BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF is first to reach $1B in inflows
BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF is first to reach $1B in inflows
IBIT, BlackRock Inc.'s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, has surpassed $1 billion in inflows, becoming the first ETF issuer to achieve this figure.
The news was reported by Bloomberg after investors poured $371 million into the fund on Wednesday and another $358 million on Thursday.
IBIT began trading on January 12, 2024, and has quickly gained popularity among investors seeking exposure to BTC through a regulated investment vehicle. 99% of the portfolio is made up of cryptocurrencies, with Bitcoin making up the majority of it. As of Thursday, the fund had 25,067 Bitcoins in assets.
Todd Sohn, ETF strategist at Strategas, said, "This confirms how serious BlackRock is about this new asset class. There are too many resources and opportunities not to prioritize it."
According to Bloomberg data, Fidelity Investments is in second place, with its FBTC product attracting $880 million from investors.
The top two firms, BlackRock and Fidelity, received 68% of all inflows, with nearly $2 billion in nine days of trading.
Meanwhile, most of the money came from investors exiting Grayscale Investment's GBTC fund after the ETF was approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Grayscale's Bitcoin Trust had more than $28 billion in assets under management when it converted to an ETF, and the ETF lost $1.6 billion after it began trading. However, Grayscale's fund is still a behemoth.
Grayscale's Bitcoin ETF has a high management fee of 1.5%. BlackRock and Fidelity's management fees are a fraction of GBTC's, but they don't have the lowest fees in the group of new Bitcoin ETFs. In contrast, the Franklin Templeton fund, which had a minimum fee of 0.19%, received less than 2% of total inflows.
Bloomberg analysts believe that BlackRock and Fidelity will capture a large share of the market in the future due to their institutional and retail distribution networks.
BlackRock's head of IBIT products, Rachel Aguirre, said BlackRock has focused on attracting investors who are new to the asset class from day one.
"We've seen flows coming in from a number of different directions, both from retail investors and from individual investors. There are those who were ready to invest on day one, but we are also focused on those investors who are just starting to look at this asset class," Aguirre said.
Read also: Tether's total BTC assets have reached 66,465 coins
