As a researcher with a background in financial markets and experience in analyzing digital asset trends, I find the recent developments in the bitcoin ETF market intriguing. The data suggests that spot bitcoin ETFs experienced slower outflows on Thursday compared to the previous day’s record levels. This trend was observed across several major players such as BlackRock’s IBIT, Fidelity’s FBTC, Bitwise’s BITB, VanEck’s HODL, and WisdomTree’s BTCW, which had no new flows on Thursday.


Following significant setbacks that pushed its value down to $56,500, bitcoin made a recovery on Thursday and continued to rise during the early hours of Friday. This improvement took place concurrently with a decrease in withdrawals from US-based bitcoin ETFs compared to the prior day’s record outflows.

Based on recent figures from SoSoValue, there was a total withdrawal of approximately $34.4 million from bitcoin spot ETFs on May 2nd.

Bitcoin ETFs Experience Slower Outflows

Thursdays saw a halt in new investments for BlackRock’s IBIT and Fidelity’s FBTC, the second and third largest Bitcoin funds in terms of total assets. A comparable pattern emerged for Bitwise’s BITB, VanEck’s HODL, and WisdomTree’s BTCW, all reporting no inflow of fresh funds.

Nonetheless, according to Bloomberg’s renowned ETF analyst James Seyffart, it’s common for funds to experience days with no new investments, and this trend shouldn’t be mistakenly viewed as a sign of product ineffectiveness.

As a crypto investor, I’ve noticed that among all the Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), Grayscale’s GBTC has been drawing considerable attention due to its persistent outflows. And unfortunately, on Thursday, I observed yet another net outflow for this ETF, amounting to $55 million, according to SoSoValue’s recent data.

Instead, Ark Invest’s ARKB fund saw net inflows of $13 million daily. Meanwhile, other bitcoin spot ETFs, including Franklin Templeton’s EZBC, Valkyrie’s BRRR, Invesco and Galaxy Digital’s BTCO, reported inflows of $3 million, $2 million, and $1 million respectively. The combined total for these funds amounted to $6 million in new investments.

Yesterday, I witnessed a significant outflow of funds from Bitcoin investment vehicles, marking a new record with over $563 million withdrawn. Among these, Fidelity’s FBTC saw a substantial loss of $191 million, surpassing the outflows from GBTC.

As a researcher studying financial markets, I observed an interesting development on May 1st. BlackRock’s Institutional Bitcoin Investment Trust (IBIT) experienced its first net daily outflow during this period, contributing to the broader market downturn that pushed the price of bitcoin down to $56,500 lows.

Bitcoin Recovery

Bitcoin’s price has risen by 3% over the last day, reaching above $59,300 following the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) dovish stance announced at the FOMC meeting. According to QCP Capital, Jerome Powell, the Fed chairman, indicated that there will be no interest rate hikes and revealed a decrease in Quantitative Tightening (QT) from $60 billion monthly to $25 billion.

In the Quantitative Research Analytics (QRA), the Treasury intends to keep the volume of longer-term bond issuances constant. This move aims to address worries about rising longer-term interest rates, thereby potentially weakening the US dollar and benefiting riskier assets like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

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2024-05-03 13:22