The ETF managed by BlackRock holds over 500,000 Bitcoins

The amount of Bitcoin held by the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF from BlackRock has reached 500,380 coins (over $48 billion at the current exchange rate). This has happened in less than a year since its launch and in just 233 trading days.

Back in March, when the BlackRock Bitcoin fund first held over 250,000 Bitcoins, the company’s CEO, Larry Fink, called the iShares Bitcoin Trust the fastest-growing fund in the history of the ETF market. By early November, in terms of assets, BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF surpassed its own gold ETF—iShares Gold ETF.

The principle behind spot ETFs is that fund managers buy cryptocurrency to back the fund’s shares or sell it when those shares are redeemed, while the shares track its market (spot) price. These shares are traded on major exchanges like NYSE, NASDAQ, and CBOE.

The group of 12 U.S. spot ETFs, including BlackRock's and Fidelity's ETFs, now manages over 1.1 million Bitcoins—about 5.5% of the total existing coins. This is comparable to the estimated amount of Bitcoin held in the wallet of Bitcoin's anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Various estimates suggest that he may own between 600,000 and 1.5 million Bitcoins.