Bitcoin ETFs now $2B up on inflows to date, led by BlackRock

Investors have plowed billions of dollars into spot bitcoin ETFs since they launched last month — and so far, it’s paying off.

Altogether, the suite of new bitcoin-backed funds (not counting Grayscale Bitcoin Trust) have attracted $11.4 billion in capital inflows in the past five weeks.

Their respective issuers, a set of 10 led by BlackRock, Fidelity, Ark, 21Shares and Bitwise, have then used that cash to buy bitcoin on behalf of ETF shareholders.

They do so through crypto exchanges, mostly Coinbase and Coinbase Pro, but they also utilize prop trading firms such as the Dutch-founded Flow Traders.

• Spot ETFs had accumulated 258,770 BTC as of Friday morning, per data shared by BitMEX Research. 
• At $52,100 per coin, that’s $13.48 billion held by the ETFs — $2.08 billion more than the value that has flowed into those funds to date.
• Buyers of these funds are overall up more than 18% since their January 11 debut. Bitcoin has meanwhile gained less than 12%.

BlackRock’s fund, IBIT, is the furthest ahead in terms of actual dollars. 

Read more: A month after launch, spot bitcoin ETF weekly net inflows hit new high

That’s mostly due to IBIT having the most assets under management (AUM) — 115,991 BTC ($6.04 billion) from $5.17 billion inflows, an appreciation of more than $870 million, or 17%, at current prices.

The chart below plots the differences between net inflows and the current value of bitcoin treasuries for each spot ETF.

Shareholders in Invesco-Galaxy’s offering, BTCO, are however way further ahead, albeit on a smaller scale. 

BTCO has attracted $241.4 million net flows and currently holds 5,970 BTC worth $311 million — a difference of almost $70 million, or 29%.

Valkyrie, Fidelity and VanEck funds are also further ahead than BlackRock’s, with around 20% gains.

BlackRock ETF has dollar-cost averaged into bitcoin

The variations in unrealized gains across the different funds illustrate distinct buying patterns between investor groups.

Plotting BlackRock inflows against bitcoin’s price, for example, shows investors have kept their IBIT allocations steady over time. 

This has essentially led IBIT to dollar-cost average into bitcoin at an even pace, converting to lower unrealized profits compared to Invesco-Galaxy’s fund BTCO.

BTCO instead saw two-thirds of its total inflows to date across just four days — Jan. 16 to 19 — as bitcoin floundered between $41,600 and $43,100 after dropping more than 15% in the days following the ETF debuts. 

Another surge in inflows occurred two days later, when BTC traded below $40,000 for the first time in more than a month.

Read more: Another bitcoin ETF just joined the $1B assets club. Will it be the last?

Bitcoin is now up by nearly one-third from that point, pushing BTCO, and its shareholders by extension, as far into the green as practically possible.

Some of those investors appear to have taken it one step further by taking profits, making BTCO the only bitcoin ETF, apart from GBTC, to record outflows since launch. 

Between Feb. 9 and 14, investors pulled more than 1,500 BTC ($78.1 million) from Invesco-Galaxy’s fund, equal to around 20% of its treasury at the time. The price of bitcoin rallied from under $45,500 to $50,000 across that period.

WisdomTree’s BTCW slightly trails the pack, having attracted the overwhelming majority of its inflows on its first day of trade — before bitcoin dipped.

As for Grayscale’s flagship fund, now an ETF in its own right, it has on average bled nearly 2,400 BTC ($124.9 million) per trading day this month. 

All told, the bitcoin pulled from GBTC since Jan. 11 was collectively worth $6.86 billion at the time of those outflows. 

That same amount of bitcoin (162,259 BTC) would now fetch $8.44 billion — potential gains of  23% left on the table, had that capital not immediately re-entered the market.

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