BlackRock and Fidelity’s spot Bitcoin ETFs landed in the top 10 for all ETFs by net asset flows for the month of January, according to a recent report from U.S. financial services firm Morningstar.
It’s an impressive feat when you consider that neither ETF was actually available to investors for the entire month. Each fund, the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC), began trading on January 11. That means they each had 14 total days of trading.
BlackRock’s IBIT accounted for $2.7 billion worth of net asset flows and Fidelity’s FBTC accounted for $2.3 billion. Net assets means that the Morningstar calculation accounted for deposits and withdrawals during the month of January.
Keep in mind that BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, has a massive ETF business. Even without its IBIT making the top 10, it had five other funds in the running—including its iShares Core S&P 500 ETF taking the top spot.
There were signs that the Blackrock and Fidelity ETFs were performing well among the rest of their competition—crypto and otherwise—just a week after they had been trading, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas.
Another way to put the bitcoin ETF flows in ETF context (besides showing their #s relative to past new launches) is how they stack up to ALL ETFs in past 1 week flows. Even after four days two of them are in Top 5 and three in Top 10, up there w the studs $VOO, $QQQ et al. pic.twitter.com/oduhktEqwG
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) January 18, 2024
The performance is even more impressive when you consider how the pre-approval hype around spot Bitcoin ETFs quickly evaporated. On the day they began trading, the price of BTC rose as high as $48,494.62. But after that peak—and less than two weeks later—the price had slid all the way to $38,678.19 on January 23.
That’s because when the ETFs began trading and the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) was converted to a spot ETF, it unlocked previously locked-up shares and triggered a selloff. The resulting sell pressure caused Bitcoin to lose all its ETF gains.
In fact, Grayscale picked up its own superlative: GBTC saw the second-largest outflow of any ETF in January, with $5.7 billion worth of shares being sold after its conversation to a spot Bitcoin ETF.
Image: Screenshot of Morningstar ranking of ETFs by January 2024 inflows.
It’s a bittersweet outcome. Some analysts have posited that if Grayscale hadn’t filed a lawsuit—and won a judgement—against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over its refusal to consider its ETF application, none of the others would have been approved.
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