#ChartoftheDay The iShares Bitcoin Trust ( #IBIT ) has become the largest spot $BTC ETF in the US by assets under management (AUM), surpassing Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ( #GBTC ).
As of the end of trading on May 28, Blackrock’s IBIT has a holding of 288,670 Bitcoins, while GBTC holds 287,450 Bitcoins.
Created in 2013, GBTC has a decade history of operating as a close-end fund and had accumulated almost $30 billion of bitcoin before the debut of spot bitcoin ETFs. However, investors have been continuously pulling Bitcoin from the fund since it converted into an ETF in mid-January this year. The daily outflows were in hundreds of millions of dollars. On May 28, GBTC recorded $105 million in outflow, while IBTC registered a $102.5 million inflow.
This is mainly due to GBTC’s sky-high 1.5% management fee, which was a major turn-off for investors. In contrast, Blackrock’s IBTC only charges 0.12%; Fidelity’s FBTC charges 0.25%; and ARKB from Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest has a fee of 0.21%, with the fee waived for the first six months of trading or the first $1 billion in fund assets.
Although GBTC has maintained a significant lead over newcomers and plans to roll out a low-fee new product called Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust, Grayscale lacks the muscles that trillion-dollar asset management companies like BlackRock and Fidelity have in terms of customer relations and influence, which could also be an underlying reason for the rise of IBIT.
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