After hitting a record trading volume on Monday at $1.3 billion, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) set a new record for the second consecutive day at $1.357 billion, with more than 42 million shares changing hands. Overall, the US-traded Bitcoin ETFs saw $520 million in combined net inflows on Monday.
Fidelity Investments’ Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) came second at $860 million in trading volume, while the next two closest contenders, Ark 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) and the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB), did $280 million and $180 million, respectively.
According to Bloomberg Intelligence analysis Eric Balchunas, such gargantuan volumes — IBIT ranked 11th among all available ETFs and 25th among stocks overall in terms of daily trading volume — is a more than impressive result, especially considering the strength of the competition.
In a follow-up post on Wednesday, Balchunas also noted that the number of individual trades for IBIT has surpassed those of SPY and QQQ, which suggests that most demand comes from retail traders. The said figure is much higher than the analyst expected, especially considering that most Bitcoin ETF products are not yet available on many advisory platforms nor do they have options.
On Wednesday, IBIT set a new record in terms of new inflows at $612 million, placing once again ahead of the competition. The flagship Bitcoin ETF was followed by Fidelity’s FBTC at $245 million inflows and Ark Invest 21Shares’ ARKB at $23.8 million. On the other hand, Grayslale’s GBTC fund has seen the biggest outflows since January 30 at $216 million, and VanEck’s HODL product lost some $3 million, as per data from BitMEX Research.
In the past few days, the price of Bitcoin has skyrocketed to $63,000, nearing its all-time high of $69,000, which is believed by many to be an indicator of an upcoming pre-halving rally. The halving event for Bitcoin is expected to occur in April 2024, at a block number 740,000. It will slash miner rewards in half from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC, which will reduce the amount of new BTC entering the market.
Historically, every Bitcoin halving has seen a notable surge in price a couple of months before and after the event due to reduced supply and increased scarcity. However, JPMorgan analysts forecast that the BTC price may drop to as low as $42,000 after halving, mostly due to a decline in rewards and higher production costs.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is changing hands at $63,093, as per data from TradingView.
