Despite a groundbreaking day in the US with the largest Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) launch for a single asset, the Bitcoin price remained stagnant, hovering around the $46,000 mark. This development has raised questions within the community, particularly in light of the extraordinary trading volume and participation seen in the ETF market.<\/p>\n
On its first trading day, Bitcoin ETFs saw unprecedented activity. The total volume reached $4.6 billion, distributed among major players such as Grayscale ($2.3 billion), BlackRock ($1 billion), Fidelity ($700 million), ARK 21Shares ($288 million), and Bitwise ($125 million). This event marked over 700,000 individual trades.<\/p>\n
Nate Geraci, President of the ETF Store and co-founder of the ETF Institute, remarked<\/a>, \u201cGBTC had the largest ETF launch by trading volume ever with $2.3 billion\u2026 iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) had the 5th largest launch with $1 billion. GBTC obviously had built-in liquidity, but it\u2019s still a record. IBIT\u2019s performance is impressive given it launched the same day as 10 other competitors.\u201d<\/p>\n Bloomberg\u2019s ETF expert Eric Balchunas added<\/a>, \u201cAll told, there were 700,000 individual trades today in and out of the 11 spot ETFs. For context, that is double the number of trades for QQQ (although it sees much bigger $ volume because bigger fish use it). So, there was a lot more grassroots action (versus big seed buys) than I expected, which is good.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite these impressive figures, the Bitcoin price struggled to surpass the $50,000<\/a> threshold. Although BTC briefly touched $49,000, it failed to maintain these gains, dipping to as low as $45,700. At press time, the price settled around $46,000.<\/p>\n Dan Ripoll, managing director at Swan Bitcoin, argued<\/a> almost everyone expected Bitcoin to either rip, or to sell off on the ETF news, but neither happened. So what\u2019s behind the muted price response?<\/p>\n Ripoll argues that compliance departments at brokerage firms often take \u201cweeks to several months to add new products to their internal \u2018approved products list\u2019 for advisors to sell.\u201d Moreover, the expert explained that several large broker-dealers like Vanguard<\/a>, UBS, Citi and Merrill Lynch have either restricted or disallowed their retail clients to buy any spot Bitcoin ETFs.<\/p>\n A significant point of discussion was Vanguard\u2019s decision to block its customers from buying into the new BTC Spot ETFs, citing that these products \u201cdon\u2019t fit with Vanguard\u2019s investment philosophy.\u201d This move by the world\u2019s second-largest asset manager, behind BlackRock<\/a>, further complicates the landscape for Bitcoin ETF adoption.<\/p>\n \u201cThere may be other brokers who blocked these sales as well for ideological reasons. They don\u2019t believe in Bitcoin. I didn\u2019t expect this at all. They\u2019ll lose customers quickly with this strategy,\u201d Ripoll stated.<\/p>\n Matt Dines, Chief Investment Officer at Build Asset Management LLC, added<\/a> another very important fact that is probably not widely known:<\/p>\n The dollars behind today\u2019s spot ETF volume haven\u2019t even hit the fund portfolio managers\u2019 desks yet. Most create orders behind today\u2019s flows will get cash settled tomorrow morning T+1 \u2026 i.e. the capital behind today\u2019s wave hasn\u2019t even started lifting offers in the UTXO market.<\/strong><\/p>\n Besides that there are reports of investors rotating out of Bitcoin ETF proxies, like BITO and mining stocks, to redeploy capital into better proxies, such as the new spot ETFs. This shift might have mildly suppressed ETF inflows and could take months to fully materialize.<\/p>\n It is also interesting to note that Grayscale accounted for half of yesterday\u2019s trading volume, much of which could have been sell orders. In the run-up to the spot ETF approval, GBTC was a popular bet among speculators<\/a> who had taken advantage of the discount of over 40% at times in the hope that this would close with the ETF launch. This is exactly what happened, with GBTC only trading at around -1% yesterday.<\/p>\n Thus, most of the GBTC trading was probably selling. This is supported by the fact that there is probably no point for investors to hold the GBTC with its enormous 1.5% yearly fee when other spot Bitcoin ETF issuers offer 0.25%.<\/p>\n Fred Krueger, a crypto expert, stated, \u201cGBTC volume must be 90% sales. Some of that went into IBIT.\u201d BitMEX Research commented<\/a>, \u201cThe GBTC volume could be mostly selling and outflow. It has been trading at a discount for almost all the trading day, so not likely to be buying.\u201d<\/p>\n In summary, the lack of a significant Bitcoin price surge, despite the record ETF day, can be attributed to a combination of factors including GBTC selling, compliance delays, brokerage restrictions, fund rotations, and ideological stances by major financial institutions.<\/p>\n At press time, BTC traded at $45,893.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" <\/p>\n Despite a groundbreaking day in the US with the largest Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) launch for a single asset, the Bitcoin price remained stagnant, hovering around the $46,000 mark. This development has raised questions within the community, particularly in light of the extraordinary trading volume and participation seen in the ETF market.<\/p>\n On its first trading day, Bitcoin ETFs saw unprecedented activity. The total volume reached $4.6 billion, distributed among major players such as Grayscale ($2.3 billion), BlackRock ($1 billion), Fidelity ($700 million), ARK 21Shares ($288 million), and Bitwise ($125 million). This event marked over 700,000 individual trades.<\/p>\n Nate Geraci, President of the ETF Store and co-founder of the ETF Institute, remarked<\/a>, \u201cGBTC had the largest ETF launch by trading volume ever with $2.3 billion\u2026 iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) had the 5th largest launch with $1 billion. GBTC obviously had built-in liquidity, but it\u2019s still a record. IBIT\u2019s performance is impressive given it launched the same day as 10 other competitors.\u201d<\/p>\n Bloomberg\u2019s ETF expert Eric Balchunas added<\/a>, \u201cAll told, there were 700,000 individual trades today in and out of the 11 spot ETFs. For context, that is double the number of trades for QQQ (although it sees much bigger $ volume because bigger fish use it). So, there was a lot more grassroots action (versus big seed buys) than I expected, which is good.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite these impressive figures, the Bitcoin price struggled to surpass the $50,000<\/a> threshold. Although BTC briefly touched $49,000, it failed to maintain these gains, dipping to as low as $45,700. At press time, the price settled around $46,000.<\/p>\n Dan Ripoll, managing director at Swan Bitcoin, argued<\/a> almost everyone expected Bitcoin to either rip, or to sell off on the ETF news, but neither happened. So what\u2019s behind the muted price response?<\/p>\n Ripoll argues that compliance departments at brokerage firms often take \u201cweeks to several months to add new products to their internal \u2018approved products list\u2019 for advisors to sell.\u201d Moreover, the expert explained that several large broker-dealers like Vanguard<\/a>, UBS, Citi and Merrill Lynch have either restricted or disallowed their retail clients to buy any spot Bitcoin ETFs.<\/p>\n A significant point of discussion was Vanguard\u2019s decision to block its customers from buying into the new BTC Spot ETFs, citing that these products \u201cdon\u2019t fit with Vanguard\u2019s investment philosophy.\u201d This move by the world\u2019s second-largest asset manager, behind BlackRock<\/a>, further complicates the landscape for Bitcoin ETF adoption.<\/p>\n \u201cThere may be other brokers who blocked these sales as well for ideological reasons. They don\u2019t believe in Bitcoin. I didn\u2019t expect this at all. They\u2019ll lose customers quickly with this strategy,\u201d Ripoll stated.<\/p>\n Matt Dines, Chief Investment Officer at Build Asset Management LLC, added<\/a> another very important fact that is probably not widely known:<\/p>\n The dollars behind today\u2019s spot ETF volume haven\u2019t even hit the fund portfolio managers\u2019 desks yet. Most create orders behind today\u2019s flows will get cash settled tomorrow morning T+1 \u2026 i.e. the capital behind today\u2019s wave hasn\u2019t even started lifting offers in the UTXO market.<\/strong><\/p>\n Besides that there are reports of investors rotating out of Bitcoin ETF proxies, like BITO and mining stocks, to redeploy capital into better proxies, such as the new spot ETFs. This shift might have mildly suppressed ETF inflows and could take months to fully materialize.<\/p>\n It is also interesting to note that Grayscale accounted for half of yesterday\u2019s trading volume, much of which could have been sell orders. In the run-up to the spot ETF approval, GBTC was a popular bet among speculators<\/a> who had taken advantage of the discount of over 40% at times in the hope that this would close with the ETF launch. This is exactly what happened, with GBTC only trading at around -1% yesterday.<\/p>\n Thus, most of the GBTC trading was probably selling. This is supported by the fact that there is probably no point for investors to hold the GBTC with its enormous 1.5% yearly fee when other spot Bitcoin ETF issuers offer 0.25%.<\/p>\nBitcoin Price Cannot Maintain Its Gains<\/h2>\n
Rotation Plays And GBTC Selling<\/h2>\n
Record-Breaking ETF Launch<\/h2>\n
Bitcoin Price Cannot Maintain Its Gains<\/h2>\n
Rotation Plays And GBTC Selling<\/h2>\n