Arkham tags 40 wallets holding 6,864.99 BTC for VanEck's VBTC ETN

First reported 12 Nov, 03:01 UTCSource: Crypto BriefingLast editorial activity 12 Nov, 03:01 UTCWrite a comment ↓

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Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence has tagged 40 on-chain addresses linked to VanEck's VBTC Bitcoin exchange-traded note, which together hold 6,864.99 BTC, according to a report by Crypto Briefing. At about $507.2 million, the stash makes the product's holdings visible on the blockchain itself.

Labels cover 40 addresses

Arkham announced the labels on November 9, 2026. The firm has attached tags to 40 addresses that it ties to the product, and those wallets collectively hold 6,864.99 BTC, a value Crypto Briefing puts at around $507.2 million.

The figure was reached without any buying or selling of coins. Arkham's own research gives VBTC holdings of between 6,864.99 and 6,868 BTC, and the small spread reflects slightly different snapshots of the same wallets. Spreading the coins across many addresses is standard custody practice, comparable to a bank storing its gold across several vaults.

Part of a wider batch of fund wallets

VBTC was one product in a larger set of labels covering addresses linked to roughly $3 billion in institutional fund holdings. The labelling traces back to Arkham's top-100 holders report, dated November 3-4, 2026, which fed a broader effort to map wallets belonging to regulated digital asset products.

Other products in the same batch include CoinShares BITC at $1.52 billion, Invesco BTIC at $266.6 million and Grayscale Solana Trust at $125.9 million. Grayscale's entry is the only one built around Solana rather than Bitcoin, and no other crypto assets appear in the VanEck addresses Arkham identified.

A six-year-old product, physically backed

VBTC is not new. VanEck launched it in Europe on November 19, 2020, as a physically backed exchange-traded note. Physically backed means the product holds actual Bitcoin in cold storage rather than tracking its price through derivatives, the difference being between owning gold bars and owning a bet on gold.

According to the report, the labels do not change how VBTC works. What they change is visibility: anyone can now see the wallets and their balances.

Open questions

Will greater on-chain transparency for ETN holdings prompt closer regulatory scrutiny?
Will other issuers' wallets be labelled in a similar way?

Key facts

Arkham Intelligence announced the labels on November 9, 2026.

Arkham has labelled 40 on-chain addresses tied to VanEck's VBTC Bitcoin ETN.

Those addresses together hold 6,864.99 BTC, worth around $507.2 million.

No coins were bought or sold to produce the figure.

The labelling traces back to Arkham's top-100 holders report of November 3-4, 2026.