A filing from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, shows that BlackRock Financial Direction has increased the number of its Bitcoin futures contracts since Q1 2022.

According to a Tuesday filing with the SEC, the BlackRock Global Allocation Fund included 54 Bitcoin (BTC) futures contracts issued through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange as of July 31. The contracts, which expired on Aug. 27, were worth $x.viii million, affectionate by $369,137.

The gains from the Bitcoin futures represent roughly 0.00138% of the BlackRock Global Resource allotment Fund, or viii.91 BTC at the fourth dimension of publication. The company holds $9.5 trillion in total assets under management.

The investment comes following BlackRock chief intelligence officer Rick Rieder saying before this year that the business firm had "started to fiddle a flake" in crypto. Nevertheless, CEO Larry Fink said in July that the company was seeing "very little in terms of investor demand" for cryptocurrencies.

Before pursuing Bitcoin futures, BlackRock had indirect exposure to the crypto asset through its buying pale in business concern intelligence firm MicroStrategy The investment company also mentioned Bitcoin in two prospectus filings with the SEC in January, hinting that it would be exploring using crypto derivatives.

Related: BlackRock ETFs agree $384 million of shares in Bitcoin mining firms

News of the BlackRock SEC filing comes as the price of Bitcoin has dropped more than 4% in the last 24 hours post-obit a calendar month of considerable volatility. As data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro shows, the price of the crypto asset is $41,323 at the time of publication.