Impressive Debut for Bitcoin Spot ETFs in the US
The first day of trading for the Bitcoin Spot ETFs in the United States was a resounding success, with trading volumes totaling nearly $4.5 billion. The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), recently converted into an ETF, accounted for about half of these volumes, while a new BlackRock fund, IBIT, accounted for around a quarter of the trades.
In the first 30 minutes of trading on Thursday, over $1 billion in trading volume was recorded, signaling a rapid market reaction to the listing. This intense activity followed the SEC’s approval of several Bitcoin ETFs, making it a historic regulatory decision.
Hashdex announced that while the rule change to list its Bitcoin futures fund as a spot product has been approved, its registration statement to convert the fund is still under review by the SEC.
Overall, there were over 700,000 unique transactions confirmed on the first day of trading for the Bitcoin Spot ETFs. This data suggests that many small investors participated in trading alongside the long-awaited whales.
The Grayscale and BlackRock ETFs led the way, with approximately 56 million and 38 million shares traded, respectively. GBTC closed the day with approximately $2.3 billion in trading volume, while BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) surpassed $1 billion in volume by the end of the day.
According to an analyst from Bloomberg Intelligence, this is the highest trading volume ever recorded on the first day of an ETF. The first-day trading volumes of IBIT were similar to those observed by the first Bitcoin futures ETF, the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO), which recorded around $950 million in volume on October 19, 2021.
