In the last two weeks, ETFs on Bitcoin spot have started buying BTC again.
Between Monday, May 6 and Friday, May 18, there were capital inflows of approximately 1.3 billion dollars.
The bitcoin ETFs have put together a solid two weeks with $1.3b in inflows, which offsets the entirety of the negative flows in April- putting them back around high water mark of +$12.3b net since launch. This key number IMO bc it nets out inflows and outflows (which are normal) pic.twitter.com/tdnZOKEocM
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) May 17, 2024
Bitcoin spot ETF: BTC purchases
Taking into consideration all the existing Bitcoin ETFs in the world, by the end of April they collectively held about 991,000 BTC.
In the first days of May this figure decreased by 10,000 units, but it started to rise again two weeks ago.
Specifically, on May 14th it had returned to 991,000, and between Wednesday, May 15th and today it has increased by 8,000 units, reaching almost a million BTC held.
Thanks to these purchases, the ETF on Bitcoin spot by BlackRock, IBIT, now holds more than 276,000 BTC, not far from the almost 289,000 held by Grayscale’s (GBTC) ETF.
Since the end of March, GBTC has liquidated more than 7,000 BTC, while IBIT has purchased 2,000. At this rate, the overtaking could occur by the end of May.
The trend
Limiting themselves to inflows or outflows of capital in dollars, around mid-March outflows had started to prevail.
After all, the price of Bitcoin was at all-time highs, so many decided to sell to cash in on the gains.
This negative trend for spot Bitcoin ETFs seemed to have stopped at the end of March, but it resumed just before mid-April, when markets began to price in the possible “sell the news” following the April 20 halving.
Although this negative trend has not been without interruptions, it lasted until the stock market session on Friday, May 3rd.
On the following Monday, however, the situation reversed, with a prevalence of capital inflows returning.
Actually, the 1.3 billion dollars of net inflows in the last two weeks are not even remotely comparable to the inflows in February. Just to say that in just one day, at the beginning of March, over a billion dollars of inflows were exceeded, a few days before the price of BTC reached its peak.
The various ETFs on Bitcoin spot
Examining the performance of individual ETFs on Bitcoin spot on US stock exchanges, it is discovered that starting from Monday, May 6th, GBTC has practically stopped losing capital.
Since the first day of trading, on January 11th, the Grayscale ETF had started a long and steady series of daily outflows, so much so that they were forced to reduce the number of BTC in their vault from almost 620,000 to less than 290,000.
However, during that period many outflows from GBTC were followed by even larger inflows into other ETFs, so much so that BlackRock’s IBIT and Fidelity’s FBTC alone currently own many more BTC than GBTC has liquidated.
However, starting from the week before the halving, the growth trend had actually stopped.
Since then, only last Friday IBIT has seen a significant influx of capital again, with GBTC appearing to have stopped recording outflows.
Note that in the last two weeks, Fidelity’s FBTC has recorded overall more inflows than IBIT, even though it still holds less than 60% of the BTC owned by IBIT.
The most interesting week in recent times was actually last week, with a significant increase in flows into all new ETFs, except for GBTC, starting from Tuesday the 14th.
The success of ETFs
The last two weeks of positive inflows have effectively offset the negative outflows of April, bringing the total overall level to over 12 billion dollars net since the launch in January.
So in just over four months, the new ETFs on Bitcoin spot from US exchanges have managed to acquire a total value comparable to that of the main gold ETFs.
In fact, the main gold ETFs in the world are Invesco Physical Gold A, with almost $13.3 billion in AUM, iShares Physical Gold ETC by BlackRock, with over $12.3 billion, and Xetra-Gold with just under $11.5 billion.
It is worth noting that the latter was launched in 2007, which means it is almost 17 years old, while Invesco’s is from 2009, which is the same age as Bitcoin.
The world’s largest Bitcoin ETF, GBTC, has over 19 billion dollars in AUM, even more than the largest gold ETF. It was launched in 2013, so it has been around for 11 years.
BlackRock’s has over 18 billion dollars in AUM, thanks to the fact that since it started buying Bitcoin in January, the value of BTC has risen by 55%, going from $38,500 on January 23 to the current $67,000.
In light of this data, the success of the new ETFs on Bitcoin spot on the US stock exchanges appears remarkable, although largely due to the increase in the market value of BTC.
It should be remembered, however, that ETFs are primarily a tool for speculating on the price of BTC in the short term, so they can alternate between periods of large inflows and periods of large outflows. The above data should therefore not be considered definitive in any way.
