[The gap between Grayscale and BlackRock Bitcoin ETF narrows to $1.5 billion]
The race for the top spot among Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) providers in the United States has narrowed to just $1.5 billion.
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) remains in the lead with $18.7 billion in assets under management (AUM), holding about 297,000 Bitcoins. However, affected by outflows in recent months, the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) is quickly catching up and now sits at $17.2 billion in AUM, just $1.5 billion behind GBTC, while the third-ranked Bitcoin ETF is more than $7.5 billion behind.
Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas previously predicted that IBIT would surpass GBTC by the end of April. Although this prediction has not yet come true, developments have not deviated too far. The slowdown in inflows into BlackRock's IBIT fund in the past four days may be the main reason why it failed to surpass GBTC as expected. Still, the fund had recorded inflows for 71 consecutive days before that.
IBIT has never recorded a net outflow since its first day of trading, while Grayscale’s GBTC has primarily recorded net outflows since its inception, according to CoinGlass data. The worst day was when GBTC recorded an outflow of $618.2 million on March 19. While IBIT recorded its highest inflow of $856.53 million on March 12, it is still $25 million short of surpassing GBTC. IBIT has seen daily inflows exceed $30 million just once since mid-April.
Nonetheless, the gap between IBIT and GBTC has narrowed from $2.3 billion to $1.5 billion in the two weeks since Balchunas’ prediction.
