Bitcoin: the ETF by BlackRock (IBIT) dominates the market

Last Friday, the stock market session ended with a remarkable dominance of the BlackRock ETF compared to the other spot Bitcoin ETFs.

In fact, in the face of total net inflows slightly above 400 million dollars, IBIT had as much as 360 million.

In other words, 90% of the inflows went to BlackRock’s ETF, leaving all other ETFs combined with only the remaining 10%.

The Bitcoin spot ETF by BlackRock dominates the market, with 90% of the total net inflows. Source: Coinglass

The dominance of BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF

Note that historically this dominance appears to be less pronounced.

Since they were launched on the US exchanges, in January of last year, in total the spot Bitcoin ETFs have gathered total net inflows of almost 54 and a half billion dollars.

IBIT di BlackRock in total has gathered nearly 57.8 billion dollars in net inflows since then, compared to just over 12 billion of FBTC, Fidelity’s ETF.

Instead, GBTC by Grayscale has overall recorded 23.7 billion in net outflows, which explains why the inflows of IBIT are greater than those of all ETFs combined.

Considering only the positive net inflows, IBIT overall attracted more than 75.5% of the total, followed by FBTC with more than 15.5%. All the others together account for less than 9%.

Therefore, BlackRock’s dominance in crypto ETFs is remarkable, and it has even increased in recent days.

Ethereum ETFs

The spot ETH ETFs landed on the US exchanges in July of last year.

In total, since then, they have recorded net inflows of approximately 9.8 billion dollars.

In this case, Blackock also dominates, given that its ETHA has totaled 9.8 billion dollars in overall net inflows, followed by FETH by Fidelity with almost 2.4 billion. ETHE by Grayscale, on the other hand, recorded more than 4.3 billion in overall net outflows.

Curiously, the percentage of total net inflows, ignoring the outflows of ETHE, is almost 76% for BlackRock’s ETF, while Fidelity’s rises to 18.4%. The others had to settle for less than 6% of total net inflows.

So BlackRock also dominates the ETF market on Ethereum with more or less the same percentage.

In this case, however, on Friday the dominance was much more contained.

In fact, out of a total of 461 million dollars in daily net inflows, BlackRock’s ETHA attracted less than 255, with Fidelity’s FETHE attracting more than 132.

Therefore, yesterday’s record was focused on the Bitcoin markets.

BlackRock and the ETF on Bitcoin

Note that on Friday the price of BTC was essentially stable, while that of ETH was rising.

Today, however, BTC has risen more than ETH, at least for now, so it is possible that the overall daily net inflows on spot Bitcoin ETFs will once again exceed those on Ethereum, as often happens.

Chart of ETH/BTC (Ethereum against Bitcoin) trend, Binance market. Source: TradingView

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The domination of BlackRock in this field can be explained in several ways.

The first, most obvious reason is that BlackRock is still the largest asset manager in the world, therefore those who choose an ETF to invest in often rely on them, considering them safer.

One must not forget that in the hypothetical case where a large sum of BTC were to be taken from the IBIT fund’s reserves, its market value would decrease, or even collapse. Therefore, many ultimately choose the ETF, which from this point of view offers greater security.

However, there is also a second reason, since the level of security offered by, for example, Fidelity more or less seems comparable to that of BlackRock.

BlackRock has a lot of clients, and among them, there are many very wealthy ones. Since it launched the ETF on Bitcoin, it has advertised it a lot, and it seems that this advertising has paid off.

One must not forget that for the company, this ETF is an excellent source of income, precisely due to its resounding success. Therefore, there is nothing surprising if the company has invested a lot in it, especially in advertising.

BlackRock and Bitcoin

Although the Bitcoin ETF by BlackRock was launched just over a year and a half ago, the company has been following Bitcoin for several years.

To tell the truth, during the great speculative bubble of 2021, it seemed to be quite still, but after the bear-market of 2022, it started to become increasingly active in this specific field.

It is very likely that the biennium 2020/2021 pushed many BlackRock clients to ask the company to provide them with reliable tools to gain exposure to BTC, and so in the end, the company did so in 2024.

It should not be forgotten, however, that although spot crypto ETFs landed on US exchanges only in 2024, already after the great speculative bubble of 2017, some financial companies had asked the SEC for permission to launch them.

The SEC at the time had refused, although, on the other hand, the CFTC had already approved in 2017 the launch of BTC futures.

In the end, in 2023, a federal judge condemned the SEC’s decision to reject spot Bitcoin ETFs, and so only two years ago the doors really opened for BlackRock and Fidelity in this specific sector.

Bitcoin: the ETF by BlackRock (IBIT) dominates the market

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