Tudor Investment has increased its BlackRock Bitcoin ETF stake by 18.9% in the second quarter, ending a year-long run of reductions while cutting most of its reported call-option exposure to the fund.
Summary
- Tudor Investment increased its BlackRock Bitcoin ETF stake by 18.9% in the second quarter.
- The hedge fund added 109,446 IBIT shares, taking its total holding to 688,529 shares worth about $22.9 million.
- Tudor cut its reported IBIT call options by about 85% while its put position remained roughly unchanged.
- The purchase ended a year-long run of reductions from Tudor’s late 2024 peak of more than 8 million IBIT shares.
The Securities and Exchange Commission filing submitted on Aug. 14 showed that the macro hedge fund founded by billionaire Paul Tudor Jones held 688,529 shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, or IBIT, as of June 30, up from 579,083 shares at the end of March.
Tudor added 109,446 shares during the quarter, taking the reported value of the position to about $22.9 million. The purchase reversed the direction of its IBIT holdings after the firm spent much of 2025 reducing a position that had once exceeded 8 million shares.
At the end of 2024, Tudor held more than 8 million IBIT shares worth roughly $427 million. Successive reductions through 2025 left the latest share count more than 90% below that peak, meaning the second-quarter purchase recovered only a small part of the exposure previously sold.
The position is also limited compared with the size of Tudor’s portfolio. The firm manages more than $100 billion in assets, while the $22.9 million IBIT stake represented only a fraction of its reported securities holdings at the end of June.
Tudor Investment increased shares while cutting IBIT calls
Alongside the purchase of direct shares, Tudor substantially reduced the call options it reported against BlackRock’s Bitcoin fund.
Its IBIT call position fell by about 85% during the quarter, dropping to the equivalent of 148,000 underlying shares from 998,000 at the end of March. The firm’s reported put exposure remained roughly unchanged.
The filing establishes Tudor’s positions at June 30 but does not disclose the strike prices or expiry dates for the options. It also does not show whether the reduction resulted from sales, expirations or another change in the firm’s strategy, limiting what can be inferred from the lower call position.
Form 13F itself provides only a quarter-end snapshot of certain U.S.-listed securities held by institutional investment managers. Filers generally have up to 45 days after a quarter ends to submit the report, while short positions and many other forms of exposure are not disclosed.
As previously explained by crypto.news in June, 13F reports can show long positions in listed crypto investment products but not directly held cryptocurrencies, complete hedges, cost bases or trades that were opened and closed within the reporting quarter.
Tudor’s filing therefore confirms that its direct IBIT share count increased between the March 31 and June 30 reporting dates, while providing only a partial view of the hedge fund’s total Bitcoin-related exposure.
Other institutions also added BlackRock Bitcoin ETF shares
Tudor’s purchase was disclosed during a busy round of second-quarter institutional filings involving BlackRock’s Bitcoin product.
Morgan Stanley reported on Aug. 14 that it had increased its IBIT stake by 23% during the second quarter, taking its position to about 16.5 million shares from roughly 13.4 million at the end of March.
The bank added approximately 3.04 million shares, although the reported value of the holding fell from about $667 million to $549 million as Bitcoin prices declined during the quarter. Morgan Stanley also disclosed 2.57 million shares of its own Bitcoin Trust, valued at about $43.3 million, after the fund began trading in April.
UBS likewise reported a larger position in BlackRock’s fund. An Aug. 13 SEC filing showed the Swiss bank held about 2.5 million IBIT shares valued at nearly $90 million at June 30, compared with about 549,000 shares at the end of 2025.
The change represented an increase of roughly 355% in its share count over six months, according to the UBS filing coverage published Aug. 13. Like other 13F reports, however, the filing does not determine whether all of the reported shares represented proprietary investments or assets held for clients.
Not every large holder increased its allocation. Harvard Management Company kept its 3.04 million IBIT shares unchanged during the second quarter, ending two consecutive quarters of reductions.
Harvard previously held 6.81 million shares at the end of September 2025 before cutting the position to 5.35 million in the fourth quarter and then reducing it by another 2.31 million shares during the first quarter of 2026. Its remaining position was valued at about $101.4 million at June 30.
The same second-quarter holdings report showed that Abu Dhabi investment entities Mubadala Investment Company and Abu Dhabi Investment Council also left their IBIT share counts unchanged. Mubadala held 14.72 million shares worth about $490.1 million, while the council reported 8.22 million shares valued at approximately $273.6 million.
Paul Tudor Jones has backed Bitcoin as an inflation hedge
Tudor’s renewed purchase follows several years of public support for Bitcoin from Jones, who first laid out his investment case for the asset in 2020.
Jones initially presented Bitcoin as protection against monetary expansion and inflation, later continuing to discuss it alongside gold and other scarce assets. His position focused in part on Bitcoin’s fixed supply and the potential loss of purchasing power in traditional currencies.
During a June 2025 Bloomberg interview, Jones said Bitcoin, gold and equities could form part of a portfolio designed to protect against inflation, with allocations adjusted to account for Bitcoin’s higher volatility.
At the time, he argued that policymakers dealing with large debt burdens could seek to keep real interest rates below inflation. Jones said assets such as Bitcoin and gold would become important stores of value under those conditions.
Jones had earlier discussed allocating roughly 1% to 2% of a portfolio to Bitcoin but did not provide a new percentage during the 2025 interview.
The hedge fund manager also maintained a positive view of Bitcoin during an earlier period of regulatory pressure in the United States. In May 2023, he said he intended to retain a small allocation to the cryptocurrency while citing its fixed supply as part of its investment case.
Bitcoin ETF inflows returned ahead of Tudor filing
Tudor’s quarter-end position was disclosed after U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded another period of net inflows in early August.
The funds attracted about $853.5 million over five consecutive trading days from Aug. 3 through Aug. 7, according to SoSoValue data cited in an Aug. 8 report. BlackRock’s IBIT accounted for about $694 million of the total.
The five-day inflow streak began with $170.1 million in combined net inflows on Aug. 3, followed by $211.5 million on Aug. 4 and $244.4 million on Aug. 5. The products then received about $128.8 million on Aug. 6 and $98.85 million on Aug. 7.
BlackRock’s fund had already recorded a $209.4 million single-day inflow on July 7 as total U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF inflows reached $265.7 million for the session. Fidelity’s FBTC, Bitwise’s BITB, ARK 21Shares’ ARKB and Grayscale’s Bitcoin Mini Trust also received net inflows that day, while Grayscale’s GBTC posted withdrawals.
BlackRock describes IBIT as a product designed to provide exposure to Bitcoin while reducing the custody and operational requirements involved in holding the cryptocurrency directly. The fund carried a 0.25% sponsor fee and reported a net asset value of $35.58 per share as of Aug. 14.
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