iShares Bitcoin Trust permitted participants include Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, UBS, Citadel Securities, and ABN AMRO, according to BlackRock.
Joining Jane Street Capital, JPMorgan, Macquarie, and Virtu Americas, this raises the total number of APs to nine. A dozen or more APs is a common number for popular ETFs.
With five more APs joining the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), the total number of APs is now nine, and the fund is still drawing in billions of dollars from investors, according to BlackRock (BLK).
According to a prospectus filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the new APs include of clearing firm ABN AMRO, Wall Street financial titans UBS, Citadel Securities, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs. They are part of the same group as Virtu Americas, Masquarie, JP Morgan, and Jane Street Capital.
According to an article published by CoinDesk in January, Goldman Sachs was reportedly in discussions with issuers over becoming an AP and aiming to play a big role in the bitcoin ETFs.
Because they facilitate liquidity creation by adjusting the supply of shares in response to shortages or surpluses, APs play a crucial role in the ETF process. Compared to large ETFs, which often have dozens of APs, IBIT has grown fairly large in its short three months of existence, with approximately $18 billion in assets under management as of yesterday's close.
Goldman Sachs' involvement stands out because, despite other TradFi behemoths making big moves, the bank's chief investment officer for wealth management stated only last week that the bank thinks crypto has "no value" and that it is not under any pressure to join the area.
As with JPMorgan, Goldman's CEO Jamie Dimon had a public stance against cryptocurrencies for a long time, yet he was an early advocate for BlackRock's IBIT fund when it debuted in January.
View for more updates