BlackRock CEO Larry Fink was “pleasantly surprised” by the performance of his company’s spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) and reiterated that he is “very bullish” on Bitcoin’s long-term viability.
"IBIT is the fastest growing ETF in the history of ETFs. Nothing in the history of ETFs has captured assets as quickly as IBIT," Larry Fink said in a March 27 interview with Fox Business.
Fink said the performance of the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) over the first 11 trading weeks even surprised him.
IBIT has had a strong start to trading, with flows reaching $13.5 billion in the first 11 weeks, reaching a daily high of $849 million on March 12, according to Farside Investors. IBIT has average inflows of just over $260 million per trading day.
"I'm pleasantly surprised that we are now creating a more liquid and transparent market. Before we submitted our application, I would have never predicted that we would see this type of retail demand," Fink said. According to BitMEX Research, IBIT currently holds $17.1 billion worth of Bitcoin, taking just two months to reach the $10 billion mark — a milestone that took the first gold ETF two years to reach. reached.
Among all currently approved ETFs, IBIT trails only Grayscale Bitcoin Trust in Bitcoin holdings, valued at $23.6 billion. However, Grayscale’s Bitcoin holdings continue to decline and are below the 620,000 BTC held before converting to a spot Bitcoin ETF. Nine spot Bitcoin ETF issuers (excluding Grayscale) currently hold more than $34.1 billion in Bitcoin, with IBIT, Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) and ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) leading inflows.
Meanwhile, some industry experts predict that some spot Bitcoin ETF issuers may eventually go out of business due to a lack of profits.
Hector McNeil, co-CEO and founder of white-label ETF provider HANetf, said: “Most ETFs launched today will never break even because only those managing billions of dollars will Assets, costs come into play, but that’s not the case.”, recently told Cointelegraph.
Some ETF issuers have lowered fees in an attempt to compete with some of the larger players.
But these smaller issuers "face an uphill battle to get into the turf war among the giants," said Henry Jim, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg.
"If they match fees, they won't have enough revenue to survive, and if they don't lower fees, they won't be able to collect enough critical assets to survive." Asset manager Hashdex’s spot Bitcoin ETF was approved on March 27, making it the 11th and latest entrant into the competitive spot Bitcoin ETF market in the United States.
