Bitcoin ETF interest abound as BlackRock fund has record day
The Monday trading volumes total passes the previous high mark set on the fund’s first day of trading nearly seven weeks ago
pbk-pg/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
BlackRock’s spot bitcoin ETF saw record daily trading volumes Monday — another signal interest in such funds has not yet died down.
More than 42 million shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), worth roughly $1.3 billion, had been traded on the day as of 3:30 pm ET.
The $1.1 billion in trade volumes marked the highest daily mark for IBIT in its six-plus weeks on the market, according to Yahoo Finance data. It broke the previous record of roughly $1 billion the fund posted during its first day of trading on Jan. 11.
Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas, in an X post, called IBIT’s Monday volumes an “insane number” for a recently launched ETF with a bunch of competitors.
The nine US spot bitcoin funds — excluding the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC) — also collectively saw a record $2.4 billion in trading volumes Monday, Balchunas added.
The BlackRock BTC fund’s trading volumes ranked 11th among ETFs with about an hour left in the trading day, Bloomberg Intelligence data indicated. It was trailing the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) and was ahead of State Street Global Advisors’ Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLF) at that time.
Aside from GBTC — which started with about $28 billion in assets upon converting to an ETF — IBIT is the biggest spot bitcoin fund, with nearly $7 billion in assets.
Read more: As bitcoin ETFs gain ground on gold funds, is a flippening in the cards?
Despite spot bitcoin ETFs seeing a rare day of net outflows on Feb. 21, according to BitMEX Research, the segment’s funds notched net inflows of nearly $600 million during last week’s four days of trading.
Overall, net inflows into US spot BTC funds in the US have amounted to about $5.5 billion.
Trading volumes for bitcoin ETFs by competing asset managers Bitwise, WisdomTree and VanEck had spiked last week.
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan said last week the cadence and size of “sales wins” for BITB from money managers has recently increased as bitcoin’s price has rallied.
Bitcoin’s price was above $54,300 at 3:30 pm ET Monday — up nearly 5% from 24 hours prior.
Executives and industry watchers have said they expect bitcoin ETF net inflows to balloon in the coming months as more wealth managers get comfortable with allocating client capital to such offerings.
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