In less than two weeks since U.S. regulators approved ten spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, it’s shaping up to be a race between two companies for these new assets.
According to the latest Bloomberg data, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (ticker: IBIT) and Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (ticker: FBTC) are leading in this field, pulling in around $1.9 billion and $1.6 billion, respectively. At this point, they’ve scooped up roughly 70% of the Bitcoin ETF inflows.
Read More: BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin ETF Takes a Step Closer to Reality
GBTC boasts the industry’s top-tier fee of 1.5% – lower than the 2% tag pre-conversion, but still higher than its closest rivals. Franklin Templeton’s fund is rocking a post-denial expense ratio of 0.19% – the lowest in the Bitcoin ETF. While BlackRock and Fidelity are right next to it with potential post-denial charges of 0.25%.
All the fresh-faced Bitcoin ETFs hitting the market this month have been flaunting a net inflow, except for Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). Despite being the world’s largest cryptocurrency fund with $22 billion in assets, it’s lost 106,092 BTC since its ETF transformation, worth approximately $4.4 billion in nine trading days.
The Outflow of GBTC funds
The cash exodus from Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) slowed for a second day, prompting a glimmer of hope that the multi-billion Bitcoin dump might end soon.
BitMEX Research data reveals that on January 24th, the GBTC outflow amounted to a mere $429 million – the smallest daily escape since Grayscale’s spot Bitcoin ETF launched on January 11th, slowing down by 33% compared to the start of the week on January 22nd.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, in his January 25th X message, declared that the GBTC outflow is “seemingly trending down,” though he couldn’t help but note, “it’s still a pretty large number.”
Slowing down the daily fund escape doesn’t necessarily mean the GBTC outflow has ended or is slowing down. Earlier, Balchunas predicted that GBTC would lose about 25% of its circulating shares before the capital outflows stopped.
GBTC Outflow Data May Be Misinterpreted
Meanwhile, blockchain tracking firm Arkham Intelligence warned about the potential misinterpretation of GBTC transaction data presented on its platform.
In the January 24th X post, Arkham revealed that the GBTC outflow data on their platform is like a split between Coinbase Prime and GBTC’s new storage addresses.
Due to the input-output structure of its blockchain, Bitcoin transaction outputs are often split amongst multiple addresses.
In the long term, Anthony Scaramucci from SkyBridge Capital predicts that in the long run, companies like BlackRock and Fidelity will likely remain atop the leaderboard.
BlackRock and Fidelity will be the dynamic duo. They’ve got the biggest sales force. In the serious business of financial services, it’s all about the assets, and these two are the two biggest players in the ETF space. So I suspect they will be the two winners.
Anthony Scaramucci, this month on Bloomberg Television
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