BlackRock and Fidelity Lead in Net Inflows for Bitcoin ETFs
According to Blockworks, ten spot bitcoin ETFs were launched on January 11, and two funds have distinguished themselves in terms of net inflows: BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and Fidelity Investments’ Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC). The BlackRock offering reached $1 billion in assets after four days of trading, while Fidelity’s fund hit the milestone on its fifth trading day. IBIT and FBTC had about $1.2 billion and nearly $1.1 billion in net inflows, respectively, after Thursday, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data. The two funds each have more than $2 billion in trading volumes since launching.
Yahoo Finance data indicated that IBIT saw an additional $430 million or so in trading volumes on Friday, while Fidelity’s fund hit Friday trading volumes totaling roughly $415 million. Robert Mitchnick, BlackRock digital assets head, told Blockworks in an email that this is just the beginning and they have a long-term commitment focused on providing investors access to an iShares quality ETF.
Other funds, such as Bitwise’s spot bitcoin ETF, were closing in on $400 million of inflows entering Friday, while a product by Ark and 21Shares had eclipsed inflows of $300 million. The Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF (BTCO) had roughly $190 million of assets after five days on the market. Net inflows for a fund by crypto specialist Valkyrie have so far edged those seen by a product from traditional finance giant Franklin Templeton. VanEck and WisdomTree have seen the lowest levels of inflows thus far.
Grayscale Investments’ Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC) has seen about $2.2 billion of outflows so far, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data. GBTC had about $28 billion in assets upon the conversion, but that level has come down amid outflows due to its 1.5% fee, which is well above the other ETFs with fees between 0.19% and 0.39%. John Hoffman, Grayscale’s managing director of sales and distribution, called GBTC a leading risk transfer vehicle that has dominated spot bitcoin ETF volumes, with trading volumes totaling roughly $7.7 billion after five days of trading.