Tudor Investment, founded by billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones, increased its direct stake in BlackRock’s spot bitcoin ETF in the second quarter while cutting its reported call option position in the fund by 85%.
The firm held 688,529 shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), valued at $22.9 million as of June 30, according to a 13F filing on Friday.
The share count rose by 109,446, or 18.9%, from 579,083 at the end of March. The holdings are now worth around $24.5 million.
Tudor also reported calls tied to 148,000 underlying IBIT shares, down 85.2% from 998,000 in March. Its put position edged down 1.4% to 715,000 underlying shares from 725,000, according to the filings.
The filing does not disclose the options’ strike prices or expiration dates, so the underlying share counts do not provide a direct measure of Tudor’s directional exposure. And the derivatives positionings are likely a hedging mechanism for its bitcoin bets.
Tudor first disclosed 869,565 IBIT shares in mid-2024 and increased the position to 8.05 million shares, worth $427 million by year-end. It then cut the stake in every quarter of 2025, ending December with 576,523 shares.
The firm’s initial buildup came as bitcoin rallied from around $60,000 to $92,000, while cuts then came into strength. In the second and third quarters of last year, BTC rallied to an all-time high of $124,000, while Tudor reduced its exposure. As bitcoin began to crash, Tudor’s share count hit its low.
Even after the latest purchases, the direct-share position remained 91.4% below its late-2024 peak and accounted for only a fraction of the $71.9 billion in the company’s portfolio.
Tudor Jones has repeatedly framed bitcoin as an inflation trade. He said in 2024 that “all roads lead to inflation” and disclosed that he was long bitcoin and gold, then called bitcoin the “best inflation hedge” in April this year, citing its fixed supply as an advantage over gold.