Merrill, Wells Fargo Offering Bitcoin ETFs to Top Clients: Report

The question of whether retail investors are getting into the action may soon be definitively answered.

2 min read

Feb 29, 2024

With spot Bitcoin ETFs continuing to see a torrent of interest and investment seven weeks into their existence, two of the most storied brands in investing have begun to offer access to the red-hot investment vehicles: Merrill—the wealth management division of Bank of America—and Wells Fargo, according to a Bloomberg report on Thursday.

Citing anonymous sources “familiar with the matter,” the report notes that the two firms are extending the offer to wealth management clients with brokerage accounts.

The “newborn nine” Bitcoin spot ETFs in the U.S. have swelled to hold more than $17 billion in the top cryptocurrency since being approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on January 10. That's on top of Grayscale, which converted its existing Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), launched in 2013, into a spot Bitcoin ETF and holds another $25 billion in BTC.

ETFs allow investors exposure to the notoriously volatile Bitcoin without holding the asset directly. And that's clearly an attractive proposition.

With Bitcoin's bullish moves this year so far, major crypto funds have seen unprecedented inflows—including an eye-popping $2.45 billion tallied two weeks after Bitcoin spot ETFs were approved. Last week, that torrent slowed—but “slow” is relative, with nearly $600 million stuffed into the funds in just seven days.

Analysts are crunching the numbers and scanning the market to determine where all the money flowing into Bitcoin spot ETFs is coming from, a key question being whether retail investors—consumers, rather than professionals, who invest via brokerage companies—have already nabbed a significant piece of the action. Today's news from two of the largest brokerage firms suggests that's beginning to happen.

As for the firms that haven't yet opened the doors to their customers?

"I'm sure pressure is mounting for them,” wrote Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas on Twitter. “They like to see track record and get paid off but [with] grassroots demand like this they gonna have to expedite.”

Get crypto news straight to your inbox--

sign up for the Decrypt Daily below. (It’s free).

Get Email!

United States of Bitcoin? These States Are Considering BTC Reserves

Donald Trump and his political allies are plugging away at plans to stockpile Bitcoin at a national level in the U.S. Treasury. And now, with the asset’s price repeatedly soaring to new peaks since Election Day, some U.S. states are following suit. So far, three states are fielding proposals to establish strategic Bitcoin reserves, while digital asset advocates are calling for other local governments to do the same. Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Is Now on the Table—Here's How It Could Work Here'...

AI Won’t Tell You How to Build a Bomb—Unless You Say It’s a 'b0mB'

Remember when we thought AI security was all about sophisticated cyber-defenses and complex neural architectures? Well, Anthropic's latest research shows how today’s advanced AI hacking techniques can be executed by a child in kindergarten. Anthropic—which likes to rattle AI doorknobs to find vulnerabilities to later be able to counter them—found a hole it calls a “Best-of-N (BoN)” jailbreak. It works by creating variations of forbidden queries that technically mean the same thing, but are expre...

Elon Musk and Dogecoin: How the Billionaire Became the 'Dogefather'

As Dogecoin makes a comeback off the back of Bitcoin’s surge, some may be pondering: Where did the asset come from? What’s it for? And what’s Tesla CEO Elon Musk got to do with it? The original meme coin’s boom largely has the world’s richest man to thank. Musk’s obsession with shitposting helped boost the coin to a top 10 cryptocurrency. It’s been a wacky ride over the past few years, culminating in Musk's appointment to co-lead a government agency called D.O.G.E.—yes, really. But we'll explai...

News

Courses

Deep Dives

Coins

Videos