Paul Tudor Jones buys Bitcoin ETF shares again after a year of selling

The hedge fund of billionaire Paul Tudor Jones is expanding its position in the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF for the first time in more than a year. Tudor Investment bought nearly 110,000 additional shares in the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) in the second quarter of 2026, after the fund had sold shares throughout 2025, including when Bitcoin stood at its peak of $124.000.

In brief:

• Tudor Investment expands its IBIT position by 18.9% to 688,529 shares, worth approximately $22.9 million.
• The fund cut its call options on IBIT by 85.2%, from 998,000 to 148,000 underlying shares.
• The current position remains 91.4% below the peak at the end of 2024.

First purchase in a year after selling at the top

According to a 13F filing with the US securities regulator SEC, Tudor Investment held 688,529 IBIT shares as of 30 June, an increase of 109,446 shares compared with the previous quarter. The position was worth more than $22.9 million at that time and has since grown to approximately $24.5 million.

It is the first expansion of the direct share position in more than a year. As CoinDesk reports, Tudor reduced its IBIT position every quarter in 2025, even while Bitcoin rose to a then-record of $124.000. Only when the price subsequently fell did the position reach its lowest point.

Tudor first took possession of IBIT shares in mid-2024, with 869,565 shares at the time. By the end of that year, the position had grown to 8.05 million shares, worth $427 million, while Bitcoin rose from approximately $60.000 to $92.000. A series of quarters of selling followed. Despite the recent purchases, the current position remains 91.4% below that peak and represents only a small part of the total portfolio of $71.9 billion.

Options sharply reduced, puts virtually unchanged

Strikingly, Tudor simultaneously scaled back its call options on IBIT sharply. The number of underlying shares fell by 85.2%, from 998,000 to 148,000. The put options remained virtually stable, declining slightly from 725,000 to 715,000 underlying shares, a decrease of 1.4%.

The 13F filing does not mention strike prices or maturities of the options, so the exact direction of the exposure cannot be read directly from the figures. Analysts generally assume that such derivative positions serve as a hedge for the direct share position.

Tudor Jones has long viewed Bitcoin as protection against inflation. In 2024, he stated that all roads lead to inflation and that he held both Bitcoin and gold. Earlier this year, he called Bitcoin the best inflation hedge, partly because of the fixed maximum amount that can ever be mined, which he considers an advantage over gold. Recently, the Bitcoin ETF segment actually saw outflows, which makes the news about Tudor Investment’s purchases all the more striking.