[ad_1]
(Bloomberg) — The first U.S. ETF to hold Bitcoin directly is off to a strong start, with billions of dollars traded in a historic first day of trading for the long-sought investment vehicle.
Most Read Articles on Bloomberg
On Thursday, $4.6 billion worth of shares traded between about a dozen U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which was converted into an ETF, had about $2.3 billion in volume, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Meanwhile, he lost more than $1 billion to BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT).
“This is definitely a breakthrough,” said Athanasios Psarofagis, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “There was no question that demand for these ETFs was strong, but the overall numbers are impressive.”
Still, it’s hard to compare Thursday’s activity to other days in the ETF’s history. Typically, a fund that tracks a new asset class will start trading only once per day. It would be unprecedented for more than 10 nearly identical funds to all launch at the same time. But even if you focus on just one of his ETFs, you can see that the size of the trades is quite large.
The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust debuted as the most heavily traded ETF in history. Indeed, this product has been in his trust structure since 2013, giving him a head start of nearly $27 billion in asset size.
Volume does not indicate buying or selling or investor inflow. Because of the way the fund settles trades, net inflows into or net outflows from the commodity likely won’t be known until at least Friday.
When the first Bitcoin futures fund began trading in 2021, it had nearly $1 billion in trades on its entire first day. At the time, the futures fund’s debut was the second-most traded fund in history.
Psarofagis added the caveat that much of the demand could come from so-called “seed” money, pre-arranged by fund issuers. Signs of more fundamental demand, such as from individual investors and financial advisors, may emerge later as more broker-dealers list funds on the platform.
Most Read Articles on Bloomberg Businessweek
©2024 Bloomberg LP
[ad_2]
Source link
