Bitcoin rallied to a new year-to-date highs above $65,000.
Newly launched spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds now make up four of the 11 largest spot commodity ETFs less than two months after their launch, comprising the latest milestone signposting the sector’s explosive success of spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Data compiled by Hold15Capital, a popular investor and analyst on social media, shows that IBIT, the spot Bitcoin ETF from BlackRock, now ranks as the third-largest commodity ETF with more than $10 billion in assets under management (AUM). IBIT is only beaten out by SPDR Gold Shares with $53.6 billion and BlackRock’s Ishares Gold Trust with $25.4 billion — the two largest spot gold ETFs.
Fidelity’s FBTC fund also ranks fifth with $6.55 billion, sitting behind BlackRock’s iShares silver trust with $9.63 billion, while the Ark 21Shares Bitcoin ETF is ninth with $1.58 billion and the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF is 11th with $1.58 billion.
The news follows the strongest week ever for spot Bitcoin ETFs, with the funds setting multiple new records for daily trade volume and inflows. On Feb. 28, spot Bitcoin ETFs hosted $8 billion worth of trades and daily trade volume and $637.4 million in inflows, according to data from Bloomberg.
However, data from Sosovalue shows the funds posting a combined outflow of $139.5 million on Feb. 29 after $492.4 million left the Grayscale Bitcoin Fund ETF (GBTC), breaking an extended stretch of consecutive daily inflows for the sector.
While GBTC is the largest Bitcoin ETF with a $26.5 billion AUM, GBTC already held $28.5 billion in assets at the time of its conversion into an exchange-traded fund on Jan. 10.
The surging activity surrounding spot Bitcoin ETFs has helped to drive frothy gains for leading cryptocurrencies, with both BTC and ETH rallying by more than 120% since mid-October.
Both assets posted new year-to-date highs on March 4, with BTC tagging $65,488 — just 4.7% shy of its all-time high of $68,570 — while ETH traded at a high of $3,537.6.
The current market action is highly sensitive to volatility as many investors are over-leveraged. In the past 24 hours, 90,175 traders’ positions worth $248.7 million were liquidated, including $75.8 million in BTC trades and $29.8 million worth of ETH, according to CoinGlass.
The heavy liquidations came despite BTC and ETH posting relatively modest daily gains of 4.5% and 2.4% respectively.
Ether ETF speculation
While ETH has rallied alongside BTC in recent weeks as many analysts and institutions tip that the first spot Ether ETFs may receive regulatory approval in the coming months, not everyone is sold that the prospective ETH exchange-traded funds will debut this year.
On March 1, Jake Chervinsky, the chief legal officer for the crypto venture capital firm, Variant, tweeted that the recent over-exuberant bullish market momentum could undermine the likelihood that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will greenlight the pending spot Ether ETF applications in 2024.
“I am a lot less confident about ETH ETF approval this year than many of you are,” Chervinsky tweeted. “The SEC got a ton of political blowback for approving BTC ETFs, even though the court basically forced it to. Now, animal spirits are in control of the market, and an ETH ETF would only add to that.”
