Spot Bitcoin ETFs Record $4.6 Billion First Day Trading Volume – Unchained

Grayscale’s GBTC and iShares IBIT accounted for more than 70% of the $4.6 billion in volume recorded on the first day of trading.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a monumental first day in, with the 11 approved funds recording a collective $4.65 billion in trading volume.

The biggest winners from the first day of trade were Grayscale Investments’ Graysale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) which saw more than $2.3 billion in trading volume, followed by Blackrock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) that recorded more than a billion in trading volume.

biggest day 1 in ETF history

not bad at all

— Luke Martin (@VentureCoinist) January 11, 2024

It is worth noting that volume does not represent the amount of inflows the fund has seen, but rather broader trading activity. Market participants have speculated that several investors may be selling large amounts of GBTC, or trading it in for another listed spot Bitcoin ETF.

Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart noted that arbitrage traders had not managed to bring the GBTC discount to Net Asset Value (NAV) down to zero just yet, which likely implies that sell-side trades are still dominant. 

Looking at $GBTC and traders haven’t managed to arb the discount to 0% yet. Probably means both:

1)trading is heavy on the selling side and
2)market makers are likely still ironing out kinks in the process

That said its trading VERY tight and the live discount is just ~1.3% pic.twitter.com/5XkBN2HeU7

— James Seyffart (@JSeyff) January 11, 2024

Interestingly, Grayscale opted to keep their fund fees firm at 1.5%, exceeding fees charged by competing spot Bitcoin ETF issuers by a considerable margin. The crypto investment manager appears to be betting on its size relative to its competitors as its stand out factor – GBTC has an AUM of $28 billion after its conversion into an ETF, whereas the other newly listed products are all starting from scratch.

“GBTC has size, liquidity, AUM, and it’s offered by Grayscale, a crypto specialist,” said Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein in an interview with Yahoo Finance. 

Nearly all other spot Bitcoin ETF issuers lowered their fees in attempts to undercut competitors in the days leading up to the deadline from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for approval. 

As things stand, Bitwise is the lowest cost option with fees of just 0.20%, Fidelity and VanEck charge fees of 0.25%, and BlackRock charges 0.30%.