Goldman Sachs jumps into bitcoin ETFs and one hedge fund gets bullish on miners
When the SEC opened the door in January for bitcoin exchange-traded funds to hit the mainstream, many traditional financial institutions across Wall Street and beyond finally had the opportunity to buy into crypto. Since then, money has poured in, but in fits and starts.
On Wednesday, banks and hedge funds with more than $100 million in assets hit a deadline to file their second-quarter 13F reports, disclosing their investments and what they bought and sold over a three-month stretch.
Goldman Sachs went big in the quarter, while rival Morgan Stanley trimmed its crypto holdings. JPMorgan has yet to make a big splash.
There are no shortage of opportunities for firms that want to take their time getting into the market. Following an array of public ETF listings in January tied to bitcoin, the Securities and Exchange Commission went a step further last month, clearing the way for spot ether ETFs, allowing investors to get access to the second-largest cryptocurrency. Those new holdings will start showing up in third-quarter reports.
In the period from March through June, Goldman Sachs made its debut in the crypto ETF market, purchasing $418 million worth of bitcoin funds. Its biggest position is a $238 million ownership in shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust. The bank also owns shares in spot funds from Grayscale, Invesco, Fidelity and others.
Morgan Stanley was the first among the big players on Wall Street to give the green light to its 15,000 financial advisors to start pitching clients, who have a net worth north of $1.5 million, bitcoin ETFs, specifically those issued by BlackRock and Fidelity. Up to this point, wealth management businesses have only facilitated trades if customers requested exposure to the new spot crypto funds.
Of Morgan Stanley’s $1.5 trillion in assets under management, the bank disclosed in its filing that it trimmed its position in spot bitcoin ETFs to around $189 million from roughly $270 million. Most of those cuts were due to sales of almost all of its shares in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which has a much higher management fee than other ETFs. The vast majority of the bank’s spot bitcoin holdings are now through the iShares trust.
JP Morgan reported minimal crypto exposure of around $42,000 worth of shares in Grayscale’s bitcoin fund and another $18,000 worth of the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF. HSBC has nearly $3.6 million worth of spot bitcoin holdings, all from the fund issued by Ark 21Shares, UBS has around $300,000 worth of spot bitcoin ETF holdings, and Bank of America has collective holdings of around $5.3 million, mostly from BlackRock and Fidelity.
For most of the banks, the vast majority, if not all, of the ETF flows can be attributed to wealth management clients asking for exposure, rather than a decision by the firm to hold the assets on its balance sheet.
While Wall Street investment banks are coming in slowly, hedge funds are taking a more aggressive approach.
Millennium Management, which oversees $62 billion, now holds over $1.1 billion worth of shares in at least five Bitcoin ETFs, and is the single largest holder of shares in BlackRock’s bitcoin fund, with shares worth more than $371 million according to its August filing.
That’s down substantially from the $844 million worth of shares it held as of its May filing, having cut its stake in BlackRock’s fund by about half, and in Grayscale’s by more than half.
London-based Capula Investment Management, one of the top hedge funds in Europe with $30 billion under management, disclosed in a recent SEC filing that it holds more than $464 million in spot bitcoin ETFs, including the funds offered by BlackRock and Fidelity.
Point72 Asset Management and Apollo Management have also jumped into the market as have firms including Citadel Advisors, Jane Street and Fortress Investment Group.
Since launching in January, spot bitcoin funds have seen net flows of around $17.5 billion, bringing total assets in the funds to $53.5 billion as of mid-August. Grayscale’s fund, which existed previously and was converted to an ETF, has seen $19.4 billion in outflows since the change, though its new budget product has seen net inflows of $274 million.
Spot ether ETFs hold more than $7.6 billion as of Tuesday. Barclays analysts noted that trading volume across all spot crypto ETF products has declined, compared to spot exchange volumes.
Still, the new ETF activity has helped lift bitcoin prices, which hit a record above $73,000 in March. The price has since dropped sharply, to under $58,000, alongside volatility in the boarder markets, though it’s still up more than 30% this year.
“The crypto markets are strong because we have the sentiment shift,” Galaxy Digital chief Mike Novogratz told CNBC in May. “Crypto is now an asset class. It will be next year, it will be forever. And it wasn’t that way two years ago. There was risk around the asset class, and it’s been de risked.”
Bitcoin mining lures new investors
ETFs aren’t the only way investors are playing the market.
Daniel Sundheim’s D1 Capital built up a bitcoin mining position in the latest quarter, taking advantage of a shift as miners retrofit their facilities to service artificial intelligence clients. Like crypto mining, artificial intelligence workloads require immense amounts of power.
D1, which managed about $19 billion at the beginning of the year, bought nearly $5.4 million worth of Bitdeer Technologies, $17.3 million of Iris Energy, and nearly $17.4 million in shares of Hut 8 Corp.
Hut 8 said in its first-quarter earnings report that it had purchased Nvidia’s AI processors and secured a customer agreement with a venture-backed AI cloud platform as part of its expansion. Iris Energy expects to generate up to $17 million in annual revenue from its AI cloud services.
The combined market capitalization of the 14 major U.S.-listed bitcoin miners hit a record high of $22.8 billion on June 15, according to a note from JPMorgan, which has also been investing capital into an ETF of miners and individual companies. UBS has added shares of Bitdeer, Bitfarms, Bit Digital, Hut 8, as well as more than $5 million in Iris Energy, as of its latest 13F filing.
Sundheim, who previously built up a reputation as a savvy investor during his 15-year tenure at Viking Global Investors, has changed his tune on bitcoin. In 2019, he equated Canadian pot companies to the closest thing to a bubble since bitcoin.
Tesla has quietly removed the Cybertruck’s range extender from the options in its online configurator.
Does Tesla still plan to bring the product to market?
When Tesla unveiled the production version of the Cybertruck in late 2023, there were two main disappointments: the price and the range.
The tri-motor version, which was the most popular in reservation tallies, was supposed to have over 500 miles of range and start at $70,000.
Tesla now sells the tri-motor Cybertruck for $100,000 and only has a range of 320 miles.
As for the dual-motor Cybertruck, it was supposed to cost $50,000 and have over 300 miles of range. The reality is that it starts at $80,000, and it has 325 miles of range.
However, Tesla had devised a solution to bring the range closer to what it originally announced: a separate battery pack that sits in the truck’s bed. Tesla called it a “range extender.” It costs $16,000 and takes up a third of the Cybertruck’s bed.
Even though the Cybertruck has been in production for a year and a half at this point, the range extender has yet to launch.
Initially, Tesla said that it would come “early 2025”, but we reported that it was pushed to “mid-2025” late last year.
At the time, Tesla also reduced the range that the removable battery pack adds to the Cybertruck to “445+ miles” rather than “470+ miles” for the dual motor – a ~25-mile reduction in range.
Now, Tesla has removed the option from its online Cybertruck configurator. It used to take reservations for the range extender with a “$2,000 non-refundable deposit”, as seen on the image above, but now it’s not in the configurator at all at the time of writing.
It’s unclear if Tesla is not planning to launch the product anymore or if it is just pausing reservations.
In its specs page, Tesla still lists the achievable range of both versions of the Cybertruck with and without the range extender battery:
Electrek’s Take
I’m curious. Is it dead, or does Tesla just want to stop taking reservations for it?
At first, I was curious about the product even though I didn’t think it would make up for Tesla’s significant miss on Cybertruck specs.
However, after it was confirmed that it takes up 30% of your bed and that it needs to be installed and removed by Tesla at a service center, I think it’s pretty much dead on arrival at $16,000.
It’s going to be a product limited to only a few people at best. And now that’s if it makes it to market.
With the option being removed from the configurator, there’s no production timeline available. Again, the last one was “mid-2025”, which is soon.
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Environment
EcoFlow members can save up to 65% on power stations while supporting disaster relief during the 2025 Member’s Festival
Portable power station specialist EcoFlow is kicking off its third annual Member’s Festival this month and is offering a unique new rewards program to those who become EcoFlow members. The 2025 EcoFlow Member’s Festival will offer savings of up to 65% for its participating customers, and a portion of those funds will be allocated toward rescue power solutions for communities around the globe through the company’s “Power for All” fund.
EcoFlow remains one of the industry leaders in portable power solutions and continues to trek forward in its vision to power a new tech-driven, eco-conscious future. Per its website:
Our mission from day one is to provide smart and eco-friendly energy solutions for individuals, families, and society at large. We are, were, and will continue to be a reliable and trusted energy companion for users around the world.
To achieve such goals, EcoFlow has continued to expand its portfolio of sustainable energy solutions to its community members, including portable power stations, solar generators, and mountable solar panels. While EcoFlow is doing plenty to support its growing customer base, it has expanded its reach by giving back to disaster-affected communities by helping bolster global disaster response efforts the best way it knows how– with portable power solutions.
EcoFlow and its members look to provide “Power for All”
Since 2023, EcoFlow has collaborated with organizations worldwide as part of its “Power for All” mission. This initiative aims to ensure access to reliable and timely power to disaster-affected communities across the globe, including rescue agencies, affected hospitals, and shelters, to support rescue and recovery efforts.
This fund most recently provided aid for communities affected by the recent Los Angeles wildfires, assistance to the Special Forces Charitable Trust (SFCT) in North Carolina following severe hurricanes, and support for non-profits engaged in hurricane preparedness in Florida and the Gulf Coast. Per Jodi Burns, CEO of the Special Forces Charitable Trust:
In the wake of devastating storms in Western North Carolina, reliable power was a critical need for the families we serve. Thanks to EcoFlow’s generous donation of generators, we were able to provide immediate relief, ensuring these families and their communities had access to power when they needed it most. We are so impressed with EcoFlow’s commitment to disaster response through their ‘Power for All’ program. It has made a tangible impact, and we are deeply grateful for their support and partnership in helping these families recover and rebuild.
In 2024, the US experienced 27 weather and climate events, each causing losses exceeding $1 billion, marking the second-highest annual total on record, according to National Centers for Environmental Information. The increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters underscore the critical need for reliable and timely power solutions during emergencies, much like EcoFlow and its members are helping provide through the “Power For All” initiative.
To support new and existing EcoFlow members, the company is celebrating its third annual Member’s Festival throughout April to offer a do-not-miss discount on its products and donate a portion of all sales to the “Power for All” fund to provide rescue power to those in need in the future. Learn how it all works below.
Save big and give back during the 2025 Member’s Festival
As of April 1st, you can now sign up to become an EcoFlow member to participate in the company’s exclusive 2025 Member Festival.
As a member, you can earn “EcoFlow Power Points” by completing tasks like registration, referrals, and product purchases and tracking your individual efforts toward disaster preparedness and recovery.
Beginning April 4, EcoFlow members will also be able to take advantage of exclusive discounts of up to 65% off select portable power stations, including the DELTA Pro Ultra, DELTA Pro 3, DELTA 2 Max, DELTA 3 Plus, RIVER 3 Plus, and more. However, these sale prices only last through April 25, so you’ll want to move quickly!
Click here to learn more about EcoFlow’s “Power for All” campaign. To register for EcoFlow’s 2025 Member Festival in the US, visit the EcoFlow website. To register as a member in Canada, visit here.
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Tesla is losing another top talent: its long-time head of software, David Lau, has reportedly told co-workers that he is exiting the automaker.
Tesla changed how the entire auto industry looks at software.
Before Tesla, it was an afterthought; user interfaces were rudimentary, and you had to go to a dealership to get a software update on your systems.
When Tesla launched the Model S in 2012, it all changed. Your car would get better through software updates like your phone, the large center display was responsive with a UI that actually made sense and was closer to an iPad experience than a car.
Tesla also integrated its software into its retail experience, service, and manufacturing.
David Lau deserves a lot of the credit for that.
He joined Tesla in 2012 as a senior manager of firmware engineering and quickly rose through the ranks. By 2014, he was promoted to director of firmware engineering and system integration, and in 2017, he became Vice President of software.
Lau listed the responsibilities of his team on his LinkedIn:
- Vehicle Software:
- Firmware for the powertrain, traction/stability control, HV electronics, battery management, and body control systems
- UI software and underlying Embedded Linux platforms
- Navigation and routing
- iOS and Android Mobile apps
- Distributed Systems:
- Server-side software and infrastructure that provides telemetry, diagnostics, over-the-air updates, and configuration/lifecycle management
- Data engineering and analytics platforms that power technical and business insights for an increasingly diverse set of customers across the company
- Diagnostic tools and fleet management, Manufacturing and Automation:
- Automation controls (PLC, robot)
- Server-side manufacturing execution systems that power all of Tesla’s production operations
- Product Security and Red Team for software, services, and systems across Tesla
Bloomberg reported today that Lau told his team he is leaving Tesla. The report didn’t include reasons for his stepping down.
Electrek’s Take
Twelve years at any company is a great run. At Tesla, it’s heroic. Congrats, David, on a great run. You undoubtedly had a significant impact on Tesla and software advancements in the broader auto industry.
He is another significant loss for Tesla, which has been losing a lot of top talent following a big wave of layoffs around this time last year.
I wonder who will take over. Michael Rizkalla, senior director of software engineering and vehicle firmware, is one of the most senior software engineers after Lau. He has been at Tesla for 7 years, and Tesla likes to promote within rather than hire outsiders.
There are also a lot of senior software execs working on AI at Tesla. Musk has been favoring them lately and he could fold Lau’s responsibilities under them.
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