Record BTC price in sight as bitcoin ETF flows surge
Recent inflows suggest people “recognizing that the train may leave the station sometime around the election,” Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan said
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan | Ben Solomon Photo LLC for Blockworks
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Bitcoin’s price reached roughly $73,500 after 3 pm ET on Tuesday. It dipped to about $72,600 by 4 pm ET — up 4% from 24 hours ago.
This surge to just below BTC’s record high (above $73,700, set in March) comes as capital continues to pour into US spot bitcoin ETFs. Another $479 million of net new money entered that category on Monday, Farside Investors data shows.
Those funds have seen $22.5 billion worth of net inflows since launching in January — with nearly $3.9 billion, or 17%, of those gains coming since Oct. 11.
“I think that is people recognizing that the train may leave the station sometime around the election,” Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan said during an X space late last week.
Hougan’s firm — a crypto-focused asset manager that offers both a BTC and ETH ETF — regularly meets with institutions about possible crypto allocations. The number of meetings that have led to such an allocation have gone up “significantly” in recent weeks, he explained.
A portion of these institutional players have embraced what he called “crypto sleeves,” Hougan added during the X space — exposure not just to a bitcoin fund, but perhaps an allocation to another that holds ETH and additional exposure to MicroStrategy or bitcoin miners.
“[It’s] the idea of treating crypto the same way you treat stocks, which is you don’t just buy Nvidia; you buy a basket,” he said.
Beyond institutional buy-in, bitcoin investors are betting on governments continuing to debase fiat currencies, Hougan noted in a CIO memo. But, he argues, BTC does not need the dollar to collapse to hit $200,000, adding: “It can get there just by capturing a sliver of gold’s existing market.”
Thoughts differ on the trajectory of crypto prices from here in the case of a Trump or Harris victory. But perhaps we won’t have to wait for the election to wrap up before seeing BTC notch a new all-time high.
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