T. Rowe Price, one of the biggest old-school fund managers in the US with roots stretching back to 1937, is finally dipping its toes into crypto, but not just with another Bitcoin tracker.
A Oct. 22 SEC filing reveals the $1.8 trillion firm wants to run a fund with a “diversified basket of crypto assets,” targeting between 5-15 coins weighted differently than the usual market cap approach.
They aim to beat the FTSE Crypto US Listed Index (the top ten exchange-listed tokens) while keeping the freedom to zig when others zag.
This puts T. Rowe in a small club of major players designing products around active management instead of simple exposure.
It’s a departure from what BlackRock did with its spot Bitcoin ETF (now holding about $90 billion) and Fidelity’s $23 billion fund.
Those are just passive Bitcoin conduits; T. Rowe’s approach is more like an equity fund, with managers trying to outperform by making smart allocation choices across multiple assets.
This is T. Rowe’s attempt to restart growth.
The Baltimore firm has watched money flow out of its mutual funds for years, many of which couldn’t keep up with passive benchmarks.
Since 2021, they’ve lost over $67 billion in assets under management despite the broader market rally. CEO Rob Sharps has been under pressure to modernize the 87-year-old firm’s approach, especially as younger investors increasingly bypass traditional funds altogether.
Crypto gives them a fresh battleground where active management might actually still work. They’ve already built the trading infrastructure, with “end-to-end capabilities” for custody and execution.
T. Rowe has historically been more conservative than peers like BlackRock, and they were noticeably absent from the first wave of spot Bitcoin ETFs. This makes their multi-coin approach even more surprising.
The FTSE Crypto US Listed Index currently includes Bitcoin and Ethereum alongside alts like Solana and XRP, hinting at what the portfolio might look like. Their square-root weighting means smaller assets get proportionally bigger allocations than in typical ma
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Author: Andjela Radmilac
