A Little-Known Firm Owns Nearly 3,000 Times More of This XRP ETF Than Morgan Stanley

A Little-Known Firm Owns Nearly 3,000 Times More of This XRP ETF Than Morgan Stanley

Joel South

Thu, August 20, 2026 at 6:10 PM GMT+3 5 min read

Quick Read

• Morgan Stanley (MS) held just 67 Bitwise XRP ETF shares versus Wolverine's 199,912, a 2,984x multiple that sounds striking but turns out to be misleading.

• Franklin Templeton (BEN) posted record AUM of $1.8 trillion, $18.4 billion in net inflows, and shares up 46% year to date.

• Q3 13F filings due in November will reveal whether major wealth platforms have begun building real XRP ETF positions for clients.

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A quirky data point is bouncing around ETF Twitter this week: a little-known Chicago investment firm reported roughly 2,984 times as many shares of the Bitwise XRP ETF as Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) did in the latest 13F filings. The catch, and it is the whole story, is that Morgan Stanley's position is tiny.

According to Q2 13F filings covering positions as of June 30, 2026, Wolverine Asset Management reported 199,912 shares of the Bitwise XRP ETF, worth roughly $2.33 million. Morgan Stanley reported 67 shares. That is the entire arithmetic behind the headline.

What the 13Fs Actually Show

A 13F is a quarterly snapshot institutions above a size threshold file with the SEC, listing U.S. equity and ETF positions from the end of the prior quarter. It does not say whether a position is proprietary capital, client assets, advisory holdings, trading inventory, hedges, or arbitrage. So calling either firm bullish or bearish on XRP (CRYPTO:XRP) from these numbers would be a stretch.

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Across the three XRP ETFs Morgan Stanley reported owning, the firm disclosed 7,037 shares total: 6,715 shares of the Franklin XRP ETF, 255 of the REX-Osprey XRP ETF, and 67 of the Bitwise XRP ETF. Our comparison of the two filings puts Wolverine's Bitwise position at roughly 28.4 times Morgan Stanley's combined reported XRP ETF share count across those three funds. Again, the multiple is loud because the denominator is small.

For context on scale, Morgan Stanley reported Q2 2026 revenue of $21.35 billion and total client assets across Wealth and Investment Management reaching $10 trillion. A 67-share ETF position, at a value in the hundreds of dollars, is a rounding error on a rounding error. At that size, the position could easily reflect a client account, advisory holding, trading inventory, or another non-directional purpose. The filing gives us no way to know.

Who Is Wolverine, and Why Does This Read Big?

Wolverine Asset Management is a multi-strategy affiliate within the broader Wolverine organization, which also includes Wolverine Trading, a well-known options market maker. Its full disclosed 13F portfolio was approximately $11.38 billion, so it is a substantial manager even if the name does not ring a bell for most retail investors.

Wolverine's broader organization has deep roots in market making and ETF trading, which is important context. But the 13F does not disclose why Wolverine Asset Management held the Bitwise fund, so the position should not automatically be read as a directional XRP bet.

The more interesting takeaway is what the comparison reveals about institutional XRP ETF ownership right now. The household-name bank in the headline is barely there, while a lesser-known institutional manager reported a much larger position in the same fund. That does not tell us who is more bullish on XRP, but it does show how misleading headline multiples can become when one side of the comparison is essentially negligible.

Franklin's Quiet Cameo

Morgan Stanley's largest reported XRP ETF holding was actually the Franklin XRP ETF, at 6,715 shares. The fund is a product of Franklin Resources (NYSE:BEN), which changed its corporate name to Franklin Templeton, Inc. effective August 17, 2026.

Franklin reported record AUM of roughly $1.8 trillion in its most recent quarter and $18.4 billion in long-term net inflows, with ETF demand among the areas contributing to growth. Morgan Stanley itself has also flagged crypto and tokenization as a Wealth Management growth area. The distinction is important: being engaged with digital assets strategically is very different from making a large directional allocation to a specific XRP ETF.

What Investors Should Actually Watch

The open question is whether the Q3 13Fs, due in November, show any of the big wealth platforms building materially larger XRP ETF positions on behalf of clients. Spot crypto ETFs often take time to appear more meaningfully in institutional filings as advisors get comfortable and platforms expand access.

Until then, the clearest read of the June 30 filings is this: 199,912 versus 67 is a great headline, and a modest data point. The comparison is real, but it says far more about how tiny Morgan Stanley's Bitwise position was than it does about Wolverine Asset Management making some enormous bet on XRP.

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Contact editorial@247wallst.com for any questions or corrections.