iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), the BlackRock ETF on spot Bitcoin, has set a new record.
In fact, it has become the first ETF in the world to have surpassed 500,000 BTC held, after the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust sold about 400,000 from January until today.
At this moment, it is officially reported that the Bitcoins held by BlackRock’s ETF are 500,380, with a value of over 48 billion dollars.
The ETF by BlackRock on Bitcoin
The BlackRock ETF on Bitcoin, created and managed by its affiliate iShares, landed on the markets on January 11, 2024, along with the other spot Bitcoin ETFs that landed for the first time on the US exchanges on that same date.
From the beginning, IBIT has recorded record numbers for several reasons.
The first reason is that one of the ETFs launched on January 11 was GBTC (Grayscale Bitcoin Trust), which already existed previously but not in the form of an ETF, and over the years it had accumulated too many BTC (more than 600,000).
Once transformed into an ETF, it was able to start and liquidate the excess BTC, so much so that since then it has sold about 400,000. Many of those Bitcoins ended up being purchased by BlackRock’s ETF, which therefore recorded a very fast growth of collateral assets.
In fact, just a little over a month after its stock market debut, it had purchased 100,000 BTC, and within three months it reached 200,000.
The second reason for the immediate success of IBIT was the fact that at the time there was truly FOMO towards Bitcoin, and thus it recorded record trading volumes right from the start.
Just think that on the very first day of being listed on the stock exchange, it reached a billion dollars in daily trading volume, while in November it surpassed 5 billion in daily volumes twice, and 4 billion five times. The monthly trading volume of IBIT in November nearly reached 75 billion dollars, which is quite unusual for an asset that is less than a year old.
The BTC held by BlackRock’s ETF (IBIT)
The almost constant growth over the months of the Bitcoins held by IBIT suggests that it could reach new records in the coming months.
Currently, the single entity that holds the most BTC should be Satoshi Nakamoto, for whom an amount exceeding one million Bitcoin is estimated. However, Satoshi has been missing since 2011, and his Bitcoin have never been moved.
In second position there is precisely the BlackRock ETF, although it must be said that theoretically those 500,380 BTC do not belong to either BlackRock or Ishares, but to the shareholders of the ETF, who are very numerous. Therefore, even though it is technically a single entity that holds them, the ownership is not unique.
In third position is MicroStrategy, with more than 400,000 BTC, while in fourth is still GBTC. It is worth noting that the US government recently moved from the fourth position, roughly tied with GBTC, to the fifth, roughly tied with Fidelity’s ETF.
Among other things, IBIT holds more than double that of the second ETF in this ranking.
At this rate, however, within a year BlackRock’s ETF could even come to challenge Satoshi Nakamoto’s first position, also because, as far as the latter is concerned, it is not precisely known how many BTC he possesses.
However, already today the ETFs on Bitcoin, taken together, exceed 1.2 million BTC held, which is more than those of the founder.
The maximum number of Bitcoin
It is known that there can never be more than 21 million Bitcoin.
It is not as well known, however, that as of today there are already almost 19.8 million, and therefore there are just over 1.2 million left to create (with mining). It will still take several decades to create them all.
Moreover, of the almost 19.8 million BTC in existence, there are many that must be considered lost forever and irreplaceable. These are the ones held in public addresses whose private keys have been lost.
For example, the 1.1 million BTC that are estimated to be owned by Nakamoto most likely should be considered among those lost, because they have never been moved, and Satoshi has completely disappeared for more than ten years. The most probable hypothesis is that he passed away without leaving his Bitcoin to anyone as an inheritance.
In total, the lost BTC could be more than 3 or even 4 million, with some estimates suggesting they might even exceed 5 million.
1.2 million are held by the ETFs.
About 2.5 million are held by centralized exchanges, while 0.15 million are in DeFi.
Just under a million are held by private entities, such as companies, while half a million are held by government institutions around the world.
The rest (more than 10 million) are held by unidentified entities, meaning largely private individuals or companies whose ownership is not known, or who hold too few for it to be worth mapping them.
Finally, note that there are less than 100 individual addresses in the world that hold more than 10,000 BTC, and only 4 that hold more than 100,000 (these are addresses belonging to exchanges). For example, Satoshi Nakamoto used a different address for each individual receipt of BTC. Since those Bitcoins were received by mining them, every time he mined a block, he created a new address to receive the 50 BTC that were due at the time to whoever managed to mine a block. In total, he might have about 20,000 different addresses.
