Millennium Lifted Crypto ETF Holdings to $4 Billion Before Digital Asset Prices Sank

Millennium traders boosted Ethereum ETF stakes during the third quarter

Millennium Management added more than $1 billion to its holdings in cryptocurrency funds during the third quarter, leaving the firm with a larger stake than its peers just before the market downturn in digital assets.

New York-based Millennium, ranked as one of the nation’ s largest hedge fund managers, bought additional shares in exchange traded funds that hold the cryptocurrency Ethereum, according to a regulatory filing from earlier this month. That helped drive its combined holdings in ETFs that hold either Bitcoin or Ethereum to almost $4 billion at the end of September, compared to $2.6 billion at the end of June. Soaring prices also contributed.

Cryptocurrencies began to tumble in early October, after President Donald Trump slapped more tariffs on China, reviving fears of a trade war. The decline continued this month, leaving Ethereum down roughly 40% from its high this year, while Bitcoin has dropped about 30%, according to data from Trading View.

A Millennium spokesperson declined to comment on the investments, which were reported in a Form 13F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on November 14. Money managers who oversee $100 million or more of equities that trade on U.S. exchanges must report these holdings on a Form 13F filed within 45 days of the end of each quarter.

A Snapshot of Holdings

The swoon in cryptocurrency prices doesn’t necessarily mean that Millennium has lost money on its ETF stakes. The 13F filings provide a snapshot of the equity positions that fund managers hold on the last day of the quarter, and Millennium may well have changed these stakes since then.

In addition, the Form 13Fs don’t have any information on a fund manager’s other investments, such as bonds, currencies, swaps and futures contracts. Oftentimes the reported stock holdings are part of a larger, more complex strategy in which the risk tied to owning the shares has been hedged.

“Strategies utilizing digital assets derivatives may be hedged or may be directional,” Millennium says in its latest SEC registration, dated September 29. A directional trade is one that’s designed to profit from price changes in the cryptocurrency and thus may be unhedged.

Israel Englander, Millennium’s founder, is also known for maintaining tight controls over risk-taking. In fact, risk control is billed as a hallmark of fund advisers that employ a multimanager strategy, a group that includes Citadel Advisors, Point72 Asset Management and Balyasny Asset Management as well as Millennium.

Multimanager Funds

These fund managers employ hundreds of separate trading teams known as pods that each operate independently from one another; the parent firm allocates capital among the teams, which in turn invest the money through their own specific strategies across different asset classes.

Millennium manages more than $81 billion that is allocated among roughly 330 investment teams, according to its website. The holdings that Millennium and other multimanager hedge funds report through their Form 13Fs are mainly an aggregation of the independent bets made by these trading teams.

Millennium’s traders have been buying shares of cryptocurrency ETFs since these types of funds became available in 2024. In theory, that positioned Millennium to take advantage of a runup in cryptocurrency prices that continued through most of this year, buoyed in part by President Trump’s moves to promote the industry and remove its regulatory barriers.

Other multi-manager firms have been reporting much less exposure to cryptocurrency ETFs. Point72 had about $100 million in such funds at the end of September, while Chicago-based Balyasny had a slightly higher total at $111 million, according to their respective filings.

Miami-based Citadel didn’t report a single cryptocurrency ETF among the $87 billion of stocks that its fund business held as of September 30. Nor did Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital Management, another multi-manager hedge fund.

Crypto Derivatives

These firms may be betting on cryptocurrencies through other financial instruments though. Point72, for example, says in the most recent version of its SEC registration, dated March 31, that one or more subsidiaries for its multi-strategy funds have invested in digital assets through exchange-traded futures contracts.

In general, derivates are the most popular way for hedge funds to get exposure to cryptocurrencies, according to an industry report published earlier this month by the Alternative Investment Management Association. Among hedge funds that are betting on digital assets, 67% said they use derivatives, 40% report buying digital currencies on the spot market, and 33% said they invest in ETFs (some use more than one method).

“The global hedge fund industry’s engagement with crypto/digital assets and blockchain technology has accelerated in 2025,’ according to the AIMA report.