Yesterday, a decidedly very positive news came out regarding BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF (IBIT).
In fact, the day ended with a daily inflow of over 224 million dollars.
[
] BlackRock (IBIT) Daily BTC Flows: +221.9m: BBG
— Tree News (@News_Of_Alpha) August 26, 2024
This is the largest inflow into IBIT in the last 35 days.
News: the growth of inflows of BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF
Taking into consideration all the daily inflows to all the spot Bitcoin ETFs listed on the US exchanges, around mid-August there was a decline.
In fact, even on August 9 and 14, there were total outflows, respectively amounting to 90 and 81 million dollars.
Subsequently, until August 22 inclusive (last Thursday), the 90 million dollars of total daily inflows had never been exceeded.
The turning point occurred on Friday the 23rd, with more than 250 million, divided between IBIT of BlackRock and FBTC of Fidelity, with HODL of VanEck following closely.
Analyzing instead only the IBIT flows, there is no outflow in the month of August.
On August 8th, there were inflows of over 150 million dollars into this ETF, but afterwards, daily inflows had not exceeded 100 million until yesterday.
Yesterday’s data is a real boom for IBIT, although it does not represent the historical record.
Among other things, the day before yesterday FBTC by Fidelity even recorded an outflow of 8 million dollars, so that against 224 million dollars of inflows on IBIT at the overall level, the daily inflows were only 202 million. In fact, in addition to FBTC, HODL also recorded an outflow of 7 million, with BITB by Bitwise even recording a daily outflow of over 16 million dollars.
The impact on the price of Bitcoin after the news of BlackRock’s ETF
All this, however, has had no positive impact on the price of Bitcoin.
On Friday, the price of BTC had risen in a single day from $61,000 to $65,000, probably also on the wave of overall positive inflows on ETFs. However, on Saturday it had fallen back below $64,000, with traditional exchanges closed.
Even last night the price was around $64,000, but during the rest of the day it dropped to $63,000, and then at night even below this threshold.
The current price level is only 3% higher than it was before the bull rise on Friday.
This suggests that yesterday, in addition to the positive inflows into BlackRock’s ETF, other dynamics also played an important role, including, for example, that of the US dollar.
The trend of the Dollar Index
The Dollar Index, which measures the value of the US dollar against a basket of other major fiat currencies, has been in sharp decline since the beginning of July.
In the span of about a month and a half, it dropped from 106 points to just over 100 points, marking the annual low for 2024.
In theory, this dynamic should have favored a clear rise in the price of Bitcoin, but instead in July it fell from $64,000 to $54,000, and on August 5 it even dipped below $50,000.
After returning above $60,000 already on August 9, it started a period of relative stability which, however, might have been interrupted just on Friday.
Perhaps the decline of the dollar in July and August is having a delayed effect on the price of Bitcoin, now that the other dynamics that caused it to fall in the past months seem to have eased, or even dissolved.
In the coming days, an increase in volatility is expected, and perhaps a short bull period.
The ETFs on Ethereum
The trend of ETFs on Ethereum spot, listed on US exchanges since mid-July, are instead showing negative performance.
With the exception of three days (August 12, 13, and 14), since the 8th of this month, they have been consistently recording daily outflows.
These are not very high figures, but it should be remembered that they have a significantly lower AUM compared to those on BTC.
Yesterday the daily outflows were 13 million dollars, and on Friday they were more than 5 million.
In total since August 8, there have been overall outflows of over 90 million dollars, while in the same period those on Bitcoin have recorded inflows of over 840 million dollars.
The difference becomes macroscopic if all the inflows or outflows are taken into consideration since they were listed.
In fact, Bitcoin ETFs are at +18 billion dollars, while those on Ethereum are still even at -480 million dollars. This is due to the -2.5 billion dollars of Grayscale’s, which existed many years before but not in the form of an ETF.
These data better frame the overall situation of the crypto market, although Bitcoin still has a dominance of 57%.
The price of Ethereum
At this point, it is not surprising that the price of ETH, since the new spot Ethereum ETFs landed on the US exchanges, has dropped from over $3,400 to less than $2,700.
In this period, it is precisely Ethereum and the altcoins that are suffering the most. On the other hand, Bitcoin is essentially continuing the lateralization period that began at the end of February, despite some downward excursions at the beginning of the month.
Note that on August 5th, the price of Ethereum also dipped below $2,200. This is a price level that had not been seen since the end of January.
Furthermore, its current price is lower than that of mid-February, while that of Bitcoin is higher than that of late February. Since the last phase of the last bullrun started precisely at the end of February, this difference turns out to be quite significant.
