BlackRock, Fidelity And Grayscale Dominate Spot Bitcoin ETF Trading On First Day

Updated: 12 January 2024

Disclosure

Don’t invest unless prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment, you shouldn’t expect to be protected if something goes wrong.

Join Our Telegram channel to stay up to date on breaking news coverage

BlackRock, Fidelity and Grayscale led the charge during the first day of trading for multiple spot Bitcoin ETF (exchange-traded fund) products yesterday.

Aggregated data from Yahoo Finance shows that the total volume across the 10 spot Bitcoin ETFs reached more than $4.5 billion.

BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF, the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), was the top performer of the newly listed funds, and handled just over $1 billion. That’s a remarkable 22% of the collective trading volume recorded yesterday.

Fidelity’s spot BTC ETF recorded the second highest amount of trading volume of the new ETF listings during yesterday’s session, with approximately $685 million.

Investors Shift Their Funds From Grayscale To Cheaper Alternatives

Grayscale’s spot Bitcoin ETF, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), recorded $2.2 billion in trading volume. Despite GBTC’s clear lead with regards to yesterday’s trading volume, analysts say it is not the best performer in terms of grabbing new spot Bitcoin ETF investments.

That’s because the Grayscale’s Bitcoin ETF product is a conversion of its multi-billion-dollar Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.

Senior Bloomberg ETF analyst, Eric Balchunas said that the majority of the trade volume recorded by GBTC yesterday was likely selling volume, while BlackRock’s BTC ETF witnessed mainly buying.

Re what all these dollars flying around means. For the 10 fresh ETFs volume = buying btc today. Clear cut. But, GBTC volume prob ALL selling and maybe $BITO has some too so likely a lot offsetting going on. Just my take tho, not 100%, we'll know more when flows hit tonight

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) January 11, 2024

He added that GBTC’s high trading volume could just be investors rotating out of the fund so that they can move their capital into newer spot BTC ETFs with lower fees. These cheaper and newer alternatives include BlackRock’s and Fidelity’s respective ETFs, he said. His colleague, James Seyffart, echoed the sentiment.

Hashdex Misses Out On Spot Bitcoin ETF Activity

Not all spot Bitcoin ETF applications were approved for trading yesterday with Hashdex missing out. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) did approve Hashdex’s 19b-4 filing, which would allow its BTC ETF product to be listed on U.S. stock exchanges.

But the regulator did not make its Form S-1 effective, leaving the Hashdex “DEFI” fund still trading as a futures-based ETF.