Institutional demand for cryptocurrency has surged during the second quarter of 2024, with major Wall Street players like Goldman Sachs increasing their exposure to the popular crypto ETFs, in a growing signal of the mainstream appeal of crypto during an election year.

Goldman Sachs now holds $418 million in crypto exposure, according to a new quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Its investments in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, the most popular bitcoin ETF in the U.S., reached 6,991,248 shares or $238.6 million, according to recent financial disclosures to the SEC. The past several months have seen BlackRock’s popular bitcoin ETF already log around $20.5 billion in cumulative net inflows, illustrating swelling interest from mainstream financial institutional.

This past year has also been a largely successful one for bitcoin, with institutional adoption of crypto rising dramatically since the introduction of new bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) this past January.

Despite concerns over a U.S. recession earlier this month, hedge funds and major institutions are still closely watching opportunities in the crypto industry. “If you thought institutional investors would panic at the first sign of volatility, the data suggest otherwise. They’re pretty steady,” Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise Invest said.

“ETFs are a big tent that attract a wide variety of investors," he added.

Goldman Sachs has also invested almost $80 million in Fidelity's bitcoin ETF, along with over $56 million in Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF and more than $35 million in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.