More than ever, whales are crowding the pool of liquidity for bitcoin mining stocks.
Institutional holdings in public bitcoin miners have accelerated since the last bull run, so much so that 9 out of 13 largest public bitcoin miners by market cap have 40% or more of their outstanding shares owned by institutions.
Core Scientific stands out, with a tremendous 85.61% of its stock in the hands of institutions. On the opposite side of the spectrum, BitFuFu’s share of institutional holding is shockingly sparse at 0.39%. Bitdeer, one of the largest stocks in the bunch both in terms of market cap and MWs under management, is lower than we might expect, as well, perhaps indicating that Wall Street has a bias against Asia-based publicly traded bitcoin miners.
In the chart below, we break down the top 10 institutional holders for 13 bitcoin miners by total shares owned, percentage ownership, and total value of held shares (as of market close on February 18, 2025).
There are a few usual suspects that show up across the board, with Blackrock (which is the ultimate or penultimate institutional holder for all of its allocations except for core Scientific) and Vanguard holding the most shares out of all of the institutions. Other honorable mentions include Morgan Stanley, State Street, Geode Capital Management, Van Eck, UBS, Invesco, and Vident Advisory.
Blackrock takes the cake for total holdings of the bitcoin miners in our list. Its total portfolio value is a buck shy of $2 billion, whereas Vanguard’s is a close second at $1.8 billion. The third largest allocator in our group, V3 Holdings, notably only holds shares of Cipher Mining, of which it holds 39% of outstanding stock.
It’s worth noting that some of these allocations provide liquidity for investment vehicles for retail and institutional investors alike. Blackrock and Vanguard, for instance, use their holdings largely for their investment products, namely Blockrock’s ETFs and Vanguard’s index funds. Other institutions, like State Street, may be holding shares in custody for clients, instead of holding them for their own portfolio.
Regardless, these institutional holdings are a reminder that the market still has an appetite for public bitcoin miners despite the bitcoin ETFs, just as it has appetite for gold and silver miners even with plenty of available gold investment vehicles.
Header image by Aditya Vyas via Unsplash
