The 9 new ETFs approved by the SEC in the United States hold a total of 403.337 BTC in reserves, as of today.
Grayscale's Bitcoin investment fund, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), has been surpassed by new Bitcoin spot ETFs approved in the United States in January in terms of the amount of bitcoin held in reserve by these funds.
While GBTC has been facing significant BTC outflows, new Bitcoin ETFs have been accumulating a significant amount of the cryptocurrency since its listing.
According to data from the Bitcoin Treasuries platform, The 9 new cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds hold in reserves a total of 403.337 BTC, while the total bitcoins in reserves on Grayscale’s GBTC, as of today, is 400.165 BTC.
The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust has been a major player in the Bitcoin market. However, since Bitcoin spot ETFs began trading on the country's stock exchanges, it has faced stiff competition, due to the lower fees offered by its competitors, among other advantages.
Record inflows into new Bitcoin ETFs
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and Fidelity Investments’ Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) have seen record inflows since listing, with over 100.000 BTC each held in reserve as of today.
To be more specific, IBIT owns 195.985 BTC, valued at around $13.680 billion, while FBTC holds 122.951 BTC, valued at around $8.580 billion. Both ETFs hold 318.936 BTC in reserves, representing 79% of the Bitcoin held in the new US exchange-traded funds.
Both BlackRock and Fidelity Investments provide investment and asset management services to individual, corporate and institutional clients and are seeking regulatory approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch an Ethereum spot ETF, allowing their investors to gain direct exposure to the second-largest cryptocurrency on the market by market capitalization.
A battle between heavyweights
Since the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust was authorized by the SEC to become a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (it was previously a private trust), it has lost about 35% of the bitcoins it held in reserve, or about 220.000 BTC.
As mentioned at the beginning, this is mainly due to the attractive advantages offered by its competitors, such as low fees.
On January 10, the date on which the new Bitcoin spot ETFs were approved in the United States, BlackRock announced further reductions in IBIT fees, in order to attract as many investors as possible.
The company reduced Fidelity said in a statement that it would reduce fees on its fund’s net asset value from 30 to 25 basis points, and said it would charge a promotional fee of 12 basis points on the first $5.000 billion over the first 12 months after IBIT’s listing. In the case of Fidelity, the company said in January that it would charge fees of just 0,39% to its investors, while Grayscale had not yet included fees associated with its exchange-traded fund or its authorized participant in its SEC filing.
In addition to surpassing GBTC in the amount of bitcoins in reserves, IBIT and FBTC have also achieved higher daily trading volumes and better liquidity metrics in the market.
Continue reading: BlackRock's Global Allocation Fund to invest in Bitcoin ETF
