It has been one week since the bitcoin spot ETF began trading.

The big surprise to many is that bitcoin’s price has traded down despite billions of dollars flowing into the various ETFs.

How could that have happened?

There are two main reasons in my opinion — first, investors across the market had built up anticipation of the ETF approvals.

This led the asset to rise from around $27,000 in mid-October to ~$45,000 earlier this month.

Whenever you get this type of rapid appreciation, it is likely that the market will sell the news.

That is exactly what happened here.

Investors took profits after their speculation was confirmed.

“Buy the rumor, sell the news” has not been the only culprit though.

There have been billions of dollars flowing out of Grayscale’s GBTC also, which is putting significant sell pressure on the bitcoin price. Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas shared this visual to highlight more than $2 billion leaving the world’s largest bitcoin fund.

This is happening because Grayscale’s management fee only dropped to 1.5% from the previous 2%. While the 25% drop may seem significant, the other ETFs are competing with sub-0.50% management fees.

Simply, Grayscale is the most expensive fund based on fees.

Why would they leave their fee so high?

The asset management firm is betting that majority of the capital will not leave the fund.

The current market cap is over $25 billion, so less than 10% of the capital has left in the first week, which probably signals that more than 50% of the fund will stay and continue to pay a 1.5% management fee.

If that is the case, Grayscale will still pull in ~ $225 million annually without any increase in bitcoin’s price.

Not a bad business.

This nuance around Grayscale and the sell pressure in the market highlights an important development — the dynamics of the bitcoin market are changing because the holder base is changing.