Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have notched their best week since debuting in January, extending a record-shattering run.
Bitcoin ETFs gobbled up more than $3.3 billion in Bitcoin the week ended November 22, according to data from SoSoValue.
With Bitcoin trading well above $90,000 the entire week, that comes out to more than 30,000 Bitcoins purchased by ETF issuers last week — roughly 10 times the amount of newly created Bitcoin. (Since rewards were halved in April, the network produces a little more than three coins every 10 minutes.)
“Pac-Man mode activated,” Eric Balchunas, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote on X, signifying the “gobbling up” trend.
Those gains appear to have slowed since, with some $438 million flowing out of Bitcoin ETFs to start the week, per SoSoValue.
But the dozen funds that cumulatively hold more than 5% of the world’s Bitcoin remain the most successful ETFs to have launched since the investment vehicle went mainstream in the 1990s.
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While Bitcoin ETFs are still far smaller than more established funds — the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, for example, holds assets worth more than $530 billion — none of them have hit key milestones as fast as their Bitcoin counterparts.
Investment giant BlackRock’s IBIT hit a market value of $40 billion earlier this month, just 211 days after its launch, according to Balchunas. The previous record setter, BlackRock’s IEMG, took more than three years to achieve that mark, he said.
Last week’s record inflows came as BlackRock launched its new Bitcoin ETF options to the tune of almost $2 billion in notional exposure, the total amount of risk exposure for a position.
That “is unheard of for day one,” Balchunas wrote on X.
Bitcoin ETF options allow investors to buy or sell Bitcoin for a specific price at a predetermined date just as easily as they purchase options for stocks — without needing to sign up on crypto-specific options platforms.
ETFs have played a prominent role in Bitcoin’s recovery this year.
Spurred in part by an institutional shopping spree, Bitcoin topped $73,000 in March, breaking the record it had set in 2021. After hovering around $60,000 for much of the year, it surged again after the November 5 presidential election of Donald Trump, hitting an all-time high just shy of $100,000 last Friday.
Other factors in Bitcoin’s latest rally include the Republican sweep in the US elections, central banks cutting interest rates, and MicroStrategy’s largest-ever Bitcoin purchase.
Bitcoin ETF issuers hold a combined 1.1 million tokens. They are expected to surpass the blockchain’s inventor, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, as the largest holder of Bitcoin before year’s end.
Aleks Gilbert is a DeFi correspondent based in New York. Have a tip? Contact him at aleks@dlnews.com.
