Spot Bitcoin ETF Weekly Outflows Hit $500M Globally: CoinShares

It’s been over two weeks since the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) greenlighted eleven spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States.

Thus far, the nascent ecosystem has seen significant fluctuations in net flows. In the just concluded week, the digital asset investment products of asset managers like BlackRock, Bitwise, Fidelity Investments, Grayscale, ProShares, and ARK 21Shares saw net outflows that summed up to $500 million globally.

Grayscale Bitcoin ETF Dominates Outflows 

Grayscale is still leading the outflows with its higher-fee converted spot Bitcoin ETF (GBTC). As of January 22, blockchain analytic platform LookonChain reported that Grayscale holds 566,973 BTC, valued at $23.21 billion, BlackRock and Fidelity hold 33,431 BTC ($1.37 billion) and 24,857 BTC ($1.02 billion), respectively, and Bitwise boasts of 10,152 BTC ($415.6 million).

So far, more than $2.2 billion has left the ETF as outflows. Some of Grayscale’s BTC holdings are said to have been moved to its custodian Coinbase Prime. 

Substantial Decrease in GBTC Outflows’ Impact 

Grayscale’s outflows are in strong contrast with the inflows from the other ETF issuers. To put it in perspective, the newborn spot bitcoin ETFs had inflows totaling $1.8 billion last week. This was led by $744.7 million from BlackRock’s IBIT and $643.2 million from Fidelity’s FBTC. Following their launch on January 11, the nine new ETFs have jointly recorded almost $5.8 billion in inflows.

Compared to last week when the outflows from Grayscale’s GBTC were considerably huge, recent data shows that there has been a substantial decrease in its impact. According to CoinShares’ Head of Research James Butterfill, the daily outflows still existent. 

Bitcoin Price Sees Significant Recovery

Looking back at the day when the spot Bitcoin ETFs were launched, the flagship cryptocurrency Bitcoin has seen a huge drop in its price. 

From $49,000, the coin dropped to around $38,000 suggesting a negative impact of the spot Bitcoin ETF offering. However, there has been some significant recovery for the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.  At the time of this writing, BTC is trading at $42,049.54.

“We believe that much of the price falls, despite these positive flows, was due to bitcoin seed capital being acquired prior to Jan. 11,” Butterfill said.