(Bloomberg) — Bitcoin was once conceived as a way to escape the financial system. Increasingly, some of its biggest holders are choosing to move deeper inside it.
Wall Street is making it cheaper and easier for investors to swap large crypto holdings for shares in exchange-traded funds, allowing them to retain exposure to Bitcoin while moving their wealth from private wallets and crypto platforms into the machinery of mainstream finance.
What began as a bespoke service for the very wealthy is becoming more routine. BlackRock Inc. cut the minimum size for such transactions to $1 million in July from $25 million when the process first became available. Since US regulators last summer permitted in-kind creations, which allow investors to swap crypto for ETF shares, more digital assets have been moving into funds this way and the market infrastructure has steadily expanded.
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That pitch has acquired an extra edge amid a spate of kidnappings, hacks and custody failures involving crypto wealth. Investors can simplify how they hold the asset, shedding the burden of private keys, digital wallets and self-custody while gaining some of the protections of a conventional financial product. And because the Bitcoin is exchanged rather than first sold for cash, that shift can be accomplished without necessarily triggering an immediate capital-gains tax bill, depending on the investor’s circumstances.
“It’s going to keep growing because we keep expanding the access,” said Robbie Mitchnick, head of digital assets at BlackRock. “People see things happen in the outside world — whether it’s kidnappings, ransom, custody failures — that motivate them to make this switch for all or some of their holdings.”
Bitcoin surged over the past week to briefly top $80,000, as improving market conditions and returning investor demand accelerated a rally that had begun with a squeeze on bearish positions.
The transactions use the same in-kind creation process that underpins much of the ETF industry. Investors contribute Bitcoin or other digital assets to a fund holding the same asset and receive ETF shares in return, with an authorized participant or market maker handling the transfer.
The scale is already material at BlackRock. Its IBIT fund, the largest of the US spot Bitcoin ETFs, has facilitated more than $5 billion of such conversions, according to Mitchnick, up from more than $3 billion when Bloomberg reported on the trend last October.
The process, per Mitchnick, can take more than a week, and inquiries are coming from both US and international clients.
The first time Bitwise handled such an in-kind transaction, the deal had to be worth at least $100 million to secure the required support from authorized participants. The threshold later fell to $50 million. It is now $3 million.
“The whole process is still bespoke, from introducing a client to a market maker to working with the adviser, but it’s becoming more standardized,” said Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of Bitwise.
The process was once slow, Hougan said. “Now it is more like a conveyor belt, and, in the future, it will be more like a push button. It’s part and parcel of this becoming an institutionalized asset.”
Signs of broader adoption are showing up across the industry. At Morgan Stanley, in-kind conversions account for about 5% to 7% of overall holdings in its roughly $560 million spot Bitcoin ETF, MSBT, according to Ally Wallace, global head of ETFs at Morgan Stanley Investment Management.
“We have had some trades like this come to fruition but there is a lengthy education process related to this type of transaction which takes time and results in a longer lead time,” she said.
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At 21shares, completed in-kind transactions over the past three months have averaged about $5 million in size, according to Alistair Perry, head of capital markets.
The mechanism is also spreading beyond Bitcoin. Grayscale Investments LLC and VanEck use in-kind transactions for Ether products, while Bitwise also carries them out for Ether and Solana.
At Grayscale, the shift has been rapid. In March, 28% of gross Bitcoin creations and 57% of gross Ether creations were processed in-kind. By June, those shares had climbed to 62% and 63%, respectively, according to Krista Lynch, the firm’s head of trading and capital markets.
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The remaining constraint is the plumbing. Transactions must pass through an authorized participant or market maker willing to handle the crypto, adding costs that help explain why the service began with very large holders and why minimums remain high.
Still, minimums could fall further as more intermediaries build the capacity to handle crypto or find creative ways to bundle up client orders, potentially opening the service beyond whales.
“Today, this crypto-native use case is in full effect,” Lynch said. “We also increasingly see ETF market makers embracing the in-kind feature as they gravitate back to the original, and often more efficient, way in which ETPs are classically operated.”
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