ETF Bitcoin Spot Records $4.6 Billion Trading Volume on First Day of Trading

The Bitcoin spot ETFs opened to impressive trading volumes on January 11 but failed to sustain stable momentum for BTC.

ETF Bitcoin Spot Records $4.6 Billion Trading Volume on First Day of Trading

Updated as of the evening of January 12, 2024:

According to BitMEX Research data, the influx into 11 Bitcoin spot ETFs on their first day of trading totaled $655 million USD, highlighting substantial demand from institutional investors and individual traders in the US securities market.

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Following the previous day's approval announcement by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 11 major Wall Street ETFs launched their first trading sessions on January 11 (U.S. time).

Here is the list of SEC-approved Bitcoin spot ETFs trading on the exchange:

The 11 Bitcoin spot ETFs registered a total trading volume of $4.6 billion USD by the end of the first trading day, from over 700,000 accounts, with Grayscale's GBTC leading at $2.3 billion USD. However, Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart suggested that most of Grayscale's volume could be from sell-offs as investors unwind positions in this fund from the 2021-2022 period to rotate capital into other ETFs.

Following closely are BlackRock's IBIT and Fidelity's FBTC, with trading volumes of $1 billion USD and $721 million USD, respectively. The remaining ETFs traded below $300 million USD.

Further time is needed for analysts to compile data, calculate buy/sell differentials, and determine the total Net Asset Value (NAV) generated by Bitcoin spot ETFs on their first day, revealing actual BTC demand.

With such trading volumes, GBTC and IBIT broke the $1 billion USD first-day trading volume record set by BITO, the Bitcoin futures ETF launched in October 2021. The record for the most successful first-day trading volume for an ETF belongs to another BlackRock fund launched in June 2023, with $2.1 billion USD in volume.

Bitcoin spot ETFs have long been seen by financial observers as tools to bridge traditional finance with the crypto sector, attracting new capital flows from Wall Street into the market. Standard Chartered Bank forecasts that Bitcoin ETFs could attract $50 to $100 billion USD into Bitcoin in 2024 alone, pushing BTC prices to $200,000 USD by late 2025.

Bitcoin prices responded unusually in the hours following the ETF trading launch. The world's largest cryptocurrency rose from $47,200 USD to a new high of $48,969 USD on January 11 - the highest since late December 2021 - before sharply correcting to $45,600 USD as "sell the news" sentiment dominated the market, compounded by news that brokerage firm Vanguard announced it would not support Bitcoin spot ETF trading.

Chart: 1-hour BTC/USDT pair on Binance at 04:30 AM on January 12, 2024

Some opinions within the cryptocurrency community following the observation of the first trading day of 11 Bitcoin spot ETFs pointed out shortcomings in traditional finance, such as fragmented liquidity, differences in ticker symbols for the same asset type, pricing differentials, and reference discrepancies - issues largely mitigated in real-time on the crypto market through blockchain technology.