Yesterday, it was another record day for trading in spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Considering only the new ETFs on the US stock exchanges, the daily trading volume has exceeded nine and a half billion dollars.
Summary
The trading volumes of ETFs on Bitcoin spot
In particular, three of these ETFs have individually exceeded two billion in daily volumes: IBIT by BlackRock, GBTC by Grayscale, and FBTC by Fidelity.
It is worth noting that on the first day of trading on the stock exchange, January 11th, by adding up all the daily trading volumes of all the new Bitcoin ETFs excluding GBTC, they barely exceeded two billion dollars, and even then it seemed to be a success.
Yesterday IBIT alone exceeded 3.7 billion, almost double what happened on January 11th.
Even GBTC, which had lost a lot of volumes over the weeks, yesterday recorded its new all-time high from this point of view, with 2.9 billion exceeding even the 2.2 on January 11th.
Regarding BlackRock’s ETF, it has actually been setting new records since February 26th.
After the billion dollars of trades on the first day, and the subsequent decline, on February 26th it rose to 1.3 billion, and on the 28th it had even risen above 3.3.
On Monday it had again touched 2.5 billion dollars, and yesterday it set its new all-time high record above 3.7 billion.
These are record volumes, both in terms of trades of a single ETF, but also overall the ETFs on Bitcoin are recording record trading volumes on the stock exchange at the asset class level.
Grayscale
Yesterday, however, what surprised the most was GBTC by Grayscale.
Indeed, after reaching a trading volume of 2.2 billion dollars on January 11th, it had even dropped below 320 million on February 23rd.
Furthermore, until the 28th it had not yet exceeded one billion.
On Monday it had risen above 1.8 billion dollars, and yesterday it jumped to 2.9.
This last leap seems almost sensational, but it must be framed in context.
GBTC has been around for over ten years, but not in the form of an ETF. When it was still just an OTC-traded fund, it had managed to accumulate about 620,000 BTC, but with a significant discount to NAV due to the inability to redeem shares on the market.
With the transformation into ETF, they were finally able to start withdrawing shares from the market and partially selling the collateral. Since then, they have sold more than 200,000 BTC, which is slightly less than a third of what the fund owned on January 10th.
At first, they had managed to sell even more than 10,000 BTC per day, but starting from the end of January, the selling pace dropped to touch 428 BTC on February 27th.
At that point, however, the return of the actions has resumed, and they have had to sell up to almost 10,000 BTC in one day, with 13,000 BTC sold only this week.
The fact is that there is a commission on GBTC shares that is three times higher than on IBIT, so those who own those shares should sell them to buy shares of other ETFs.
Indeed, from January 11th to today, IBIT and FBTC alone have acquired a total of 280,000 BTC, many more than the 205,000 sold by GBTC.
The impact on the price of Bitcoin
These dynamics are also having an impact on the price of Bitcoin.
However, what happened yesterday in the crypto markets may have little to do with ETFs. Perhaps it was the ETF market that was influenced by what was happening in the crypto markets, especially in terms of volumes.
On Sunday the price of Bitcoin, already high, was around $62,000.
However, on Monday the crypto markets started to move, with BTC rising up to about $65,000.
These two levels at the moment seem to be important, because yesterday Bitcoin first made a spectacular leap above $69,000, setting a new all-time high, but then immediately dropped below $62,000.
However, once it dropped below this threshold, it quickly recovered, and then rose above $65,000 during the night.
These dynamics are typical of the price of Bitcoin, and certainly not of the classic trend of ETFs. However, such volatility has also attracted speculators to traditional stock exchanges, where ETFs are traded.
Moreover, the recovery of the $65,000 occurred on closed US stock exchanges, so it certainly cannot be attributed to ETFs.
