Cathie Wood’s ARK Bitcoin ETF Daily Outflows Exceed Grayscale’s GBTC for the First Time
Cathie Wood’s ARK 21 Shares Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) has recorded daily outflows of over $87 million, marking the first time it witnessed larger daily outflows than Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC).
According to data from Farside Investors, ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) saw outflows amounting to $87.5 million on Tuesday, which is approximately equivalent to 1,300 BTC.
This comes as the second consecutive day of outflows for ARKB, as it lost $300,000 on its first-ever day of outflows on Monday.
GBTC Sees Consistent Outflows
Meanwhile, Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) recorded a daily outflow of $81.9 million.
Although this is a relatively low outflow for GBTC, it is worth noting that the trust has experienced consistent outflows every trading day since its conversion to a spot ETF.
Over the past five trading days, GBTC has shed an average of $254 million per day, resulting in a total outflow of around $15.1 billion in the past three months.
Despite the outflows from ARKB and GBTC, BlackRock’s fund saw an inflow of $150.5 million, leading to a net aggregate inflow of $40.3 million for the day.
ARKB currently stands as the third largest among the ten newly launched spot ETFs, excluding Grayscale, with $2.2 billion in assets under management (AUM).
It falls behind BlackRock’s and Fidelity’s funds, which have respective AUMs of $14.1 billion and $7.6 billion.
In terms of Bitcoin holdings, ARKB is the sixth-largest holder among funds, corporations, and miners, currently owning a total of 44,662 BTC.
On the other hand, despite shedding a substantial 291,000 Bitcoin since its conversion to an ETF, GBTC remains the leader in terms of total Bitcoin held, with around 329,000 Bitcoin on its books at the time of publication, according to data from HODL15Capital.
The recent decline in the price of Bitcoin, which dropped around 9% from last week’s high of $71,500 and briefly dipped below $65,000 on April 3, has coincided with increasing outflows from ETFs.
Leveraged Spot Bitcoin ETFs Hit Market
Notably, the introduction of the first-ever 2x and -2x leveraged spot Bitcoin ETFs, trading under the tickers BITU and SBIT, has added to the dynamics of the market.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas highlighted that these ETFs are expected to be among the top 5 most volatile ETFs in the US, with a standard deviation of approximately 150%.
Balchunas also noted a significant increase in Bitcoin ETF trading volume, which reached around $111 billion in March, nearly triple the combined volume of February and January.
The first ever 2x and -2x spot bitcoin ETFs hit the market today from ProShares. $BITU and $SBIT (tickers could have been better). $BITX is 2x but it tracks futures and $BITI is -1x but is also futures. Fee 95bps on both. Haven't traded too much so far, under $1m. pic.twitter.com/jtH1A4DbAc
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) April 2, 2024
Meanwhile, digital asset investment products experienced a positive turnaround in sentiment last week as inflows reached a total of $862 million, almost fully recovering from the record outflows of $931 million in the prior week.
As reported, Bitcoin products attracted almost all of the inflows, drawing around $865 million.
However, Grayscale experienced outflows of $967 million during the same period.
In terms of jurisdictions, the United States witnessed an additional $897 million in inflows, while Europe and Canada combined experienced outflows of $49 million, bringing the year-to-date outflows for these regions to $785 million.
