Wall Street's Crypto Ownership: A Complex Web of Infrastructure

Wall Street's crypto exposure has reached new heights, with public companies holding over $150 billion in digital assets on their balance sheets. Despite the growth, however, the question remains: who actually holds this vast amount of cryptocurrency?

A recent study mapped Wall Street's crypto ownership across five layers, revealing a complex web of infrastructure and ownership. The first layer includes SEC 13F filings, which show that institutional investors still hold over $513,000 worth of Bitcoin through ETFs.

However, corporate treasuries only account for direct spot ownership, while the largest players on Wall Street are building crypto exposure through tokenized funds and real-world asset holdings. These mechanisms allow firms to build crypto exposure without holding a single token, instead using traditional assets on-chain through tokenization.

The study also highlights the concentration of custody arrangements, with Coinbase custodians over 80% of US Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF assets. This creates a single-point-of-failure vulnerability, where a cyber incident or service disruption at one custodian could affect multiple funds simultaneously.