Bitcoin ETF
BlackRock and Fidelity’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have set a new record by amassing more assets in their first month of trading than any other ETF launched in the U.S. in the past 30 years.
The development comes amid a new report from earlier this week that showed IBIT was among the top five of the largest ETFs by inflows this year.
Bloomberg Intelligence data shows BlackRock’s IBIT and Fidelity’s FBTC have each managed to gain over $3 billion in assets within the first 17 trading days of their launch, a feat unmatched by any of over 5,500 ETFs listed.
A Bloomberg ETF analyst, Eric Balchunas, highlighted this in a February 8 post on X, stating that IBIT and FBTC are in a “league of their own.”
Previously, the record for the highest assets under management (AUM) in the debut month was held by BlackRock’s iShares Climate Conscious & Transition MSCI USA ETF, which launched on June 8, 2023, and gathered $2.2 billion.
According to Balchunas, the BlackRock and Fidelity ETF results are even more remarkable since most other such products on the list were “Bring Your Own Assets” (BYOA) ETFs, implying that one investor was responsible for all the ETF’s AUM.
In contrast, BlackRock and Fidelity’s ETFs experienced inflows every trading day since their launch, a phenomenon Balchunas described as “literally unprecedented.”
Balchunas also noted that the data excluded ETFs that underwent conversions, like Grayscale’s GBTC, and around 100 mutual funds that converted to exchange-traded funds. He also noted the mass outflows from Grayscale’s Bitcoin ETF, which have been a factor for the spot Bitcoin ETF performance.
The Bloomberg ETF analyst noted competition since ten spot Bitcoin ETFs launched on the same day. The ARK 21Shares’s spot Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) and Bitwise (BITB) ETFs ranked 20th and 22nd, respectively.
IBIT and FBTC have gained an advantage over the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), the largest fund by assets under management, in at least two liquidity metrics, according to JPMorgan.
The Hui-Heubel ratio, a proxy for market breadth, is approximately four times lower for BlackRock and Fidelity ETFs than GBTC, indicating greater market breadth for the former, JPMorgan says.
Additionally, the deviation of ETF closing prices from their net asset value (NAV) has approached that of the SPDR Gold Shares ETF for BlackRock and Fidelity’s ETFs, implying improved liquidity. In contrast, GBTC’s deviations remain higher, suggesting lower liquidity than BlackRock and Fidelity’s ETFs.