JPMorgan Chase reported 11,408,930 shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), valued at $539,984,685, in the Form 13F it filed with the SEC on Thursday 12 November for the quarter ended 30 September. The same information table lists 848,932 shares of Strategy (MSTR), 36% more than three months earlier, worth $131.3 million, and 1,581,814 shares of Coinbase (COIN) worth $300.6 million. Add two small spot bitcoin funds and you get the figure of about $981 million that Decrypt reported on 13 November.
The numbers are right. The reading that JPMorgan has turned into a bitcoin buyer is not supported by the filing. Most of the rise in value comes from the price of bitcoin in the third quarter, not from new purchases. On the same date the bank’s entities also held put and call options on IBIT, Strategy and Coinbase covering about as many shares as the stock itself, a mix more common in trading and hedging books than in a one-way bet. And the snapshot is six weeks old: bitcoin has lost about a fifth of its value since 30 September.
JPMorgan has made no public comment on the filing, and the filing itself does not say whose positions these are.
What JPMorgan’s bitcoin ETF 13F lists at 30 September
Form 13F is a quarterly list of the US-listed shares, ETFs, convertible notes and listed options that a large manager holds at the end of a quarter. JPMorgan’s covers the whole group: the filing lists 17 other included managers, among them JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. and J.P. Morgan Trust Company of Delaware, and adds up to 35,990 rows worth about $1.84 trillion. The crypto-linked rows are a rounding error in that total, roughly 0.05%.
The table adds up the rows of all the included managers for each security, in the 30 September filing and in the one filed on 12 August for 30 June. Option rows are shown as the value of the shares underneath them, which is how the form reports them.
| Row in the filing | Shares at 30 Jun 2026 | Value at 30 Jun | Shares at 30 Sep 2026 | Value at 30 Sep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), fund shares | 10,407,635 | $355.7M | 11,408,930 | $540.0M |
| IBIT call options (underlying) | 3,945,000 | $134.8M | 3,703,200 | $175.3M |
| IBIT put options (underlying) | 3,495,800 | $119.5M | 2,915,000 | $138.0M |
| Strategy (MSTR), common stock | 624,387 | $57.9M | 848,932 | $131.3M |
| Strategy put options (underlying) | 715,700 | $66.3M | 1,148,500 | $177.6M |
| Strategy call options (underlying) | 338,000 | $31.3M | 349,500 | $54.1M |
| Coinbase (COIN), common stock | 1,395,552 | $211.6M | 1,581,814 | $300.6M |
| Coinbase put options (underlying) | 373,400 | $56.6M | 1,180,000 | $224.2M |
| Coinbase call options (underlying) | 87,000 | $13.2M | none listed | none |
| Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust | 145,717 | $3.9M | 155,785 | $5.8M |
| Bitwise Bitcoin ETF | 65,712 | $2.2M | 66,264 | $3.0M |
| iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA), fund shares | 1,169,431 | $14.3M | 399 | under $0.01M |
The $981 million is the sum of five stock rows: IBIT ($540.0 million), Strategy ($131.3 million), Coinbase ($300.6 million), the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ($5.8 million) and the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF ($3.0 million). It leaves out the options, the convertible notes of Strategy ($9.0 million) and Coinbase ($35.2 million), and the miners. The filing shows no row of size for Fidelity’s FBTC, ARK 21Shares or the original Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.
Ether went the other way. The 1.17 million ETHA shares held at the end of June are down to 399, which means the position was all but closed, while ETHA options on about 1.8 million shares remain. Some crypto stocks were cut hard too. Circle Internet Group fell from 2,656,085 shares ($201.8 million) to 99,093 ($8.3 million), and the AI and bitcoin miner IREN from 2,699,785 shares to 172,550. Others grew: Bitmine Immersion went from 255,112 shares to 3,116,508 ($84.2 million), and puts on 4,642,500 shares. Robinhood, at $2.11 billion, is the largest crypto-adjacent line of all, but it is a broker and Decrypt left it out of the $981 million.
Most of the rise in IBIT is the bitcoin price, not buying
IBIT’s line grew by $184.3 million, or 52%, in the quarter. The share count grew by 1,001,295, or 9.6%. The filing values IBIT at about $47.33 a share at 30 September, against $34.18 at 30 June, and the Nasdaq close on 30 September was $47.34, so the two match.
Split the change in two. The 10.4 million shares already held at the end of June gained about $137 million on price alone. The million shares added are worth about $47 million at the September value. So roughly three quarters of the increase is the market, a quarter is new shares. JPMorgan did add to IBIT, but on a modest scale compared with the headline.
Strategy is the line where the share count really moved: up 224,545 shares, or 36.0%, while the value more than doubled, from $57.9 million to $131.3 million. Coinbase rose 13.3% in shares and 42% in value. In both cases the price did a large part of the work, and in both cases the option rows next to the stock changed even more.
JPMorgan’s IBIT options: puts and calls about the size of the stock
The rows most coverage skipped are the options. The SEC’s Form 13F guidance says option positions are entered with the details of the underlying security, so the dollar figure is the value of the shares the contracts cover, not what the options cost. It also says short positions are not reported and are not netted against long ones, and that options a manager writes, meaning sold to someone else, are left out too. So every option row here is a contract the bank’s entities bought. The form gives no strike prices and no expiry dates.
Read with that in mind, the picture changes. On IBIT, JPMorgan’s entities held calls on 3.7 million shares and puts on 2.9 million, together about $313 million of underlying, next to $540 million of fund shares. On Strategy, the puts cover 1,148,500 shares, more than the 848,932 shares of stock held. On Coinbase, the puts more than tripled in the quarter, from 373,400 to 1,180,000 shares, about three quarters of the stock line.
A put gains when the price falls. A holder that owns a stock and holds puts on a similar or larger number of shares is protected against a fall, in part or in full depending on the strikes, which the filing does not show. Across IBIT, Strategy and Coinbase, the option rows add up to about $0.77 billion of underlying against about $0.97 billion of stock. That mix is common at dealers that make markets in options, hedge notes sold to clients or finance client positions, and less so at an investor betting one way on bitcoin. The filing does not say which applies here, and the options JPMorgan may have sold are not in it at all.
The filing cannot tell us which of these it is. It also leaves out everything that is not a listed US security: bitcoin futures on CME, swaps, any short sale of IBIT, and the bitcoin or ETF shares JPMorgan may hold in custody for clients, which are the clients’ assets, not the bank’s.
One filing, 18 JPMorgan entities
The 13F of a group like JPMorgan pools the parent and 17 other included managers in a single filing: the asset managers, the private bank, the trust companies and the broker-dealer J.P. Morgan Securities LLC. A row can hold fund assets of JPMorgan Asset Management clients, shares held to hedge a structured note and inventory of the market-making desk at the same time. Decrypt reached a similar conclusion, reading the holdings as a measure of the bank’s activity in crypto markets.
The house view, where JPMorgan publishes one, points elsewhere. Its long-term capital market assumptions put a 10% return on bitcoin and still keep it out of the portfolios, as we reported on 20 October in our piece on JPMorgan’s long-term assumptions for bitcoin. A trading book that holds ETF shares and options is a different thing from a recommendation.
JPMorgan’s IBIT line has moved both ways since 2025
The bank’s last five quarterly 13Fs do not show a steady buyer either. The fund-share line fell by 43% at the end of 2025, while the call options on IBIT jumped to 8.2 million shares, then rebuilt over three quarters.
| Quarter end (filing date) | IBIT fund shares | Value | Calls (underlying shares) | Puts (underlying shares) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Sep 2025 (7 Nov 2025) | 5,284,190 | $343.5M | 1,042,500 | 2,050,900 |
| 31 Dec 2025 (11 Feb 2026) | 3,027,614 | $150.3M | 8,245,000 | 4,158,400 |
| 31 Mar 2026 (13 May 2026, restated) | 8,302,691 | $312.8M | 3,775,000 | 4,756,400 |
| 30 Jun 2026 (12 Aug 2026) | 10,407,635 | $355.7M | 3,945,000 | 3,495,800 |
| 30 Sep 2026 (12 Nov 2026) | 11,408,930 | $540.0M | 3,703,200 | 2,915,000 |
A swing like the one at the end of 2025, fund shares down and calls up, can come from a desk changing how it carries an exposure, for itself or for clients; the filing does not say. It is not the trace of one position bought and held. The values move with the price too: a smaller IBIT line in September 2025 was worth more than a larger one in March 2026.
Morgan Stanley holds more, and Harvard did not move
JPMorgan is not the largest bank holder among the filings out so far. Morgan Stanley’s 13F, filed on 13 November for the same date, lists 19,516,853 IBIT shares worth $923.9 million, up 18.4% in shares from June. It also lists 10,881,757 Strategy shares worth $1.67 billion, about 12.7 times JPMorgan’s Strategy line, and Coinbase stock worth $694.0 million. The same limits apply: Morgan Stanley’s filing pools 24 other included managers, among them its wealth-management arm Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and its broker-dealer Morgan Stanley & Co.
Harvard Management Company, which runs the university’s endowment, filed on 13 November too. Its 18-row table holds 3,044,612 IBIT shares worth $144.1 million at 30 September, exactly the share count of June. IBIT is its only crypto line. The value rose from $101.4 million because the price rose, with no sale and no purchase.
| Filer (filing date) | IBIT at 30 Sep | Change in IBIT shares since 30 Jun | Strategy stock at 30 Sep | Coinbase stock at 30 Sep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JPMorgan Chase (12 Nov) | $540.0M | +9.6% | $131.3M | $300.6M |
| Morgan Stanley (13 Nov) | $923.9M | +18.4% | $1,665.9M | $694.0M |
| Harvard Management Co (13 Nov) | $144.1M | unchanged | none | none |
Several closely watched filers had not published their third-quarter 13F on EDGAR at 06:00 UTC on Saturday, among them Goldman Sachs, Mubadala Investment Company, the Abu Dhabi Investment Council and Millennium Management. The 45-day deadline falls on Saturday 14 November this time, and the SEC’s own table of deadlines puts the third-quarter 2026 filing date at Monday 16 November.
Since 30 September, the same shares are worth about $230 million less
Bitcoin closed 30 September at $83,556 on Coinbase (daily candle ending 24:00 UTC). It changed hands at about $66,900 at 05:51 UTC on Saturday 14 November (Coinbase one-minute candle), down about 20%. The listed products fell with it, and the stocks fell further.
| Security | Close 30 Sep (20:00 UTC) | Close 13 Nov (21:00 UTC) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| IBIT | $47.34 | $38.94 | -17.7% |
| Strategy (MSTR) | $153.09 | $111.62 | -27.1% |
| Coinbase (COIN) | $186.41 | $127.65 | -31.5% |
Closes are Nasdaq’s historical quotes. Morgan Stanley’s filing values the three securities at exactly the 30 September closes. Our own arithmetic follows: priced at Friday’s closes, the 30 September share counts would be worth about $444 million for IBIT, $94.8 million for Strategy and $201.9 million for Coinbase. That is about $741 million instead of $972 million in the filing, roughly $231 million or 24% less. The Coinbase gap is a little wider because the filing values those rows at about $190 a share, above the 30 September close; the form does not say why.
This is a mark, not a loss anyone has booked. We do not know whether the bank kept, sold or added to these positions after 30 September, and puts gain value in a fall like this one. The next filing, due by 16 February 2027 for the quarter ending 31 December, will show the end-of-year book.
The money leaving the funds is a separate measure. US spot bitcoin ETFs lost $284 million on 12 November, a sixth straight day of net outflows, $204 million of it from IBIT, according to SoSoValue data covered in our analysis of the US session of 13 November. Strategy has its own date: MSCI removes it from its USA, World and ACWI indexes at the close of 30 November, which we covered when MSCI confirmed it.
How to read a bank’s 13F without the headline
The form answers one question: which listed US securities did this manager hold, long, on the last day of the quarter. It is filed up to 45 days later, priced at the quarter-end close, and silent on shorts, futures, swaps, strikes and who the position is for. For a single-strategy fund that holds a few names, it can say a lot. For a universal bank with tens of thousands of rows, a client book and a derivatives desk, it mostly measures activity.
For ETF shares, it also says nothing about the fund’s own flows: a bank can report more IBIT shares in a quarter when the fund itself shrank. If you are new to these products, our guide to how spot bitcoin ETFs work, their fees and their flows explains creations, redemptions and why the share price tracks bitcoin.
The next pieces of the picture arrive on Monday 16 November, when the remaining third-quarter 13Fs are due, Goldman Sachs and the Abu Dhabi funds among them. They will carry the same 30 September date, before the 20% fall.