Stocks trade sideways while bitcoin, crypto stocks continue to decline

As newly-approved bitcoin ETFs kicked off their second day of trading Friday, cryptocurrencies slipped and stocks were flat.

Bitcoin (BTC) was down 5% Friday, trading around $43,600. This is an 11% drop from its Thursday high of just over $49,000.

“We had been given hints that BlackRock and others had lined up some serious money to make sure yesterday was a splash,” Noelle Acheson, author of the “Crypto is Macro Now” newsletter. “So, it’s understandable that many find yesterday’s price performance disappointing.”

Ether, which has seen a 17% rally this week as investors trade on optimism that an ethereum spot ETF may soon hit the market, was flat Friday, trading just barely in the green.

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The cryptocurrencies’ moves come after 11 new bitcoin ETFs raked in more than $4 billion in trading volume Wednesday. Early flow data, which may be adjusted in the coming days, shows that the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF was the winner, bringing in almost $240 million, according to analysts at BitMEX.

Investors pulled around $95 million from Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust, which converted into an ETF Thursday. The structure change of GBTC unlocked almost $2 billion in assets for investors, so analysts were expecting even more outflows from the product.

The launch of bitcoin ETFs is still largely being interpreted as a success. Products on the whole saw day-one inflows of around $625 million, and, historically, speaking, commodity products have a massive impact on their underlying assets, analysts say.

“I do believe this is a relatively large positive for Bitcoin and that opinion stems from my experience with the launches in GLD and SLV,” Tom Essaye, founder of Sevens Report Research said, referring to the first gold and silver physically-backed ETFs.

“I can absolutely tell you they did ‘change the game’ when it came to investors gaining exposure to physical gold and silver,” Essaye added. “And I believe we will see something similar with these bitcoin ETFs and bitcoin, although importantly I will caution that it could take years for that to occur and it likely won’t happen ‘all at once,’ as some bitcoin proponents have implied.”

Crypto-related stocks also continued their decline Friday, with crypto exchange Coinbase losing 5% and hitting a new month low of around $132 a share.

As the custodian for 9 out of the 11 new bitcoin ETFs, Mizuho analysts earlier this month estimated that Coinbase could stand to gain only around $25-$30 million in annual revenue.

Analysts also speculate whether a bitcoin ETF could draw US customers off of exchanges like Coinbase now that there is another way to gain spot bitcoin exposure.

Mining companies Marathon Digital and Hut 8 saw their shares tumble, losing 12% and 10%, respectively, midway through the trading day Friday.

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