BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF first to cross $1 billion threshold in inflows

By Elijah Nicholson-Messmer and Katie Greifeld

BlackRock Inc.’s Bitcoin exchange-traded fund passed $1 billion in investor inflows, making it the first in the group of nine new ETFs directly holding the cryptocurrency to surpass the milestone since the funds started trading last week.

Investors deposited $371 million in the fund on Wednesday, pushing IBIT past the milestone, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Fidelity Investments is close behind. The company’s FBTC Bitcoin ETF saw $358 million in inflows yesterday — the highest single day tally since the fund launched a week ago. In total, about $880 million have flowed into Fidelity’s fund. BlackRock and Fidelity have driven early consolidation in the new asset, with the two firms receiving 68% of all inflows across the nine new ETFs on the market, totaling nearly $2 billion.

“Considering it’s BlackRock, I don’t think that’s surprising - they have the resources,” said Todd Sohn, an ETF strategist at Strategas. “But it shows how serious they are about this as an asset class. There’s too much opportunity to not have some power behind the launch.”

A significant portion of inflows are coming from investors leaving Grayscale Investment’s GBTC fund after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved the ETFs, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust, which was created in 2013, had over $28 billion in assets under management when it converted to an ETF, but has seen about $1.6 billion in outflows since trading started.

Grayscale’s Bitcoin ETF has a sector-high management fee of 1.5%. Management fees at BlackRock and Fidelity are a fraction of GBTC’s cost, but they do not have the lowest fees in the group of new Bitcoin ETFs — that title goes to Franklin Templeton with its 0.19% management fee. Despite its industry-low fee, Franklin has received less than 2% of inflows across the broader Bitcoin ETF group.

The two group-leading firms may capture more market share moving forward as a result of their institutional and retail distribution networks, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

BlackRock is seeing interest from “day one” retail investors, but they are also focused on attracting investors who are new to the asset class, according to Rachel Aguirre, iShares head of US product at BlackRock.

“We’re really seeing flows come from a number of different directions,” Aguirre said. “Clearly, the interest we’re seeing is both from retail, from self-directed investors and there are some who were ready to invest on day one but we’re also focused on those investors who are also just now beginning to look at this new asset class and we’re very excited about that.”