Buyers of spot bitcoin ETFs aren’t buying actual bitcoin — but that’s working out just fine so far for folks buying into BlackRock’s fund.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust has performed better than bitcoin since its launch on Thursday.
IBIT is performing better than bitcoin, but it would be more accurate to call IBIT a less bad performer. IBIT has lost 8.9% compared to the 10.2% that top crypto fell since ETFs were launched. That’s more than one full percentage between them.
IBIT shares are performing better than any of its rivals. The worst performers among bitcoin ETFs are Valkyrie BRRR (down 10.6%) and Franklin Templeton EZBC (down 10.8%), both down as of 11:50 ET. These two funds have almost identical performance to bitcoin or Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.
The figures below were actually calculated one hour after the opening bell on Thursday to eliminate any possible temporary fluctuations that could have affected the data. It is recommended to skip the opening hour on any trading day, but especially on days that mark the launch of an ETF.
IBIT and GBTC have the highest volume today with $334 and $1 billion, respectively.
GBTC is now a spot ETF. It was previously a fund that had a closed end, and shares of the fund could not be redeemed into bitcoin.
The amount of capital that has left GBTC, if it ever did, is not known at this time. But the vehicle held around $29 Billion in Bitcoin before its conversion last week.
Some discrepancy between the price of bitcoin and the share price of ETFs is to be expected — ETFs offer exposure to the underlying asset and the value of that exposure is influenced by its own supply, demand and liquidity.
The appeal of spot funds is that they are more likely to track the price and value of their underlying asset than other funds which have synthetic exposure by way of futures contracts.
BITO is the biggest futures-backed Bitcoin ETF, with assets of more than $ 2 billion as early this week. It’s almost identical to BlackRock’s fund.
Investors’ preferences could dictate that IBIT shares or other bitcoin-beating stocks are more in demand.
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