Vanguard, the world's second-largest asset manager with about $13 trillion under management, now holds a bitcoin treasury company in one of its funds. Its small-cap VSS ETF disclosed a first-ever position in Metaplanet, the Tokyo-listed firm that keeps BTC as its core treasury asset.

The fund bought about 4.5M Metaplanet shares (3350.T), worth roughly $7.5M.

VSS is a passive fund tracking a global ex-US small-cap index, so its holdings follow index membership rather than manager picks. Still, the purchase gives Vanguard investors indirect bitcoin exposure through a company that keeps adding BTC to its balance sheet.