offering clients exposure to bitcoin and previously announced that it was one of the participating investors in NYDIG’s $200 million fundraising round. 

Morgan Stanley is one of many financial institutions seeking to meet client demand for exposure to the digital asset class, including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock, to name a few.

Morgan Stanley did not immediately respond to Blockworks’ request for comment.

  • Morgan Chittum is a New York-based reporter covering markets, NFTs, the metaverse and digital assets. Before Blockworks she was a street reporter at New York Daily News, where she wrote about homicide, extremist groups, state politics and other critical topics in New York. She was a Media and Journalism Fellow at the Poynter Institute, where she dabbled in data and investigative journalism. She is published in American Banker, Yahoo News, Chicago Tribune and more.