CEO of BlackRock Larry Fink expressed his satisfaction with the performance of his company’s spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) and reaffirmed his “extreme bullishness” regarding the long-term sustainability of the cryptocurrency.
“In the history of ETFs, IBIT has grown at the quickest rate. In the history of ETFs, nothing has amassed assets as quickly as IBIT, according to Larry Fink, in a Fox Business interview from March 27.
Fink claimed that the success of the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) over the first 11 trading weeks had even “surprised” him.
According to Farside Investors, IBIT has had a great start to trading. Recording $13.5 billion in flows in the first 11 weeks, with a daily high of $849 million on March 12. IBIT sees inflows of little more than $260 million every trading day on average.
“We’re building a more transparent and liquid market now, and I’m pleasantly surprised.” Before we filed it, I never would have guessed that we would have this kind of retail demand, Fink said.
In response to the question of whether IBIT would “do good, but not this good,” Fink said, “Yes, definitely.”
The CEO of BlackRock continued, “I’m very bullish on the long-term viability of Bitcoin”
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says the $IBIT Spot #Bitcoin #ETF is the fastest growing ETF in history
— Simon Dixon (@SimonDixonTwitt) March 27, 2024
pic.twitter.com/NOsDlFgROi
According to BitMEX Research, IBIT presently has $17.1 billion in Bitcoin. It only took the company two months to hit the $10 billion milestone, which took the first gold ETF two years to achieve.
With $23.6 billion in Bitcoin holdings, IBIT is the only licensed ETF that lags behind the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. But Grayscale’s Bitcoin holdings haven’t stopped declining—it had 620,000 BTC before switching to a spot Bitcoin ETF.
With the exception of Grayscale, the nine-spot Bitcoin ETF issuers currently possess more than $34.1 billion in Bitcoin. The top three inflows are IBIT, the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC), and ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB).
Meanwhile, some industry analysts believe that a lack of earnings may eventually force some spot Bitcoin ETF issuers to close.
Hector McNeil, co-CEO and founder of white-label ETF provider HANetf. told Cointelegraph recently . That “most of the current ETFs launched will never even break even as costs will only work if they get to billions of assets under management, which they won’t.”
In an effort to compete with some of the more established competitors, a number of ETF issuers have reduced their costs.
However, as Bloomberg ETF analyst Henry Jim puts it. “These smaller issuers face an uphill battle in entering this turf war of giants.”
“They won’t be able to acquire enough critical mass assets to exist if they match fees, and they won’t have enough revenue to survive if they don’t decrease fees.”
On March 27, asset management company Hashdex received approval for their spot Bitcoin ETF. Becoming the 11th and most recent player in the fiercely competitive US spot Bitcoin ETF market.
