Bitcoin ETF Leaves Gold in the Dust—Even With Lousy Returns! You’ll Never Guess Why 💰🤯

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What to know:

  • IBIT, with the aplomb of a precocious upstart, has whisked past the SPDR Gold Trust in year-to-date inflows—this, despite bitcoin sulking in the corner with mediocre price antics.
  • Undaunted rivers of capital meander into IBIT, a testament to the institutional animal’s strange, almost poetic, confidence in Bitcoin’s long-term mirage. (Institutions apparently don’t read the news—they write it.)

Gold, that ancient hoarder of human greed, has pirouetted upwards by 29% this year, leaving Bitcoin, the enfant terrible, sulking in the wings with a mere 3.8% shuffle. And yet—the paradox!—investors fling their wallets at the prodigal digital child with the enthusiasm of moths to an exceptionally bewildering flame. 🤷‍♂️🪙

Consider BlackRock’s spot bitcoin ETF (IBIT): having slurped up a net $6.96 billion in inflows so far this annum (Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas keeps the receipts), IBIT has landed squarely at number six in the ETF hunger games—meanwhile, the once-glorious SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) lingers at a distinctly un-shiny number seven, its net inflows clocking in at a bashful $6.5 billion.

What’s behind this institutional infatuation? Surely not price performance, that fickle god—nay, rather it is an indefatigable faith in Bitcoin’s long-term destiny, come fork or fiat. Gold glistens under the anxious glare of trade wars and geopolitical melodrama, strutting up $3,384, while Bitcoin (sometimes called digital gold, but only by those with poor taste in metaphors) sits pouting, 10% beneath its January apex.

In the words of the ever-optimistic Balchunas, smuggled onto X: “To take in more cash in that scenario is really good sign for long term, and inspires confidence in our call that BTC ETFs will have triple gold’s aum in 3-5yrs.” In other words: let’s meet back here in five years, and try very hard not to say, “I told you so.” 😉🍾

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2025-05-07 13:02