BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF is the leader among 11 funds approved by the SEC in January. Chesnut/Getty Images
A spot Bitcoin ETF managed by the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock, has shown early dominance by becoming the first among a newly approved group of cryptocurrency-linked financial products to reach $1 billion in assets under management.
The company's ETF, iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), outperformed the 10 other exchange-traded products approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, including those offered by TradFi Fidelity and Franklin Templeton.
Reaching $1 billion in assets under management in such a short time would be noteworthy for any ETF, let alone one that has faced an uphill battle to gain SEC approval, said Stephen Lupka, managing director and head of private clients at Swan Bitcoin. Finance and stock exchanges.
“If you look at the history of all ETFs, BlackRock is in rarefied air,” Lupka said. luck.
Major inflows into IBIT in just one week reflect strong demand from investors, Robert Mitchnik, head of digital assets at BlackRock, said in a statement.
“This is just the beginning. We have a long-term commitment focused on providing investors with access to high-quality iShares ETFs,” Mitchnick said in a statement. luck.
Lupka added that the strength of BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF shows that Bitcoin will benefit overall as reliable TradFi firms replace failures like FTX and Celsius as an entry point for investors into the cryptocurrency market. Although the SEC tried in its statements to distance itself, the agency's approval of ETFs after a little more than a decade of rejection also helped, Lupka said.
Although Bitcoin rose in the wake of last week's approvals, its price has since fallen to around $42,400, down from $46,700 a week ago. Lupka said the Bitcoin price stall was likely due to some outflows from Grayscale's Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, which has the highest fees among all new products at 1.5%. He added that this can also be attributed to some investors managing risk by waiting to see what will happen now that the market has changed due to new entrants on TradFi.
“I think traders have realized that, in the short term, there is no catalyst in the next week or two that will push the price up 20% — and that will be a bit more in the medium term,” Lupka said.
