Good news for Bitcoin came over the weekend from Grayscale’s ETF.
Indeed, quite unexpectedly, on Friday, May 3rd, there were recorded 63 million dollars of inflows towards the world’s largest Bitcoin ETF.
Summary
The latest news on Bitcoin: Grayscale ETF outflows
Since it was transformed into an ETF on January 11, 2024, the Grayscale fund on Bitcoin has recorded a long consecutive series of outflows.
It is enough to say that on January 10th he owned about 620,000 BTC, while now he only owns a little over 290,000, which is less than half.
The outflows began on the very day of the stock market debut in the form of ETFs, so much so that already the next day they were forced to liquidate more than 2,300 BTC.
Since then, practically during all daily stock market sessions, outflows had occurred, with a peak on January 23 followed the next day by a single daily liquidation of almost 16,000 BTC.
Starting from the end of January, outflows began to decrease, reaching a first minimum peak at the end of February. However, at that minimum peak, a daily liquidation of more than 400 BTC followed.
At the beginning of March, daily settlements returned above 9,000 BTC, only to drop below 300 BTC on April 11th.
Since then, daily settlements have followed every day, ranging from 400 to 3,000 BTC.
The trend reversal
No one expected this trend to reverse.
It was expected that, as investors exited the Grayscale ETF to move to other more convenient ETFs, outflows would decrease, as indeed happened, but that there could be a net daily inflow at some point in this phase seemed really unlikely.
For example, on Friday, May 3rd, Grayscale’s ETF had still liquidated more than 900 BTC due to outflows from the previous day. And the day before, it had liquidated almost 3,000 in one go.
The influx on Friday, which has not yet been followed by a purchase of BTC due to the weekend break, was a real bolt from the blue.
In fact, the crypto markets reacted well to the news, which was released on Saturday morning when traditional stock exchanges were already closed for the weekend.
Actually, already on Friday evening the price of Bitcoin had risen with a single leap from $59,000 to about $62,000, but for other reasons. Also during the day on Friday it had risen up to $63,000.
On Saturday, however, it reached up to $64,500, both due to the positive news regarding Grayscale’s ETF, and simply continuing the upward trend started the day before.
Between yesterday and today, however, the price has remained stable at around $64,000.
The other ETFs
It should not be forgotten that while Grayscale’s ETF liquidated almost 330,000 BTC in less than four months, the other new ETFs landed on the stock exchange on January 11 acquired more than 500,000.
So it was not at all a flight of investors from ETFs on Bitcoin, but only a shift from an ETF with high costs (Grayscale’s GBTC) to others with much lower costs.
Indeed, overall, the Bitcoin ETF sector has attracted a lot of net capital inflows in recent months, ending up acquiring about 200,000 net BTC, including the 330,000 liquidated by GBTC.
Furthermore, last Tuesday some ETFs on Bitcoin and Ethereum also made their debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange, although it was not a great success.
However, with the launch in Hong Kong on April 30th, perhaps one phase has ended and another has begun.
Actually, one had already been concluded by the end of January, but the first two phases had been completely dominated by American markets.
The point now is that a second phase may have started in which Chinese markets could also play an important role.
At this moment, Chinese markets from this point of view are still playing only a very marginal role, to the point of being almost irrelevant, but they have started a process that could also assume considerable dimensions in the medium to long term.
Chinese residents who do not reside in Hong Kong, who are the vast majority, are still precluded from accessing Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs.
However, if this process started on April 30th were to conclude, as many believe, with the total opening of these products to all Chinese, China could become the second market in the world after the USA, playing a very significant role.
In such a scenario, it is not surprising at all that in recent days the crypto markets are reacting well to the news coming from the world of ETFs.
