BlackRock’s crypto ETP holdings edged past Grayscale’s

On August 17, 2024, BlackRock’s two U.S. spot-crypto exchange-traded products stood marginally ahead of four comparable Grayscale products in the on-chain valuation reported by blockchain-intelligence firm Arkham. The crossover placed a traditional asset-management giant ahead of the crypto-native firm that had dominated publicly traded digital-asset funds for years.

The underlying Arkham snapshot was posted on August 16 and remained the subject of contemporaneous reporting on August 17. Arkham valued BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, IBIT, and iShares Ethereum Trust, ETHA, at a combined $21,217,107,987. It valued Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust, Grayscale Ethereum Trust and Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust at $21,202,480,698.

Coinburn calculates the difference at $14,627,289, or approximately 0.069% of Grayscale’s reported total. That was enough to establish a crossover in Arkham’s selected comparison, but far too narrow to treat as permanent in continuously traded bitcoin and ether markets.

What the snapshot measured

Arkham attributed approximately 347,440 BTC and 312,122 ETH to BlackRock’s two products. Its Grayscale comparison included approximately 264,921 BTC and 2.292 million ETH. Arkham converted those token quantities into dollar values using market prices at its observation point.

Those figures were not issuer-reported net asset values, audited financial statements or a consolidated regulatory dataset. They were estimates based on wallets Arkham had identified and labeled as belonging to the products. Arkham had publicly described its ETF-address identification work in January 2024, when it announced that it had located wallets associated with IBIT and several competing bitcoin products.

Because bitcoin and ether trade continuously, the dollar comparison could change without either sponsor receiving or losing a token. Wallet-label revisions, transfers, fund creations or redemptions could also alter the result. The defensible finding for the August 17 record is therefore limited: BlackRock led this specified group under Arkham’s attributed-wallet methodology and contemporaneous valuation.

Why the crossover mattered

Grayscale entered 2024 with a substantial head start because its bitcoin and ether trusts predated the U.S. spot-product approvals. BlackRock entered the same market through products created within the regulated exchange-traded structure authorized during 2024.

The Securities and Exchange Commission approved exchange rule changes for spot-bitcoin products on January 10, 2024. It approved rule changes for ether-based exchange-traded products on May 23. Those decisions authorized listings under specified exchange rules; they did not constitute SEC endorsements of bitcoin, ether or the sponsors.

Against that background, the August crossover illustrated how quickly assets had migrated toward newly available products. It also showed that the institutional contest extended beyond bitcoin after spot-ether products entered the market. The comparison did not identify individual investors or prove that one sponsor’s gains directly caused another’s losses.

Grayscale still led under a broader definition

Arkham issued an important clarification on August 17: its overall Grayscale entity balance remained larger than BlackRock’s when Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund was included. Arkham estimated that non-ETF fund at roughly $460 million. The headline crossover applied only to BlackRock’s two products versus Grayscale’s four specified bitcoin and ether products.

That distinction prevents the snapshot from supporting the broader claim that BlackRock had surpassed every Grayscale digital-asset holding. It instead marked a narrower but consequential change in U.S. exchange-traded crypto products—one supported by attributable on-chain analysis, yet constrained by volatile prices, wallet attribution and product-selection choices.